¹ Robert M. Adams, Ikon: John Milton and the Modern Critics (Ithaca, 1955), p. 1. All of the modern readings except those of Miss Tuve, Mr. Madsen, and Mr. Whiting, noted below, are neatly summarized in M. Y. Hughes' Odyssey edition of the masque in Complete Poems and Selected Prose (New York, 1957). Professor Woodhouse has called to my attention a short essay on Comus in a rare volume published privately by the author, John A. Himes, Miltonic Enigmas (Gettysburg, Penn., 1921).

² A. S. P. Woodhouse, “The Argument in Milton's Comus,” UTQ, xi (1941), 47–71 and “Comus Once More,” UTQ, xrx (1950), 218–223.

³ Rosamond Tuve, “Image, Form, and Theme in A Mask,” Images and Themes in Five Poems by Milton (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 112–161. Miss Tuve suggests (p. 116) that the Circe myth is the “great hinge” on which the meaning of the masque turns.

⁴ The emphasis upon Lawes' participation in the masque is particularly strong. See especially 11. 84–87, where Lawes assumes the likeness of a Swain

⁵ The Younger Brother exclaims “Heav'n keep my sister!” (1. 486). The Elder Brother says, “Heav'n be for us.” (1. 489). The Lady explains to Comus that he cannot hurt her even though for the moment “Heav'n sees good” that she remain helpless (1. 665). The Attendant Spirit observes to the parents that “Heav'n hath timely tri'd their youth” (1. 970) and even Comus says, “It were a journey like the path to Heav'n To help you find them” (11. 303–304).

⁶ It should be said in defense of Milton's use of the trinity of faith, hope, and chastity, that it was a commonplace in Renaissance Platonic allegory. In the soul's progress to God every step which the soul takes closer to God is also a step further away from the flesh which it has repudiated. Thus chastity is legitimately equated with charity as a negative part of the process of love of God. Christian painters often identified love with chastity. See Panofsky, Studies in Icon-ology (New York, 1939), Plate LXIV and pp. 160–162, on Titian's “Marquis Alfonso d'Avalos”; the doctrine involved there is as old as St. Augustine; see De Doctr. Christ., iii.10.16, quoted by Madsen, “The Idea of Nature,” p. 211. Milton himself, in Apology for Smectymnuus, also identifies the process of chastity with the process of love.

⁷ The two emphases of the Christian relation between man and God are expressed in the two sayings: “God helps those who help themselves,” and “No one rises to heaven except those whom God himself raises” (John vi.44). Mr. Wood-house sees Milton as preferring the latter emphasis; in my reading Milton prefers the former. This is not to say, of course, that Mr. Woodhouse denies the necessity of virtue to grace in Milton's theology.

⁸ Among the most vigorous defenders of the philosophical interpretation of the masque (emphasizing the conflict between reason and passion) see J. C. Maxwell, “The Pseudo-Problem of Cornus,” CJ, i (1948), 376–380; A. E. Dyson, “The Interpretation of Comus,” Essays and Studies, n.s., viii (1955), 89–114; arid John Arthos, On A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle (Ann Arbor, 1954).

⁹ See the three major works on the relations between Milton and Plato: Herbert Agar, Milton and Plato (Princeton, 1928); Irene Samuel, Plato and Milton (Ithaca, 1947); and J. S. Harrison, Platonism in English Poetry (New York, 1903). Since this article was written, Professor Arthos has published an essay suggesting Ficino's Commentary on the Charmides as “the source and explanation of Milton's meaning” in A Mask. My own conclusions about Milton's debt to this and other works of Ficino were reached independently and differ a good deal from those of Professor Arthos, but I should certainly endorse most of what he has to say. See John Arthos, “Milton, Ficino, and the Charmides,” Studies in the Renaissance, vi (1959), 261–274.

¹⁰ In Areopagitica, Hughes ed., pp. 728–729, and in the Mask itself, 1. 822.

¹¹ Apology for Smectymnuus, Hughes ed., p. 694: Thus, from the laureate fraternity of poets, riper years and the ceaseless round of study and reading led me to the shady spaces of philosophy, but chiefly to the divine volumes of Plato and his equal, Xenophon: where, if I should tell ye what I learnt of chastity and love (I mean that which is truly so, whose charming cup is only virtue, which she bears in her hand to those who are worthy—the rest are cheated with a thick intoxicating potion which a certain sorceress, the abuser of love's name, carries about) and how the first and chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soul, producing those happy twins of her divine generation, knowledge and virtue—with such abstracted sublimities as these, it might be worth your listening, readers . . .

¹² See, for example, P. Merlan, From Platonism to Neo-platonism (Hague, 1953).

¹³ See Ficino, Epistolae, fol. vi^r, for a clear statement of the standard view.

¹⁴ For the mythologizing process see Jean Seznec's The Survival of the Pagan Gods (New York, 1953); Douglas Bush, Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition (Minneapolis, 1932) ; and especially André Chastel, Ficin et l'art (Geneva, 1954).

¹⁵ Ficino's Theologia Platonica was the standard treatment in the 16th and 17th centuries of the identity of the Christian and Platonic theologies. See Nesca Robb, Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance (London, 1935), though she, too, perpetuates the 19th-century view of Neoplatonism.

¹⁶ Ficino, Epistolae, fol. xciv^r: Ubi nos dives potensque Iuno non audit . . . Totum igitur auxilium, Salvine, nostrum nobis est a Minerva petendum . . . Nempe solum id numen ad ethereum mundi caput hominem potest atollere quod ipso summi Iovis est capite natum.

¹⁷ On Platonic iconography the standard authority is still Panofsky's Studies in Iconology; but see also now Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (New Haven, 1958). For Michelangelo see Panofsky, ch. VI and Ch. de Tolnay, Werk und Weltbild des Michelangelo (Zurich, 1949), ch. II. For Botticelli see Wind and E. H. Gombrich, “Botticelli's Mythologies,” Journal of the Warburg and Courlauld Institutes, viii (1945), 7–60.

¹⁸ The identification is borrowed by Ficino from Plotinus, Enneads, iv, iv, 9—10. See Ficino's Commentary on the Symposium, tr. S. Jayne, Univ. of Missouri Studies, xix (1944), pp. 127–128, 180. See also Ficino, Epistolae, fol. iv^v: “nam mundi totius animum saepenumero iovem platonici nuncu-pant.”

¹⁹ Cf. the medieval distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata, and see Ficino, Commentary on the Symposium, pp. 136–137.

²⁰ Cicero, Academic Questions, tr. C. D. Yonge (London 18S3), p. 15.

²¹ Interea nota priscos sacerdotes consuevisse in sacris tertiam libationis pateram Iovi servatori praecipue con-secrare: ut declararent principia, media, fines omnium, ut in legibus Plato refert, sub Iovis providentia disponi atque servari. (Commentary on the Charmides in Platonis Opera [Lyons, 1590], p. 767, col. 2G.)

²² Ficino, Commentary on the Symposium, p. 187. On daemons see also Ficino, Epistolae, fol. cxlviii^r, ff.

²³ Renaissance Platonists often recognized the Christian distinction, but in terms of three realms, not two: the realms of nature, grace, and glory, corresponding to Plotinus' triad of the World Soul, the Angelic Mind, and the One. Francesco Vieri, in Compendio delta Dotlrina di Platone (Florence, 1577), fol. b6^v, for example, classifies all the dialogues of Plato in three groups according as they deal with each of these realms. Other Platonists distinguished between the realm of divine providence and the realm of natural providence as between the upper and the lower halves of the World Soul (the outermost circle of divine emanation). The essential difference between the realms is that the realm of natural providence involves corporeal substance, whereas that of divine providence does not; the realm of natural providence is the realm in which divine law takes the form of natural law. The two realms correspond roughly to the Christian realms of nature and grace.

²⁴ Nunc vero quia Sacerdotium est nostrum Philosophandi genus, ad Neptunum recurrimus, providentiae naturalis Symbolum, et generationis typum. Est quoque Neptunus, ut nostri sub aenigmate effigunt, aquarum numen, ergo a naturali providentia est, et Neptuno aquarum Praeside, . . . [corresponding to Athena, who represents divine providence, or sapience, because sprung from the mind of God.] Petrus Calanna, Philosophia seniorum . . . de mundo ani-marum et corporum. (Panormi, 1599) (Copy in Bodleian), p. 103.

²⁵ A different way of looking at the nature problem in the masque may be seen in William G. Madsen, “The Idea of Nature in Milton's Poetry,” Three Studies in the Renaissance (New Haven, 1958), pp. 185–218.

²⁶ The fullest Renaissance analysis of the sun-moon metaphor in Platonic terms is Ficino's short work, De Sole et Lumine; see also his Epistolae, fols. bdi^r, xlviii^r, and clxxxvii^v. A partial exposition of the Platonic significance of the light imagery in the poem is given by Miss Tuve (Five Poems, pp. 146–151).

²⁷ Ficino, Epistolae, fol. iii^v, Colet's paraphrase is a marginal note in his hand in the copy at All Souls College, Oxford. An edition (with translation) of Colet's extensive marginalia in that volume is in progress.

²⁸ For an account in English, see P. O. Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (New York, 1944), pp. 171–199, 235–288. The fullest account of this particular aspect of Ficino's philosophy is Walter Dress, Die Mystik des Marsilio Ficino (Berlin, 1929). The relevant sections in Ficino's own works are in the Theologia Platonica {Opera, pp. 289–290) : see also Commentary on Symposium, pp. 158–159.

²⁹ Theologia Platonica, xiii, 2 (Opera, p. 292), cited by Chastel, Ficin et l'art, p. 53, n. 38.

³⁰ An analogous relation between act and process may be seen in the relation between vow and condition in Meister Eckhart's principle of poverty as a form of renouncing the world for God.

³¹ Although this doctrine sounds extremely dégagé, like most of the ideas of Plato and Plotinus, it rests on an empirical observation; in this case, the observation that our minds can wander away from the circumstances of the present into another world. See Joseph Katz, The Philosophy of Plotinus (New York, 1950), p. xxiii. Ficino elsewhere refers to the same part of the soul as the “eye” of the soul. See Commentary on the Symposium, p. 189. See also Plotinus, Enneads, IV, iv, 43. “Only the soul that is concentrated within itself on the world of Mind” can be proof against sorcery. Quoted by John Arthos in A Mask (Ann Arbor, 1954), p. 75.

³² An engraving based on the original is reproduced by E. Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, Plate LVIII; I follow Panofsky's analysis of the work (pp. 148–150) which is borne out by the inscription on the engraving. The engraving is also reproduced by Jean Seznec in The Survival of the Pagan Gods, p. 113.

³³ My discussion is based upon the 1637 text of the work in the edition of Merritt Hughes (New York, 1957) but I have taken into account the textual variations among all of the extant MSS and printed versions as well as the studies of those variants by Mr. C. S. Lewis (RES, viii [1932], 170–176) and Mr. J. Diekhoff (PMLA, LII [1937], 705–727). None of the alterations in the poem between the Trinity MS. and the final edition in Milton's lifetime alters the meaning of the poem which I have proposed.

³⁴ The function of innate reason in conquering the passions as the necessary first step in the three-step process is also stated in Ficino's commentary on the Charmides, Platonis opera, p. 767, col. 2B-C:

. . . quo fit ut temperantia opus sit in primis: per quam expulsa perturbationum caligine mens facta cernior, divini solis lumine abunde circunfundatur: unde sapientiam primo recuperet: deinde prudentiam adipiscatur. (2B) . . . turn per ipsam temperantiae ideam innatam menti, humanam intelliget temperantiam . . . Accedit ad haec: quod in hoc precepto significat neminem nisi temperatum de temperantia loqui ad persuadendum vel debere vel posse. (2C)

³⁵ Angelo Poliziano (1454-94) was the littérateur of the Platonic Academy at Florence and tutor of the children of Lorenzo de Medici. On Poliziano see, in English, W. Parr Greswell, Memoirs of Angélus Politianus (Manchester, 1805), pp. 1–151. His part in the mythologizing of Platonism is best described in A. Chastel, Ficin et l'Art, especially pp. 141 ff. Poliziano's most influential single work, so far as Platonic iconography is concerned, is his La Giostra di Giuliano.

³⁶ The Charmides, Plato's only dialogue on temperance, would have been especially important to Milton in preparing a masque on chastity, not merely because of the relation of the virtues, but because, as Ficino says in his own commentary on the dialogue: “Socrates' aim in this dialogue is to persuade everyone to follow a life of temperance, but he wants to convince three kinds of people especially, The Young, The Noble, and The Beautiful.” (Studium Socratis in hoc dialogo est, omnes quidem ad temperantiam cohortari. Très vero praecipue, scilicet adolescentes, et nobiles atque pulchros.) Platonis opera, p. 767, col. 1C.

Milton would undoubtedly have read not only Ficino's commentary on the Charmides, but also Poliziano's preface to the dialogue. That preface, in the form of a Latin letter to Lorenzo de Medici, was written to introduce Poliziano's translation of the dialogue. He did not complete the translation, but the text of his preface and the completed fragment of translation were published in his Opera (Lyons, 1946), II, 293–299.

³⁷ This is the standard defense of the study of philosophy in the period. See, for example, Francisco de Vieri, Libro in quo a calumniis detraciorum Philosophia defenditur (Rome, 1586): “Philosophy is nothing else but the love of wisdom”; But the true wisdom is God himself (fol. a2r). Sapience is “cognitio rerum divinarum ac humanarum” (fol. a3r). For full scholarly discussion see Eugene F. Rice, Jr., The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Cambridge, Mass., 1958). See also Howard Schultz, Milton and Forbidden Knowledge (New York, 1955).

³⁸ The term haemony has many specifically Christian connotations which seem to fit it for identification with Christian Grace, but it does not fit in that meaning in the masque as a whole. The standard exposition of the Christian meanings of haemony is that of E. S. LeComte, “New Light on the ‘Haemony’ Passage in Cornus,” PQ, xxi (1942), 283–298. J. A. Himes {Miltonic Enigmas, [Gettysburg, Penn., 1921] pp. 11–19) identifies the “shepherd lad” as St. Paul, moly as labor, and haemony as the cross. See also J. M. Steadman, “ ‘Haemony’ and Christian Moly,” History of Ideas Newsletter, iv (1958), 59–60, where Budé's distinction between “Homeric moly” and “our moly” is cited.

³⁹ Cicero, Paradoxa Stoicorum, Scipio hys Dreame, tr Thomas Newton (London, 1569), STC 5314, fols. vi^r-vii^r.

⁴⁰ Cf. Ficino's Commentary on the Charmides, p. 767, col. 2E-F: “Atque Avicenna sequutus Platonicos, et Hippo-cratem, probat animum ex ipsa sui natura adeo materiam omnem exuperare, ut cum primum in seipsum fuerit resti-tutus, possit elementa mundi mira quadam virtute movere; atque habere in corpora quaevis imperium : quo fit, ut multo magis possit in proprium . . . (2F) Declarator et mira potestas animi; a quo omnia tarn bona, quam mala in corpus defluant: et quo volente corpus servari valeat incorruptum.”

⁴¹ Cf. the interesting parallel in Ficino's commentary on the Charmides, p. 767, col. 1H: “Tanta vero est excellentia temperantiae, ut et earn omnes in operibus suis observent elegantes, et ipsius virtute non solum corpus sub luna quod-libet, verum etiam caelum ipsum universumque servetur.”

⁴² For those who want to see the conflict in the masque as a conflict between Comus and Sabrina, a morality-play struggle for the passive and inert figure of Everywoman, there are innumerable fascinating overtones available: Sa-brina's victory can represent the triumph not merely of good over evil, but of sea over land, female over male, object over subject, beauty over desire for beauty, passivity over activity, the eternal feminine over the eternal masculine, etc. But the narrative hardly supports such an interpretation. The charms of Comus and the charms of Sabrina are equally natural powers; the one in the world, the other in the soul. The real issue in the poem is the issue of chastity, the conflict between love of the body and love of God.

⁴³ The recapitulation theory is part of Professor Wood-house's exposition of the masque.

⁴⁴ The standard account of English masques is still that of Enid Welsford, The Court Masque (Cambridge, 1927). Miss Tuve (Five Poems, pp. 112–121) makes several helpful suggestions about the importance of reading Milton's Mask as a masque. For the reverse view see Don Cameron Allen, “Milton's Comus as a Failure in Artistic Compromise,” ELH, xvi (1949), 104–119, and The Harmonious Vision (Baltimore, 1954), 29–40. A useful discussion of Milton's debt to Jonson's masques is G. W. Whiting, “Comus, Jonson, and the Critics” in Milton and This Pendant World (Austin, 1958), pp. 3–28.