Milton's Comus

by John Milton

Pages: 138

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About this book

Verse, music and moral argument meet in this edition of John Milton's masque, first performed at Ludlow Castle in 1634. William Bell's introduction places Comus among the poems Milton wrote while living at Horton and explores its debts to classical literature and Spenser. The central concern is self-control: Bell reads the poem as a contest between bodily appetite and the claims of conscience.

The volume pairs the dramatic poem with detailed notes and an index to them. In the annotations, nightingales, violets, Echo and Narcissus lead into discussions of ancient stories, word origins, grammar and the varying rhythms of a song. Readers interested in Milton's shorter poetry can use these explanations to examine how imagery, sound and philosophical ideas work together, while seeing how a nineteenth-century editor approached the text.

About the author

John Milton

John Milton (1608-1674) was an English poet and political thinker, author of Paradise Lost. A defender of liberty and republican government, he is regarded as one of the greatest poets in the English language.