The Earl of Bridgewater was raised to the title by James I. out of respect for the memory of his father, the great lawyer and statesman, Thomas Egerton, who, after holding the office of Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Queen Elizabeth, was made Lord High Chancellor of England, and created Baron of Ellesmere and Viscount Brackley, by James I. It does not appear that Milton had any previous acquaintance with the Bridgewater family; nor is it likely that he was known to them, even by name, as he had at that time published nothing either in prose or verse. But his friend, Henry Lawes, the composer, was living in the earl's family, and acting as musical instructor to his daughters. He, it seems, engaged Milton to write the poetry of the two Masks, the Arcades, and the Comus, for which he himself composed the music. The Arcades was performed probably some time in the year 1634, before the Countess Dowager of Derby, at Harefield Hall, near Uxbridge. That venerable lady was the sixth daughter of Sir John Spencer, of Althorpe, in Northamptonshire. She was first married to Lord Strange, who, on his father's death in 1594, became Earl of Derby, and died soon afterwards. In 1600, she was married again to Lord Chancellor Egerton, a widower, whose son was, as we have seen, the first Earl of Bridgewater. The earl married one of her daughters by Lord Strange. During her first widowhood, she was celebrated under the name of Amyrillis, by her real or supposed kinsman, Spenser the poet, in his Colin Clout's come home again. She died at Harefield, a year or two after she had received the homage of Milton's muse. There is no ground for the assertion that she was his patroness, or that he was a constant visitor at her house. A Mask was a dramatic entertainment accompanied with music, in some cases entirely carried on in dumb show; in others, e.g. the Comus, consisting of narrative and lyric poetry, dances, &c. Examples of this kind of performance, which bore some resemblance to the modern opera, are to be found in the plays of Shakspeare-e.g. in Romeo and Juliet, and in Timon of Athens. The Comus was first published with the author's name in 1645, not by himself, but by Lawes, for whom it was written. The following dedication to Lord Brackley was prefixed : "To the Rt. Honble. John Lord Viscount Bracly, son and heir apparent to the Earl of Bridgewater, &c. "MY LORD, "This poem, which received its first occasion of birth from yourself and others of your noble family, and much honour from your own person in the performance, now returns again to make a final dedication of itself to you. 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 necessity of producing it to the publike view; and now to offer it up in all rightful devotion to those fair hopes and rare endowments of your much promising youth, which give a full assurance to all that know you of a future excellence. Live, sweet lord, to be the honour of your name, and receive this as your own, from the hands of him who hath for many favours been long obliged to your most honoured parents, and, as in this representation your attendant Thyrsis, so now in all reall expression, "Your faithfull and most humble servant, "H. LAWES." The text of this edition is that of Todd; the notes are chiefly derived from the learned edition of Milton's earlier poems, published by Thomas Warton, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, in 1785. |