Beauty is Nature’s coin, must not be hoarded
But must be current and the good thereof
Consists in mutual and partaken bliss
Unsavory in the enjoyment of itself.
If you let slip time like a neglected rose
It withers on the stalk with languished head.
In this early play, written in poetic format, Milton takes an interesting dry run at a lot of the ideas that underpin his more significant and masterful works. Here, a young woman finds herself lost in the woods and encounters the title character, a mischievous supernatural figure that attempts to seduce her into giving up her chastity. The parallels to Paradise Lost are obvious, I’d think. Comus is a charismatic figure and Milton gives him some great speeches. He’s obviously a precursor of Milton’s version of Satan, though neither Comus the character or Comus the play carries the weight or the tragedy of Paradise Lost. But it’s short, not insubstantial. Milton has interesting ideas here and the talent in his poetry is definitely already showing up. The debates surrounding virtue and vice have energy and, as he does in Paradise Lost, Milton treats the arguments of everyone with total fairness. This is obviously going to be a situation where virtue wins out, but Milton doesn’t hobble the arguments in favor of vice and they crackle with real passion. You wouldn’t exactly predict Paradise Lost after reading this, but if you’d read this at the time, you’d probably have predicted that Milton would do something kind of earth-shattering eventually. This one is a small masterpiece, but a masterpiece nonetheless. 4 stars.
tl;dr – early play from Milton deals in many of the ideas of Paradise Lost in a less sophisticated, but still very entertaining, and more lighthearted, way; energetic and passionate poetry. 4 stars.