SOURCE: Baruch, Franklin R. “Milton's Comus: Skill, Virtue, and Henry Lawes.” Milton Studies 5 (1973): 289-308.

In the following essay, Baruch argues that in his masque Comus Milton characterizes Lawes, who plays the role of the Attendant Spirit, as the teacher and dramatic guide for the Egerton children.

Much of the attention given to Milton's Comus has sprung from a concern with the pairings seen as operative in the poem. Virginity and profligacy, natural and religious virtue, celibacy and marriage, order and disorder—the list is an abundant one, with results often richly suggestive.¹ It is perhaps inevitable that this focus in Comus scholarship should have come about. By the very nature of the form, one looks for contending or, at least, separated elements to be in union at the close. If that union is not possible, we find one alternative to have lost. Thus, the universe of the masque...