Notes to Chapter 1Brown (Aristocratic Entertainments, 20) doubts, reasonably, that Milton would allude
directly to the scandal in either work, though these circumstances form the immediate
context for Arcades and would be well known to its audience.
27 Ll. 2, 17, 15, 36, 25, 94–5. Citations are from the final version in the 1645 Poems. The
countess surpasses in her merits and her noble progeny wise Latona (mother of Apollo
and Diana), Cebele (mother of a hundred gods), and even Juno.
28 In the Trinity manuscript these lines are added twice – to the second song and the third
- as they are also in 1645, for maximum effect. It is possible that the lines were added
for the publication rather than the performance itself.
29 The dowager countess had danced in Daniel’s Vision of 12. Goddesses and Jonson’s
Masque of Beauty. Lady Alice’s older sisters danced in several later masques: Mary in
The Temple of Love (1635), and Elizabeth in Luminalia (1638). Her brothers John and
Thomas, along with their young cousin George, Lord Chandos, danced as torchbearers
in Coelum Britannicum (1634).
30 Courtly masque dances probably preceded this song, though none are indicated in the
text.
31 Citations from this sonnet and Milton’s other lyrics of the period are from the versions
in the 1645 Poems.
32 In “Some problems in the Chronology of Milton’s Early Poems,” Review of English
Studies 11 (1935), 276–9, William Riley Parker argues cogently for 1632. Milton’s
use of the Latin phrase Anno aetatis in dating nine early poems would almost cer-
tainly extend to his usage in English, meaning not his 23rd year (the year before his
23rd birthday) but the year when he was 23, before his 24th birthday. Parker’s
argument has been challenged, but not to my mind persuasively, by Ernest Sirluck
in “Milton’s Idle Right Hand,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 60 (1961),
781–4.
33 The final two lines – “All is, if I have grace to use it so / As ever in my great task-
Master’s eye” – is enigmatic. The “Taskmaster” reference seems to fuse the conception
of God as Lord of the vineyard with that of God as Master of a household demanding an
account of his servants’ stewardship of the talents (money) given them. Milton refers to
both parables in his letter enclosing this sonnet. The line also invites the associations of
harshness and injustice often conveyed by the word “taskmaster” in scripture (e.g. Exo-
dus l:11; 3:7; 5:6), as well as many references to God’s all-seeing eye (e.g. Psalms 33:18;
34:15).
34 Milton alludes to a text (Isaiah 21:11–12) usually applied to ministers, in terming his
friend “a good watch man to admonish that the howres of the night passe on.”
35 See F. T. Prince, The Italian Element in Milton’s Verse (Oxford, 1954), 61–3.
36 For analysis of the careful revisions in the three and a half drafts of this poem in the
Trinity manuscript see P. L. Heyworth, “The Composition of Milton’s ‘At a Solemn
Musick,’ ” Bulletin of the New York Public Library 70 (1966), 450–8.
37 The (surely correct) reading in the Trinity manuscript is “concent”; the 1645 Poems
reads “content.”
38 A manuscript of Lawes’s music (BL Add. 53723) contains in Lawes’s autograph the
music and lyrics for five songs: “From ye Heav’ns now I fly,” “Sweet Echo,” “Sabrina
Fayre,” “Back Shepherds back,” and “Now my task is smoothly done.” Other music,
including Sabrina’s song and the dance music, may have been written by Lawes but not
Notes to Chapter 3