Matters of occasion

On first encountering Milton's Ludlow Masque - often referred to as 'Comus' - one might begin by considering what kind of text it is. A masque is a special kind of commissioned work, spectacular and 'multi-media' in presentation, and inevitably collaborative. It cannot be treated simply as its writer's 'poem' or a play. This kind of entertainment developed at the Jacobean and Caroline courts up to the time of the English Civil War. Ben Jonson (as poet until the early 1630s) and Inigo Jones (as designer) were the genre's most innovative exponents, though there were others. It was for masques that proscenium arch stages and movable scenery were first introduced in England. Masques were usually performed during the winter festive season after Christmas, or occasionally at other times, and they often represented the spectacular highpoint, involving huge expense. They featured younger courtiers as the 'masquers', who personated symbolic figures - often chaste goddesses, if it was a ladies' masque, or martial heroes, if it was a lords' masque - and whose function, apart from representing virtue, was to dance. They did not, at least until the arrival of Queen Henrietta Maria, usually speak, or sing: that was left to the servants.