Managing Spenser, Managing Shakespeare in Comus

Abstract

Recently John Guillory and Maggie Kilgour have described Milton's apparent uneasiness in Comus with Shakespeare's presence throughout this masque and his preference for – and possible endorsement of – Spenser in the poem's resolution. Nevertheless, despite efforts to clarify the value and nature of Milton's relation to Shakespeare, Spenser, and their works, the precise meaning of each literary predecessor for Milton in Comus remains to be defined. This essay provides that definition, in the process confirming Guillory's and Kilgour's argument and further refuting Harold Bloom's claim about the relationship of Spenser and Shakespeare to Milton's masque. Among this essay's new readings of elements of Comus are a fresh interpretation of the threat posed by Shakespeare's profuse "fertility" to Milton and his poem as well as a description of the significance of Spenser's art for Milton that involves a thorough decoding of the allegory of the notorious passage concerning the Shepherd Lad (ll. 617–41). This decoding reveals a Miltonic achievement – the poet's managing Spenser to manage Shakespeare – in the process fashioning his own creative space.