of the
intellectual and social life of his time. His masks are excelled only
by _Comus_, and possess in a high degree that 'Doric delicacy' in their
songs and odes which Sir Henry Wotton found so ravishing in Milton's
mask. Jonson, in his lifetime, declared that, next himself, only
Fletcher and Chapman could write a mask; and apart from the compositions
of these writers and of William Browne (_Inner Temple Masque_), there
are few specimens worthy to be named along with Jonson's until we come
to Milton's _Arcades_. Other mask-writers were Middleton, Dekker,
Shirley, Carew, and Davenant; and it is interesting to note that in
Carew's _Coelum Brittanicum_ (1633-4), for which Lawes composed the
music, the two boys who afterwards acted in _Comus_ had juvenile parts.
It has been pointed out that the popularity of the Mask in Milton's
youth received a stimulus from the Puritan hatred of the theatre which
found expression at that time, and drove non-Puritans to welcome the
Mask as a protest against that spirit which saw nothing but evil in
every form of dramatic entertainment. Milton, who enjoyed the
theatre--both "Jonson's learned sock" and what "ennobled hath the
buskined stage"--was led, through his friendship with the musician
Lawes, to compose a mask to celebrate the entry of the Earl of
Bridgewater upon his office of "Lord President of the Council in the
Principality of Wales and the Marches of the same." He had already
written, also at the request of Lawes, a mask, or portion of a mask,
called _Arcades_, and the success of this may have stimulated him to
higher effort. The result was _Comus_, in which the Mask reached its
highest level, and after which it practically faded out of our
literature.

Milton's two masks, _Arcades_ and _Comus_, were written for members of
the same noble family, the former in honour of the Countess Dowager of
Derby, and the latter in honour of John, first Earl of Bridgewater, who
was both her stepson and son-in-law. This two-fold relation arose from
the fact that the Earl was the son of Viscount Brackley, the Countess's
second husband, and had himself married Lady Frances Stanley, a daughter
of the Countess by her first husband, the fifth Earl of Derby. Amongst
the children of the Earl of Bridgewater were three who took important
parts in the representation of _Comus_--Alice, the youngest daughter,
then about fourteen years of age, who appeared as _The Lady_; John,
Viscount Brackley, who took