"Comus" in the Ruins

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 734, 7 August 1953, Page 26

"Comus" in the Ruins

YN the hushed afterglow of an English evening between the last swoop of the swifts and the first flutter of the bats, the clock in Ludlow church tower was striking ten as we gathered in the inner courtyard of the castle, a green arena where time-worn walls, Norman and Tudor, raise proud reminders of departed glory. These solid walls and soaring battle-ments-towering even in these contemptuous days-had been the. outer ramparts of England, the key defences in the chain of border fortresses against the marauding Welsh. Here in the Wars of the Roses the two pathetic princelings had languished before being dragged off. to be murdered by a usurper in the Tower of London. Here Catherine of Aragon, a happy young bride, had walked on what is still called the Queen’s Walk with the eldest son of Henry VII, soon to die and be replaced by his bluff brother. Here, then. began the dispute between the: Tudors and the Papacy. And here in 1634 the young poet Milton presented his poetical . sketch Comus in honour of the installation of the Earl of Bridgewater as President of the Council of. Wales. _ The scene possesses a dramatic beauty of its own, but there was a sup-

pressed excitement of something .more, for seldom do place and occasion so happily conspire as for the return of Comus to its original setting, 319 years after the first performance there. The audience included the present owners of the ruined Ludlow Castle, the Earl and Countess of Powis, and the Earl and Countess of Ellesmere, direct descendants of the three Bridgewater children who are reputed to have taken part on that Michaelmas night in 1634. It is round the anxieties for their safety when they were lost at night in the neighbouring wild woods that the story is woven. With the stage set against’ the shell of the great banqueting hall and the sky showing faintly pink through the gaping, though still gracious, western windows, with so powerful a hold upon the imagination, half the battle was won before a word was spoken or a note played. Yet it was a bold venture, for this court masque is magical or nothing; without that subtle alchemy it would be an elaborate moral pantomime or a boring temperance tract. However, this was no too, too substantial pageant, no hotch-potch of shouting, milling players. It was a deeply sensitive production, spoken with such beautiful precision that not a syllable wasted its sweetness’ on the open air. As Macaulay properly demanded, the lines were spoken by past

and present’ members of the Oxford University Dramatic Society as "majestic soliloquies." Spell-binding Music The mesh of enchantment was woven also by the music, some of it composed

for the original performance, the rest chosen from composers whose works Milton. could reasonably be expected to know. As if conjured up by the spirits of the woods and the waters and not made by mortals concealed in an. inner room, the old strains drifted upon the ear with the ,aid of modern cunning — now from the shadows of the round chapel, then from the high line of battlements, and now from the ruined tower, but with never a crackling hint of loudspeakers. First it was the haunting tune of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance as the dim stage was taken by a company of dancers like some ritual of the castle’s own ghosts, whose only link with

corporeal life was the white horn headdresses gleaming like bleached bones in the pale light. As if stepping out after three centuries, the Attendant Spirit warned us of the coming of Comus, the evil child of Bacchus, and his rout of lustful monsters. Their nightmare masks surgingly advanced and then creepingly retired as their revels were stilled by the. fall of "some chaste footing." Separated from her brothers, the benighted Lady appeared and danger tingled in the air. One will not soon | forget the sneer and snarl in the line of the tempter about "lean and sallow abstinence," even if she never looks a likely victim, The embodiment of chastity, she has only to say "No" without any compelling reason for saying "Yes." Tract for the Times If our modern cynicism can no longer share Milton’s moral optimism, expressed by a somewhat Shavian elder brother, that "virtue can'be assailed, but never hurt," there is timeless truth in her declaration: "Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind." , And if the poet’s classical allusions fell with more responsive grace upon the ears of the courtly audience in the days of Charles I, his finely drawn pastoral lines about "dingle or bushy dell... bosky bourn*. ... and smooth Severn steam" still apply in this unspoilt corner of the coloured counties, now glowing richly with an early harvest. As Milton’s rolling organ notes brought the masque to a close, the chimes ofthe parish church scattered their sweetness to announce Sunday and remind the audience that by their enjoyment, and that of others for a week, they were helping to raise the £45,000 needed to preserve its soaring stone, gleaming glass, and carven timber- + while Ludlow tower shall stand; Oh, come you home of Sunday When Ludlow streets are still And Ludlow bells are calling , To farm and lane and mill. such a night as this the best known of Shropshire poets might well have revised his views about the rival powers of malt and Milton.

J. W.

Goodwin