On A Masque

It is interesting that the poem seems to provide, in part, a portrayal of a lady resisting the movement toward her own sexual maturity. Despite great beauty and her singing a beautiful song as if she were a nymph, she is very naive. She strolls by Comus, and within minutes, he is asking her to come to the cottage. “And if your stray attendance be yet lodg’d, Or shroud within these limits, I shall know, Ere morrow wake, or the low roosted lark, From her thach’t pallat rowse, if otherwise, I can conduct you Lady to a low, But loyal cottage, where you may be safe” (315-20). She answers yes to the Shepherd, of course. The concepts of pleasure and enjoyment that stem from Milton’s work so readily and excessively for these two characters, for Comus and the lady, is very interesting, because it is not a difficult process for them to go through to reach such a point, it is simply laid out for them at the table of “dainties” in the cottage. Yet, she responds with such anger. ” Was this the cottage, and the safe abode Thou told’st me of? What grim aspects are these, These oughly-headed Monsters?” (693-5). Her reactions are over the top and extravagant, and eventually Milton is portraying that the loss of her Virginity brings Nature to a less aerial, and more material state that has problems for humans.