asque that was performed in 1634 at Ludlow Castle. An early work, the masque is remarkably free of the back and forth soul-searching of social, ethical, and religious conditions that characterizes his later work.
The simple story addresses the peccadilloes of the aristocratic class of which Milton was highly critical. An unnamed Lady becomes separated from her two brothers in a deep, dark wood. The evil spirit Comus tricks her into returning with him to his palace. Once immobilized there, she resists Comus' carnal temptations. Later, her brothers burst into the palace. The Lady is saved. Although her virtue never really hangs in the balance; nevertheless, this chastity remains intact.
In Comus, the body is the steel-encased dungeon of the soul, and temptations of the body are irrelevant to the virtuous soul. While the Lady is physically trapped, her mind remains free. Although the resolution clearly involves issues of control of the Lady's body, it should be noted that Comus is not allegorical. While the spirits are spirits, the Lady is not the personification of Chastity any more than Comus is Satan (although, as the son of Bacchus and Circe, he has interests beyond good-natured mischief).
While the dark wood of deceit and confusion is an ideal battlefield for Christianity to confront the forces of evil, a masque by definition connotes a certain light-hearted pith as a form of courtly entertainment not conducive to serious examination. What is important to Milton is that a chaste or in virgo intacta girl becomes a chaste wife.
Similar to Sprenger and Kramer's guidelines in the Malleus Maleficarum for determining what constitutes witchcraft, Milton also views the magical world as negative and unnecessary. Thus, the dark woods of Comus symbolize the complexity of humanity's condition in a strange land peopled by treacherous enchanterers with magic draughts. Only morality will safeguard whoever enters these ...