L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas — Reading Companion

Personification as Structural Device

Milton personifies abstract states as mythological figures, giving them genealogies and attributes. In L'Allegro, Melancholy is "of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born," while Mirth is daughter of Venus and Bacchus, or alternatively of Zephyr and Aurora. This dual origin myth underscores the poem's playful ambiguity. The personifications are not static; they act: Melancholy "brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings," and Mirth is asked to "trip it, as you go, on the light fantastic toe." Such verbs animate the abstractions, making them participants in the speaker's world. In Il Penseroso, a similar technique appears with Melancholy recast as a "pensive Nun"—the same quality, now revered. This shift in personification signals the poems' complementary perspectives.

Sensory Contrasts in Descriptive Passages

The excerpts show Milton building landscapes through opposing sensory details. L'Allegro presents a dawn scene with the lark "startl[ing] the dull night" and the cock "scatter[ing] the rear of darkness thin." Sounds dominate: hounds and horn "cheerly rouse the slumbering morn," the ploughman whistles, the milkmaid sings. Visuals follow—"russet lawns, and fallows grey," "meadows trim, with daisies pied"—in a catalog of pastoral cheer. By contrast, Comus introduces a darker sensory register: the Attendant Spirit describes a "small unsightly root" with "darkish" leaf and prickles, and Comus's palace offers "soft music" and "cordial julep" that "flames and dances." The Lady's rejection of this liquor—"'T will not restore the truth and honesty"—pits sensory temptation against moral clarity.

Dialogue as Moral Argument in Comus

In Comus, dialogue becomes the arena for ethical conflict. Comus tempts the Lady with rhetoric of natural appetite: "Why should you be so cruel to yourself, / And to those dainty limbs, which Nature lent / For gentle usage and soft delicacy?" His argument inverts the covenant of trust, accusing her of being an "ill borrower." The Lady counters with direct accusation—"false traitor!"—and insists on the freedom of her mind: "Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind / With all thy charms." Her speech shifts from defensive to assertive, rejecting his "vizored falsehood and base forgery." The exchange reveals Milton's use of stichomythia-like rebuttals, where each character's diction—Comus's smooth temptations versus the Lady's blunt condemnations—reinforces their moral positions.

Mythological Allusion as Layered Reference

Milton weaves classical mythology into the texture of his verse, often with multiple layers. In L'Allegro, Euphrosyne is one of the Graces, but the poem offers an alternative parentage involving Zephyr and Aurora, suggesting a playful irreverence toward fixed myth. In Comus, the Attendant Spirit compares the herb Haemony to "that Moly / That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave," linking his pastoral remedy to Homeric epic. The Lady's retort to Comus—"as Daphne was, / Root-bound, that fled Apollo"—invokes Ovidian transformation to assert her resistance. These allusions are not decorative; they carry thematic weight. The Haemony root, "unknown, and like esteemed," parallels the undervalued virtue the Lady embodies, while the reference to Nepenthes (the Egyptian drug that erases sorrow) contrasts with Comus's artificial joy.

Readers approaching these poems will find that Milton's authorial choices—his personifications, sensory contrasts, and layered allusions—reward close attention to individual words and their echoes across the volume. The binary structure of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso invites comparison, while Comus and Lycidas extend the exploration of temptation, loss, and consolation. Noting how Milton shifts diction between poems can illuminate the distinct emotional and moral registers he crafts.

That rain kept drumming on the glass while I followed Milton’s shepherds through their shadowed valleys, his words thick with the weight of mourning. Then, leafing past a stray note, I landed on the less solemn, more mischievous beat of Wilhelm Busch’s page, and the afternoon turned to something far lighter: Max and Maurice: A Juvenile History in Seven Tricks — Reading Companion.