SOURCE: “Comus: Milton's Re-Formation of the Masque,” in Spokesperson Milton: Voices in Contemporary Criticism, edited by Charles W. Durham and Kristin Pruitt McColgan, Susquehanna University Press, 1994, pp. 193-205.

In the essay below, Hubbell considers Milton's efforts to shift the nature and focus of the masque in his Comus.

As Stephen Orgel demonstrates, the specific function of the masque is to represent the social order, making particular reference to the monarch as the regal head of both the masque and society. Since the masque proposes to create a political fiction that would glorify the establishment, the praise of the court is an inherent element of the genre.¹ Political issues are thus inseparable from formal ones, and a study of Milton's deviations from the masque traditions will reveal the political agendas within Comus.

During the two decades before Comus, Ben Jonson united the loosely connected art forms that he had...