“Studious Retirement” 1632–1638Whatever else might contribute to Milton’s new emphasis on chastity and virginity
at this juncture, some explanation is provided by his reading. He later states in the
Apology (1642) that he reaffirmed and refined his boyhood ideal of spiritual love and
chastity during these years of study, as he read and reflected on Plato, Paul, and the
Book of Revelation:
Thus from the Laureat fraternity of Poets, riper years and the ceaselesse round of
study and reading led me to the shady spaces of philosophy, but chiefly to the divine
volumes of Plato, and his equal Xenophon. Where if I should tell ye what I learnt, of
chastity and love, I meane that which is truly so, whose charming cup is only vertue
which she bears in her hand to those who are worthy. The rest are cheated with a
thick intoxicating potion which a certaine Sorceresse the abuser of loves name carries
about; and how the first and chiefest office of love, begins and ends in the soule,
producing those happy twins of her divine generation knowledge and vertue....
But having had the doctrine of holy Scripture unfolding those chaste and high mys-
teries with timeliest care infus’d, that the body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body,
thus also I argu’d to my selfe, that if unchastity in a woman whom Saint Paul termes
the glory of man, be such a scandall and dishonour, then certainly in a man who is
both the image and glory of God, it must, though commonly not so thought, be
much more deflouring and dishonourable.... Nor did I slumber over that place
expressing such high rewards of ever accompanying the Lambe, with those celestiall
songs to others inapprehensible, but not to those who were not defil’d with women,
which doubtlesse meanes fornication: For mariage must not be call’d a defilement.
(CPW I, 891–3)The imagery of this passage – the exaltation of chastity, the Circean sorceress’s
cup, the twin birth produced by spiritual love – draws on the same nexus of con-
cepts, attitudes, and images that informs Comus. While it is surely simplistic to
identify “the Lady of Christ’s” with the Lady of Comus, the Apology indicates that
Milton held himself bound to the ideal of chastity, which for the unmarried means
virginity. A healthy young man striving over several years to sublimate his sex drive
in the service of that ideal might naturally enough extol its value. Milton’s additions
to A Maske do not mystify virginity as an ideal permanent condition or as inher-
ently superior to the chastity which includes faithful marital love – a point Milton
insists on in the Apology. Rather, as in the passage quoted, they emphasize the
virgin’s honor and power as a subset of “The Sun-clad power of Chastitie,” the
subset appropriate to the 15-year-old Lady – and to himself – in their present con-
dition of life.
During the autumn of 1637 Milton evidently felt restive and isolated at Horton
and made several trips to London. In a Latin letter of November 2,^69 from London,
he sought to reclaim an intimacy with Charles Diodati after some period of time
when the two were out of touch. Chiding his friend for failing to write or visit,
Milton refers to recent visits to London when he sought news of Charles from his