Virtue Unwavering: Milton’s Comus

Abstract

Comus is itself enchanting, and a fine introduction to Milton. Many of the poet’s rhetorical and stylistic techniques, and certain moral ideas which are central to Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, can be found in this early and glorious masque. By now it has had much critical attention, but certain accounts of a quarter of a century ago still prescribe the terms of debate. A full and valuable analysis was offered by A. S. P. Woodhouse in his article ‘Argument of Milton’s Comus’,¹ but this erred, I think, on the side of being too elaborate and speculative. Mr Woodhouse discovered several levels of meaning in the poem, but he made far too much of the closing section, and his approach was more intensively intellectual than the text seems to me to warrant. In one positive respect, too, his emphasis was misleading. He maintained that the action of the poem is set in the realm of ‘Nature’ until the closing pages, when the entry of ‘Sabrina fair’ raises it to the realm of Grace. But to my mind, the visions of life belonging to Nature and Grace respectively are present side by side throughout the poem, the one represented by the arguments of Comus, and the other by the type of insight and strength which protect the Lady.

Virtue that wavers is not virtue, but vice revolted from itself, and after a while returning. Milton: From The Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty (1642).