Notes to Chapter 1dances. Milton could hardly take it upon himself to dictate on this point, but his text
invites and makes place for Revels between the masque dances and the Spirit’s epi-
logue.
97 See John Creaser, “The Present Aid of This Occasion: The Setting of Comus,” in The
Court Masque, ed. David Lindley (Manchester, 1984), 111–34.
98 See McGuire, Milton’s Puritan Masque. Citations of A Maske are from the 1637 ver-
sion; customary line numbers are supplied from Hughes.
99 Brown, Milton’s Aristocratic Entertainments, 57–77.
100 Some earlier critics, themselves mesmerized by the power of Comus’s rhetoric, have
failed to recognize the force of the Lady’s response. See Variorum II.3, 784–852.
101 Revard, Tangles of Neaera’s Hair, 131–56.
102 In the Trinity manuscript the first epilogue is crossed out, and the expanded version
added there.
103 Citations are from Poems, 1645.
104 Hebrews 12:26–7 reads, “Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.
And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken,
as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.” See
Joseph A. Wittreich, Jr., Visionary Poetics (San Marino, 1979), 137–53.
105 [George] Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (London, 1589), 39, identifies two
classical varieties of funeral song: “funerall songs were called Epicedia if they were sung
by many, and Monodia if they were uttered by one alone.”
106 Revard, Tangles of Neaera’s Hair, 165–79.
107 The traditional funeral elegy and its parts are discussed in O. B. Hardison, The Endur-
ing Monument (Chapel Hill, NC, 1962); Ellen Lambert, Placing Sorrow (Chapel Hill,
NC, 1975), and G. W. Pigman, Grief and English Renaissance Elegy (Cambridge, 1957).
108 See Variorum II.2, 544–65, for allusions and a resumé of criticism; also Revard, Tangles
of Nearea’s Hair, 179–90. Some principal sources include Theocritus, Idyl I, for Daphnis;
Mochus’s Lament for Bion; Bion’s Lament for Adonis (Idyl I); Virgil’s Eclogue V for
Daphnis (Julius Caesar) and Eclogue X for Gallus; Petrarch, Eclogues II, VI, VII;
Mantuan, Eclogue IX; Sannazaro, Piscatory Eclogue I; Castiglione, Alcon; Joannes
Secundus, Orpheus, ecloga, and Spenser, Shepheardes Calender, especially “November”
(Lament for Dido), “July,” and “September.”
109 Revard, Tangles of Neaera’s Hair, 190–3, calls attention to an anonymous elegy for Sir
Philip Sidney, in which a university community (Damoetas among them), along with
the nature deities and the whole realm of Arcady mourn the loss of a good shepherd
and champion of Protestantism named Lycidas. The two-part volume was published
in Oxford in 1587; the Lycidas elegy is from the second part, entitled Peplus Illustrissimi
Viri D. Philippi Sidnaei Supremis Honoribus Dicatus.
110 Along with the flower passage, the Orpheus passage (ll. 58–63) is the most heavily
revised in the poem – on a separate page preceeding the poem in the Trinity manu-
script, and in the margins.
111 L. 77. In Virgil’s Eclogue VI, 3–5, Apollo plucked the ears of the pastoral poet Virgil,
warning him against attempting epic subjects. The final line of the Orpheus passage
also hints at some consolation in its reference to another aspect of the myth: Apollo
guarded the head of Orpheus on its journey to Lesbos, where it brought that island the
gift of song.
Notes to Chapter 3