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The Text of Comus, 1634 to 1645

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John S. Diekhoff
John S. Diekhoff*
Affiliation:
Oberlin College
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Extract

Scholars have sometimes assumed that the version of Comus in the Trinity Manuscript is Milton's original draft of the poem. Miss Lockwood, for example, in her study of the corrections in the manuscript, comments upon its extreme neatness—upon the neatness of the lines and upon the even margins; but in spite of this comment, and in spite of her disagreement with Masson's statement that the manuscript is very much revised, it does not occur to her that the manuscript may not be composition at all but transcription.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , September 1937 , pp. 705 - 727
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1937

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References

1 There are five important versions of Comus: (1) That in the autograph of Milton's minor poems known as the Trinity Manuscript; (2) The Bridgewater Manuscript of Comus, long thought to be in the hand of Henry Lawes, (but now known not to be—see David Harrison Stevens, “The Bridgewater Manuscript of Comus,” Milton Papers (Chicago,1927), pp. 15–16—, which is apparently a stage copy—the prompt copy, perhaps, from which Lawes produced the Mask; (3). The anonymous edition of 1637, sponsored by Lawes with the explanation that “Although not openly acknowledged by the Author, yet it is a legitimate offspring, so lovely, and so much desired, that the often copying of it hath tired my pen to give my several friends satisfaction, and brought me to a necessitie of producing it to the publicke view”; (4) The version in Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, composed at several times, the publication of which Milton authorized in 1645; and (5) the version in the second edition of Milton's minor poems, set from that of 1645, printed in 1673. While the present study requires constant reference to all these versions, the Trinity MS. version is most important to it, and receives most attention, because it is in Milton's hand and represents Milton's own work. With the edition of 1673 I have concerned myself almost not at all, in spite of the fact that it is the last authorized version of Milton's lifetime, because it comes after the period of Milton's blindness.

Readings from the Trinity Manuscript (MS.) are from W. Aldis Wright's edition, Facsimile of the Manuscript of Milton's Minor Poems Preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1899). Those from the Bridgewater Manuscript (Br.) are from the notes to Comus in the Columbia University edition of The Works of John Milton, Vol. i, pt. ii (New York, 1931). Readings from the 1637 edition are from L. S. Livingston's Comus, Facsimile Edition with Introduction (New York, 1903). For the 1645 edition I use Milton's Poems 1645: Type-facsimile (Oxford, 1924).

2 David Masson, ed., The Poetical Works of John Milton (London, 1890), i, 109: “Milton erased and changed so much in the act of writing that it is impossible to give an adequate idea of his habits in this respect except by actual reproduction. . . .”

Laura Lockwood, “Milton's Corrections to the Minor Poems,” MLN, xxv (1910), 201–205. On p. 202: “Although a cursory glance at the pages seems to tell that the poet has altered much, yet when we come to examine them in detail, we find that of the 1813 lines fully three-fourths are without any corrections at all; and, moreover, to this total of firsthand lines, he has added as an afterthought only 53. He has discarded entirely but 56, and has rewritten of whole lines barely 162. The erasures and substitutions are so scattered throughout the pages and are so much more apparent to the eye than the untouched lines, that the judgment at a glance is easily accounted for. So large a number of lines retained just as set down on paper indicates, I think, not that he changed much but that he altered relatively little.”

3 That Miss Lockwood does think of the manuscript as composition is clear from the

following sentences: (p. 204) “What are the poems, if we may judge by the amount of revision shown in the manuscript, which caused him the most labor? Arcades was written with much ease, at least with few corrections. At a Solemn Music was the result of hours of work and many rewritings; it is entirely rewritten three times, the last ten lines four times, and the first two versions have many changes. Comus shows, I believe, more uniform care for the right choice of words than any other poem.”

(p. 205) “Lycidas came to Milton's imagination, or at least to paper, in a very perfect form. He writes the first fourteen lines, and then tries the flower passage, which was evidently haunting his thought. He sets it down once; crosses it all out and begins over again. . . . After the flower passage is to mind, he takes a fresh sheet and, commencing the poem once more, writes to the end with very little recasting, except at 58–62, which he thrice revises. Save for these two difficult parts, Milton seems to have written Lycidas with little premeditation and hence with ease.”

4 W. R. Parker, “Some Problems in the Chronology of Milton's Early Poems,” RES, xi (July 1935), no. 43.

5 H. J. C. Grierson, ed., The Poems of John Milton (London, 1925), i, xi–xvii.

6 The slip of writing a word twice should not be confused with Milton's frequent restoration of a word he has found unsatisfactory and cancelled. When he returns to an earlier choice, Milton either restores the cancelled word by underscoring it, by writing it in the margin and marking the place of insertion by an asterisk, or by writing it again, in which case it is the first, not the second, occurrence of it which is cancelled in the manuscript. E.g., 11. 313, 329, 575:

313. & every bosky bosky bosky bourne from side, to side

in which bosky is written, cancelled, written, cancelled, and then written a third time and left standing (see Plate IV);

329. eye eye me blest providence, & square my tryall

in which eye is cancelled and then written in the left margin.

575. who gen who gently askt if he had seene such tow

in which who gen at the beginning of the line is cancelled.

That the presence of this kind of duplication in no way denies the possibility that Milton is copying is clear when we discover that in Upon the Circumcision, which everyone agrees is transcription, the 6th line has mourne mourne, with the first cancelled, the 11th entred enter'd, with the first cancelled, and the 22nd wrauth wrath with the first cancelled. In the 11th line of the sonnet to Lawes, where we have both drafts and know Milton was copying, he writes th thir, and cancels the first th. Other similar corrections in passages of Comus of which we have two versions in the manuscript and in At a Solemn Music will be noted below.

7 Indeed we find the same errors in the poems which are in the manuscript in other hands than Milton's:

In Sonnet 14, “On the Religious Memory of Mrs. Catharine Thomason,” the amanuensis writes in 1. 12

12. And spake the th truth of on glorious themes.

The th is cancelled, of course, an a is inserted in themes, and thee is inserted after of (by means of carets) so that the line reads

12. And spake the truth of thee on glorious theames following what is in both drafts in Milton's hand except that on is substituted for in, which is probably an error on the part of the scribe—an error which Wright corrects in his edition of Milton's poems. In the second draft Milton himself copied from the first, 1. 8, Joy, which he cancels and follows with joy. This the scribe properly keeps. In the scribe's copy of Sonnet 13 (“To Henry Lawes”) we find

11. That tun'st the h theire happiest. ..

The draft in Milton's hand from which we may assume it is taken reads (see note 6, above)

11. That tun'st th thir happiest. . .

with the th cancelled. The first draft of the poem, from which Milton himself was copying, and which he was very much changing, reads

11. That tun'st thir happiest lines . . .

The scribe, then, copies an error which Milton himself made in copying, and, of course, makes the correction.

In Sonnet 12, “On the Detraccon . . .,” the copyist writes

7. which after held the sun & moone in fee Fee

8. But this is got by casting peal pearle to hogs;

sett

10. And still revolt when tru Truth would make them free:

11. Licence they they meane when they cry liberty

The copy in Milton's hand differs from the final version of this only in the spelling pearl (8) instead of pearle.

8 Except as evidence for the existence of an earlier draft, the revisions noted so far are without much bearing upon Milton's poetic method or upon his development as an artist. I cannot concern myself here, except incidentally, with many of the significant revisions in the manuscript, nor with the significance of those that are mentioned, even though it is from the study of them that this paper grows. The results of that study are reserved for later publication.

9 Besides the three copies of At a Solemn Music, there are other items in the manuscript of which there are two or more versions, the one copied (similarly reworked) from the other: the “Letter to a Friend,” for example, (containing Sonnet ii) of which there are two copies—the one an expansion of the other—and of which there must have been at least a third copy, the one which was sent. There are two copies of the opening lines of Lycidas, three of the sonnet to Henry Lawes (two in Milton's hand), three of the sonnets on the death of Mrs.Thomason (again two in Milton's hand), two of each of the sonnets upon the reception of the Divorce Pamphlets (one of each by a scribe). There are also two or three passages of Comus of which we have more than one version.

10 Except for 11. 672–705. See note 14.

11 a. 11.279,371,713; b. 11.403,452,432; c. 11.384-5,658.

12 Since the cancellation of the fifteen lines involved only the insertion of above and the cancellation of narrow (5), it is not possible to tell how far Milton had progressed with his composition or transcription when he made the revision. He may have finished the poem. (See note 16.) He may have written to the end of the period at what is now line 11 of the poem. Perhaps he wrote only one line beyond what is now line 8, for there is a cancelled line following it which brings to a full stop the cancelled passage and the intervening lines, which, going on to line 11, would have been a less close-knit sentence unit. It would then originally have been as follows:

yet thence I come and oft from thence behold

the smoake & stirre of this dim, narrow spot

wch men call earth, & wth low-thoughted care

strive to keepe up a fraile & feavourish beeing

beyond the written date of mortall change.

The last of these lines is cancelled, and the sentence goes on as it now stands, and as it could not have gone on without the cancellation:

confin'd & pester'd in this pinfold heere

unmindfull of the crowne that vertue gives

after this mortall change to her true servants

amoungst the enthron'd gods on sainted seates

(The lines 'strive to keepe up … “ and ”confin'd …“ are interchanged by means of the numbers 1 & 2 before them.) The material of the cancelled line, beyond the written date of mortal change is (more amply) supplied by the lines of the final text as is the cancelled adjective narrow by the line

confin'd & pester'd in this pinfold heere.

Milton's transcription, then, if such it were, proceeded with many pauses for revision and

even for the composition of new material, at least to the end of the cancelled line, beyond the written date . . . At this point, a full pause and a good stopping place, Milton perhaps considered what he had written and threw away what was after all a digression, making the necessary change in 1. 5. Reading now the eight lines he intended to retain, he found that he had not sufficiently amplified “the mortal lot” and, cancelling “Beyond the written date …” he proceeded to the end of the period as it now stands, with no further revisions save the interchange of 11. 7 and 8. Because, when he wrote them, lines at present numbered 4 and 6 were separated by fifteen lines instead of by one, I think it quite likely that he did not notice the rhyme of A yr and care with which they end—and on the basis of his practice elsewhere that he did not think their rhyme sufficient reason for changing them if he noticed it later. The presence of the rhyme, however, is added evidence that 1. 6 was written before the cancellation which brought it into close juxtaposition with 1. 4. Certainly Milton had gone beyond the lines cancelled, as the single change necessary in the first line retained is enough to prove. Whether he had done so on another sheet or not this passage alone can hardly tell us.

13 In line 145 feele is substituted for the first draft heare. Ll. 146a and 146b are cancelled and written again two lines later. The final version reads (1645)

Break off, break off, I feel the different pace

Of som chast footing neer about this ground,

Run to your shrouds, within these Brakes and Trees,

Our number may affright: Som Virgin sure

(For so I can distinguish by mine Art)

Benighted in these Woods.

14 Vol. i, pt. 2, p. 545.

15 It is a fact a little disturbing to the present argument that this sheet resembles in appearance more closely than anything else in Comus the clean copy of At a Solemn Music, but there are two possible explanations: (1) Milton has already worked the passage out rather completely elsewhere, and hence needs to make fewer changes as he copies than usual. (2) He is cramped for space—here by the fact that his insertion is on a small quarto sheet, in At a Solemn Music by the fact that he has already filled a large portion of his sheet with a rough draft.

16 Milton used this cancelled beginning in another place as well. The following lines are from the cancelled passage:

4a. amidst th'Hesperian gardens on whose bancks

b. bedew'd wth nectar, & celestial songs

c. & fruits of golden rind, on whose faire tree

d. the scalie-harnest dragon ever keeps

e. his uninchanted eye . . .

Compare these lines with 393–396:

393. but beautie like the faire Hesperian tree

394. laden with blooming gold had need the guard

395. of dragon watch with uninchanted eye

396. to save her blossoms and defend her fruit.

These lines, which at the beginning were a description of the regions mild from which the Spirit has come and which in the end are a description of the realm to which he is going, are here used not so directly, but as a simile of great effectiveness, and are an interesting example of the reality to Milton first of the realms of myth and second of his own creations. Here indeed we have a passage which, recurring as it does three times, we may say was haunting his memory. We can see Milton, coming to this passage, recalling his cancelled opening lines—referring to them either in his memory or on paper—and recognizing their aptness for the comparison he desires. At the end, in the “Epilogue,” he may or may not remember that he has already used them in the text of the poem. I think it more likely that he remembered only that he had cancelled them.

This passage (11. 393–396), which seems like almost all the rest of the poem to be transcribed, suggests that the transcription progressed piece by piece as the poem was written rather than beginning after the composition was finished, for surely the opening lines were cancelled before these were written. It was in the Trinity Manuscript, the transcribed copy, that that cancellation was made.

17 William Aldis Wright, ed., The Poetical Works of John Milton (Cambridge, 1903).

18 I have not found any words in this hand or anything like it after this line. But after this point, Milton only once more in Comus restores a cancelled word merely by underscoring, without also writing it again—the word daughters in 982. “Of Hesperus & his daughters three,” in the cancelled version of the epilogue, where it is very lightly crossed and perfectly legible. Before and including 1. 353 he does it five times: 1. 4a. on whose banks, in the first line of a cancelled passage; 1. 92. glasse, in a stage direction after 1. 92; 1. 175. when, already noted; 1. 176. they praise; 1. 353. phapps some cold bancke is, Milton himself, as we have seen, not having written over again the words cancelled in 175 and 353.

19 There are a considerable number of corrections in the manuscript, certainly in Milton's hand, which find their way into the printed texts but not into Br. (and which hence we may assume to have been made before 1637 but after the performance of Comus in 1634. E.g. the following from among many:

243. And give resounding grace to all Heav'ns harmonies

Manuscript first read And hold a counterpoint, which is cancelled and replaced by And give resounding grace. Br. has And hold a counterpoint (as does manuscript Additional 11518 in the British Museum).

349. In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs, manuscript has lone cancelled and replaced by sad, which is cancelled for close. (Plate V.) Br. has lone.

384. walks in black vapours, though the noontyde brand

385. blaze in the summer solstice . . .

is cancelled for

384. benighted walks under ye midday sun

385. himself is his own dungeon . . .

Br. follows the original version.

Some changes were not made in the manuscript at all. Thus 5 lines present in manuscript and Br. after 1. 409 are omitted in all the printed editions, and 11. 357–365 of the printed editions are not present at all in either of the manuscripts. In 409, question, no (the reading of both manuscripts) becomes controversie in print.

20 The passage (Plate V) is the one of which there was a clean copy made pasted to another manuscript sheet. This clean copy, which has been lost, was evidently made after Br. was prepared and before 1637 since it includes lines (according to Todd's readings from it) not in Br. nor in manuscript as we have it although present in 1637. The clean copy was apparently in Milton's hand. At least the note directing the reader to it is, which

Wright reads as follows: “(r)ead the (pa)per over (a)gainst (i)nstead of . . . downe . . . (per)happs sōe (c)old banke is.” The copyist's clarification of the text, obviously, must have been made before Milton made the clean copy—the copyist would not bother to correct what had been superseded. Yet we know that Milton's clean copy was made before 1637, and the additions in the strange hand were apparently made after 1634, or at least after Br. was prepared. If, as I think, the copyist was making a text for Lawes to use in 1637, Milton must have worked with his poem (in the Trinity MS.) after the copy was made (at any rate after the manuscript had been prepared for copying) but before it reached print, and then in the printer's copy or in proof (if the changes were not finished before the actual copying) he must have indicated his deletions, additions, and changes. The presence of revisions in the manuscript and the edition of 1637 which are not in Br. makes it more than probable that the text for the edition of 1637 was prepared direct from the Trinity manuscript.

21 John S. Diekhoff, “The Punctuation of Comus,” PMLA, li (1936), 757–768.

22 That Milton once followed this practice (after his blindness, to be sure) we know, for the 1673 edition was certainly set from that of 1645, as witness the note in the Trinity Manuscript before the scribe's copy of the sonnet “On the detraccon which followed upon my writing certaine treatises”; “These sonnets to follow ye 10. in ye printed booke,” an instruction as to the ordering of the new poems with reference to those included in the 1645 edition. Beeching observes that the 1673 edition reproduces certain “pointless eccentricities” of the 1645.

23 A third instance is the second version of the epilogue, clearly written after Br., which consistently follows the first version in the opening song. Apparently this second epilogue was also written outside the manuscript and transcribed into it.

24 Lady Alix Egerton, ed., Milton's Comus, being the Bridgewater Manuscript (London, 1910), p. 31: “If the Bridgewater Manuscript, as is generally accepted, is the stage copy of the Masque, there must have been an intervening one between it and the manuscript in Milton's handwriting at Cambridge . . .”

25 David Harrison Stevens, “The Bridgewater Manuscript of Comus,” in Milton Papers (Chicago, 1927), pp. 14–20.

26 Stevens (Milton Papers, 15) suggests that the song may have stood first in Milton's original draft of the poem without noting the cancelled lines basic to it. He comments on the passage as follows: “One unique feature of the manuscript has been noted, namely, the use of nineteen lines of the Epilogue as printed in the 1637 text for the opening of the first speech. Henry Lawes in the role in the Attendant Spirit spoke these lines and made them more significant dramatically than they are in the printed versions of the masque. Presumably in Milton's original draft they actually stood first or else they were shifted at the request of Lawes for his own advantage as an actor. Another variant from all other

versions is the breaking of the lines preluding the rising of Sabrina into seven speeches . .. Only the two passages noted above evidence textual handling that cannot as plausibly be credited to Milton.“

27 Lady Alix Egerton, Milton's Comus, 29: “How and when Lord and Lady Bridgewater and the three children reached Ludlow I do not know, but their household and private effects left Ashbridge on 2nd July 1634 with a caravan of coaches, waggons, saddle and sumpter horses.” Lawes, we may suppose, certainly did not precede the family, and may very well have been in London or within visiting distance of Horton at Harefield (the Countess of Derby's place) or more probably with the Egerton family at Ashbridge.