Excerpt from Miltonic Enigmas The gross misconception of incidents, characters and names in the Masque grows out of the endeavor to under stand the matter literally. The Masque is an allegory designed to convey a wholesome warning to the English church and people. 'without adducing the outstanding facts of the situation which will occur to students of Eng lish history, as threatening the purity of society and pri vate life we desire to say at once that the play is directed against the doctrine and practice of Free-love and ...
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Excerpt from Miltonic Enigmas The gross misconception of incidents, characters and names in the Masque grows out of the endeavor to under stand the matter literally. The Masque is an allegory designed to convey a wholesome warning to the English church and people. 'without adducing the outstanding facts of the situation which will occur to students of Eng lish history, as threatening the purity of society and pri vate life we desire to say at once that the play is directed against the doctrine and practice of Free-love and all that it implies. Comus the magician impersonates the corrupt influence; the Spirit is the Genius of the Seventh Commandment, or Chastity; the Lady is the Christian Church of England; her two Brothers and defenders are Reason and Conscience. The significance of the other names will appear in due order. The Spirit has his mansion before the starry thresh old of Jove's court. Heaven is ruled by Love, not by the Decalogue, but the Virtues which the place demands from those who enter are gate-keepers and exclude the vicious. Especially is this true of Chastity (matt. XXII. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at ... This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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