Notes to Chapter 164 A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: On Michaelmasse night, before the Right Honorable,
John Earle of Bridgewater, Vicount Brackly, Lord President of Wales, and one of His Majesties
most honorable Privie Counsell (London: Humphrey Robinson, 1637). It was not entered
into the Stationer’s Register, and may have appeared January or February, 1638 if the
new year was counted from March. Henry Wotton claimed on April 6, 1638 to have
seen it “some good while before,” along with a copy of Thomas Randolph’s Poems
dated 1638.
65 A Maske (1637), sigs A 2-A 2v.
66 The Bridgewater manuscript, which remained at Bridgewater House until the twenti-
eth century, has inscribed on the title page the names of the three children and their
roles.
67 Shawcross, John Milton: The Self and the World, 55, imports the context of Virgil’s Sec-
ond Eclogue, the shepherd Corydon’s love for the beautiful and aloof Alexis, to suggest
that the epigraph is “consciously reflective of Milton’s firm farewell to his former liaison
with Diodati.” But even if there were evidence to support the scenario Shawcross
suggests, there is no reason to suppose Milton would make such a private gesture in this
public arena.
68 Ll. 779–806. Here and subsequently I quote from the 1637 (unlineated) text; line num-
bers are supplied from Hughes.
69 From internal evidence, the Yale editors argue that this letter, dated September 2 in the
1674 edition, should be reassigned to November, as should the subsequent letter dated
September 23 (CPW I, 325); for the latter, the November date is reinforced by several
parallels with Lycidas. Gordon Campbell, in Chronology, 57, supplies a plausible expla-
nation: Milton probably dated the letters 2.ix.1637 and 23.x.1637, and the printer of
the 1674 edition took the Roman numerals to refer to the ninth month of the year
beginning in January (i.e. September), rather than the ninth month beginning in March
(i.e. November).
70 How long the friends were out of touch is unclear. Diodati’s apprenticeship in medi-
cine, probably under his father, and his practice in the North took him effectively out
of Milton’s orbit, and the hint of family troubles suggests that his mind was taken up
with such concerns.
71 Milton’s second letter refers to “stepmotherly warfare,” evidently a topic of Diodati’s
letter. His father had recently remarried, and soon after fell out with his sons, disinher-
iting them all.
72 One trial sheet of the Trinity manuscript (the verso of the last page of A Maske) contains
drafts of three passages with a fourth crossed out. The “Orpheus” passage (ll. 58–63)
and the long flower passage (ll. 134–51) are much worked over. For the stages of
composition of Lycidas in the manuscript and in the printed version see John Shawcross,
“Establishment of a Text of Milton’s Poems through a Study of Lycidas,” Papers of the
Bibliographical Society of America 56 (1962), 317–31.
73 Justa Edouardo King Naufrago (Cambridge, 1638). The title page carries an epigraph from
Petronius, “Si recte calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est” (If you rightly cast the
reckoning, there is shipwreck everywhere). Part II has a separate title page and pagina-
tion, Obsequies to the memorie of Mr. Edward King; it was sometimes printed and bound
separately. Lycidas appears on pp. 20–5 of Part II.
74 There are five autograph corrections in the British Library copy (C 21. c. 42) and
Notes to Chapter 3