SOURCE: Shawcross, John T. “Henry Lawes's Settings of Songs for Milton's ‘Comus.’” Journal of the Rutgers University Library 28 (December 1964): 22-8.

In the following essay, Shawcross discusses the music Lawes composed for Milton's masque Comus, arguing that the text may have been altered after the composition of the music.

In a former article on the manuscripts of John Milton's mask called “Comus”¹ I drew attention to the fact that the texts of the songs for which music written by Henry Lawes exists are derived from revisions of the basic transcription in Milton's manuscript in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.² The songs come down to us in two manuscripts: British Museum Add. MS 11,518 (in an unknown hand)³ and the Lawes MS recently on loan to the British Museum (in Lawes's hand).⁴ The date of the basic transcription of the mask into the Trinity MS poses important questions for the...