Son of the Earl of Bridgewater, aged 11 at the time of the masque, played the part of the first brother.

John Egerton, a member of King Charles I's Privy Council. Egerton had been appointed the Lord President of Wales by Charles in 1631 and commissioned the masque for the installation ceremonies, which were delayed until 1634. The Bridgewater family is connected to the Countess Dowager of Derby, for whom Milton had written Arcades. The Bridgewater family is also related to the Castlehaven family, which went through a scandalous case involving the Earl of Castlehaven, in which he was accused of crimes of sodomy and rape and executed for his behaviour. Various scholars have discussed the possible connections between the Castlehaven case and Comus.

Henry Lawes, a musician for the court who also served as a musical tutor for the Bridgewater family. Lawes wrote the songs for the masque, and it is thought that he might have been the connection through which Milton was commissioned to write the masque.

Appointed to the position of Lord President of Wales by Charles I in 1631, the Earl of Bridgewater assumed an important public office. The Lord President was the head of the regional court system and also served as a contact for and to the King.

The evening star.

Ludlow Castle, where the masque performance took place, likely in the Great or Banqueting Hall of the Castle. The town of Ludlow was a Welsh border town that served as the administrative center for the region; in spite of its official presence, it also enjoyed a reputation as being a bit rough or rowdy.

An aromatic plant from which ancient peoples extracted a fragrant ointment.

A tropical plant which has several different species; the drug senna can be derived from the leaves of one species, and a purgative derived from the legumes of another species; also used poetically to suggest an aromatic plant--used in such a manner by Ovid and Vergil.

A temporary pen or place of confinement for straying cattle.

The Earl of Bridgewater.

Relating to the region of Tuscany in Italy. Florence is the capital and major cultural center of Tuscany. Referred to in ancient times as Etruscan.

Of or pertaining to the Tyrrhene or Tuscan or Etruscan region or coast.

A mythological figure of misrule

A lynx; "From 16th century applied to various other small or moderate-sized feline beasts, vaguely identified" (OED).

Refers to the cloth of Thyrsis's robe; woof signifies the "woven fabric" or the "threads that cross from side to side of a web, at right angles to the warp"; Iris is the messenger goddess of the gods, who appeared as a rainbow. The phrase suggests, then, Thyrsis's brightly colored costume.

enter conversing

An elaborate dance practiced in England for May-day games and other festive occasions; a Moorish dance

Thracian goddess of immodesty and debauchery.

A phrase that suggests the monstrous progeny of Styx or the Underworld.

Goddess of witchcraft and magical rites, connected to Artemis and the moon as well as Persephone and the Underworld.

Spongy

To talk smoothly or flatteringly; to smooth over or gloss over; smooth, flattering words

The part of the Ladie in the masque was played by Lady Alice Egerton, the eldest unmarried daughter of the Earl of Bridgewater, aged 15 at the time of the masque's presentation.

Pilgrims to the Holy Land were often called Palmers, since they often returned with a branch of a palm tree as a souvenir of their journey and a proof of their arrival at their destination

Of the air (meaning heavenly or supernatural) (OED)

From the KJV (1 Corinth 13:13): "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these [is] charity." The reference changes charity to chastity, the focus of the masque.

A river in Phrygia with many curves; Midas was king of Phrygia (Hamilton)

Margin (OED)

[parlie is a word that means a surrender or truce?] refers here to the nymph Echo, mentioned earlier, whose unrequited devotion to Narcissus embodied itself in the repetition of everything he said. At her death, her repetitive voice remained. (Grimal)

"Female water nymphs who incarnate the divinity of the spring or stream which they inhabit" (Grimal)

Personification of Youth; daughter of Zeus and Hera, cupbearer to the gods, later wife of the immortalized Heracles (Grimal)

Wearied with toil, overworked (first usage is here, OED)

One who makes, repairs, and trims hedges (OED)

(bosky) consisting of or covered with bushes, overgrown (OED)

Boundary, perhaps between fields (OED)

Blessing or benediction (OED)

Polestar, guiding light; reference to Cynosura, one of two nymphs who were turned into the Ursa Major and Minor constellations for caring for Zeus as a baby. The North Star is in the constellation Ursa Minor.(check) Arcadie is the wilderness where Pan, the god of wild places, was born. Tyrian refers to Etruria, land of the Etruscans. (Grimal, Hamilton)

Cushion to support a sleeper's head in bed (OED)

Trope of Wisdom as a great bird that is wearied and grounded by the toils of society and can only take flight once more after a period of contemplation in solitude. The Elder Brother is suggesting that the virtuous Lady prefers to be alone with her thoughts, and is therefore in no danger by herself now. He is obviously mistaken.

Swarthy, dark in color (OED)

A goblin supposed to inhabit mines. ("The designation is used by Milton; later writers use it as the equivalent of the German kobold or gnome.") (OED)

Tawny colored with stripes or streaks (OED)

River that souls must cross to reach the land of the Dead. Charon is the ferryman who carries the souls with the correct fare. The river was thought of as marshy, muddy, and stagnant. (Grimal)

[Hydra] Monstrous offspring of Typhon and Echinda - a snake with many heads and venomous breath. (Grimal)

A magical herb having a white flower and a black root, said by Homer to have been given by Hermes to Odysseus as a charm against the sorceries of Circe. (Circe is mother of Comus) (OED)

Milton's imaginary plant having supernatural virtues. (OED)

Thone was King of Egypt when Helen of Troy arrived. His wife, Polydamna, gave Helen the potion nepenthes, which made her forget all her sorrows. (Hamilton)

A follower of the school of philosophy founded by Zeno in ancient Greece, which promoted "repression of emotion, indifference to pleasure or pain, and patient endurance" (OED)

Reference to a sect of philosophers in ancient Greece, founded by Antisthenes, a pupil of Socrates, who were marked by their contempt for ease, wealth, and the enjoyments of life; the most famous was Diogenes, a pupil of Antisthenes, who carried their principles to an extreme of asceticism. Diogenes, according to legend, lived outdoors in a tub for part of his life. (OED)

Thin cloth, similar to linen (OED)

The son of Chaos and brother of Night; hence darkness personified (Brewer).

A shepherd from Virgil's Eclogues (Smith). Alternately, the shepherd who found and reared Oedipus (Grimal).

"Welsh Hafren, Britain's longest river from source to tidal waters (about 180 miles." (Britannica Online). Maryann McGuire notes in her book Milton's Puritan Masque that the Severn River represents the border between Wales and England, and thus, the episode with Sabrina also indicates that the children have entered their father's jurisdiction (87).

The Roman name of the river Severn. Also, from Sabre, daughter of Locrine and Estrildis, whom he married after divorcing Guendolœn. After the ex-Queen gathered an army and killed Locrine, she ordered Estrildis and Sabrina to be thrown into the Severn. Nereus, taking pity on Sabrina, made her the river goddess (Brewer). Geoffrey of Monmouth further notes that Guendolen herself ordered that the river be named to commemorate Sabrina, since the girl was her husband's daughter (77).

Father of Sabrina, and eldest son of Brutus, King of Britain (Brewer). In his History of Britain, Geoffrey of Monmouth relates that Locrine preferred his concubine Estrildis (Sabrina's mother) to his wife, and after his father-in-law's death, divorced his wife Guendolen in favor of Estrildis. Enraged, Guendolen raised an army against him and killed her ex-husband (75-77).

According to British mythology, Brute, the son of Sylvius (grandson of Ascanius and great-grandson of Æneas) was the first king of Britain. (Brewer).

Guendolen raised an army and defeated her husband Locrine, a king of Britain, after he divorced her in favor of his mistress. After his death in battle, she also caused his new wife, Estrildis and Sabrina, daughter of Estrildis and Locrine, to be drowned in a nearby river. From then on, she decreed that the river be named the Severn to honor Sabrina, as her husband's daughter. She ruled her husband's kingdom for fifteen years after his death, and then abdicated in favor of her son, Maddan (Geoffrey of Monmouth 75-78).

"'The Old Man of the Sea,' a sea-god of Greek mythology represented as a very old man. He was the father of the Nereids and his special dominion was the Ægean Sea" (Brewer). Grimal further notes that Nereus, whom mariners considered a benevolent god, had the ability to transform himself into different shapes.

"A plant genus of the lily family, particularly associated with death and the underworld in Greek legend. It was planted on graves, and the departed lived their phantom life in the Plain of Asphodel. The name Daffodil is a corruption of asphodel" (Brewer). Furthermore, according to myth, Proserpina dropped the flowers when Pluto kidnapped her, upon which they turned yellow, having previously been white ("Daffodil," Brewer).

The OED notes that urchin also means "goblin or elf (From the supposition that they occasionally assumed the form of a hedgehog)" (1c).

"A Greek sea-god; also the river of the world which circles the earth and as such is represented as a snake with its tail in its mouth. As a sea-god, he is an old man with a long beard and with bull's horns on his head" (Brewer).

A sea goddess and wife of Oceanus (Brewer).

"Proteus, who lived in the island of Carpathus (now Scarpanto), between Rhodes and Crete, and could transform himself into any shape he pleased. He is represented as carrying a sort of crook in his hand, because he was an ocean shepherd and had to manage a flock of sea-calves" (Brewer).

According to Brewer, "son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, represented as a fish with a human head. It is this sea-god that makes the roaring of the ocean by blowing through his shell." The name Triton, however, often referred to a variety of beings, half man and half fish, who served Poseidon (Grimal).

"A fisherman of Bœotia, who became a sea-god endowed with the gift of prophecy by Apollo" (Brewer).

Originally a mortal woman named Ino, Leucothea had offered to raise Dionysus, the son of her sister Semele and Zeus, thus arousing Hera's jealousy. She became a sea-goddess, specifically the "goddess of the spray," after the gods took pity on her when vengeful Hera caused her and her husband to become mad and kill their children. Her son became the sea-god Palæmon, and the two acted to save mariners lost in storms (Grimal).

Mother of Achilles, friend of Hera, and daughter of Nereus, she was one of the most famous Nereids (Grimal).

"Parthenope was a beautiful girl, a native of Phrygia, who fell in love with Metiochus, but did not wish to break the vow of chastity which she had made. To punish herself for her passion she cut off her hair and went into voluntary exile in Campagna, where she dedicated herself to Dionysus. In anger, Aphrodite turned her into a Siren" (Grimal). Brewer picks up the story there, noting that she was a Siren who "threw herself into the sea out of love for Ulysses, and was cast up in the Bay of Naples."

One of the Sirens. (Smith).

The goddess of the sea and wife of Poseidon (Brewer).

Ruler of Dardanus, and father of the Trojan prince Æneas by Aphrodite. Brewer notes that in one legend, Anchises was "blinded or killed for naming his son's mother." Virgil renders the story differently, claiming that Anchises escaped the sack of Troy with his son and grandson.

The OED defines the term as "a transparent precious stone of a pale-green colour passing into light-blue, yellow, and white; distinguished only by colour from the more precious emerald."

"The apparent arch or vault of heaven overhead; the sky, the firmament" (OED 2).

"The ancient people of Yemen in south-western Arabia; from Arabic Saba', or Sheba" (Brewer).

Bibliography:

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 14th ed. Ed. Ivor H. Evans. New
        York: Harper & Row, 1989.

Britannica Online. 1994-2000. 3 Dec. 2000 <http://www.eb.com:180/>.

Geoffrey of Monmouth. The History of the Kings of Britain. Trans. Lewis
        Thorpe. London: Penguin, 1966.

Grimal, Pierre. The Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Trans. A.K.
        Maxwell-Hyslop. Oxford: Maxwell-Hyslop. 1986.

Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. New York: New American Library, 1969.

McGuire, Maryann Cale. Milton's Puritan Masque. Athens, GA:
        University of Georgia Press, 1983.

Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, online.

Smith, Eric. A Dictionary of Classical Reference in English Poetry.
        Totowa, NY: Barnes & Noble, 1984.