Rajdeep Choudhury
PG II
Roll 48.
A. S. P Woodhouse posited that the Brother’s Debate in Comus is a “single train of thought” in his essay “The Argument of Milton’s Comus”. There are two debates in Comus – one is an amicable “disagreement” and the one is evidently an altercation, far from amiable. University disputations can be found in the polemical arguments of the former and Milton exhibits beautifully how the “gay rhetoric” of the eloquent Comus hides wickedness in “reason’s garb”, which the Lady removes with her arguments. The debate between the siblings however is a sort of an expository leading up this dispute. Uncharacteristically, it is a private one and Milton uses it very subtly to expound his own views on the purpose (and also the process) of debating. This is his own commentary on the “unproductive bickering” he had witnessed so many times at Cambridge.
PG II
Roll 48.
A. S. P Woodhouse posited that the Brother’s Debate in Comus is a “single train of thought” in his essay “The Argument of Milton’s Comus”. There are two debates in Comus – one is an amicable “disagreement” and the one is evidently an altercation, far from amiable. University disputations can be found in the polemical arguments of the former and Milton exhibits beautifully how the “gay rhetoric” of the eloquent Comus hides wickedness in “reason’s garb”, which the Lady removes with her arguments. The debate between the siblings however is a sort of an expository leading up this dispute. Uncharacteristically, it is a private one and Milton uses it very subtly to expound his own views on the purpose (and also the process) of debating. This is his own commentary on the “unproductive bickering” he had witnessed so many times at Cambridge.
Both the
brothers pay careful attention to what the other is saying and seem to be
genuinely influenced by each other’s speeches.
Their philosophies may reside at extremes of the spectrum of
irrationality, but they work together in a pursuit for truth where each is guided
by the other’s judgement. Thus, the debate comes across more as a discussion
than a disputation when they arrive at a common conclusion.
Rather than a discourse of conflicting opinions, the disputation has often been considered as a single train of thought. The reasons behind doing that are perfectly understandable, primarily due to the lack of contest in the debate. Instead of rebuttals and refutations each is influenced by the other and there is more of acknowledgement and averting of opinions than forceful contradictions. The Elder Brother is the idealistic optimist who is steadfast in his faith in chastity, while the younger brother is the practical pessimist who is acutely aware of the perils in the forest. Their temperaments contrast each other and complement each other at the same time.
Another reason for critics to consider this as a pseudo-debate has much to do with the fact that they are alone. This is quite a deviation from the usual public disputations. The academic discourses of Milton’s Cambridge days were nothing short of public performances, and both the defens and the opponens were very much concerned with the audience. The form of the masque itself is intimately related to the audience, sometimes requiring the contribution of the audience to the dance at the conclusion of the masque. At the onset of the play, the audience was very much involved in the action when the Egerton children were presented to their parents in the middle of the attendant spirit’s song. However, there is zero awareness of the audience in the speeches in the Brother’s debate. The brothers are concerned with each other only.
Their solitude is further underlined by the united exordiums, in which the Elder Brother’ call for light and the younger brother’s call for sound show them to be lost in darkness and silence. The traditional exordium attempted to capture the attention and sympathy of the audience and occasionally to invoke an agent of inspiration. In the exordium to Prolusion 6, for example, Milton combines flattery with invocation in saying that his listeners are incarnations of the muses and that they therefore provide all the inspiration he needs.[i]
Quite similarly, the two brothers plead Nature to give them both illumination and sound. In the usual exordium the orator calls inspiration and eloquence, which are the pralles of illumination nd sound respectively. The association between illumination and spiritual enlightenment is underlined by the Elder brother when he claims that “he has that light within his own clear breast/May sit in the centre, and enjoy bright day.” This exordium is critical in understanding the basic harmony that exists beneath the surface between the two disputants. They do call upon the stars, the moon and the spirit of sound in a united exordium as their audience. Yet the two separate appeals are so intricately intertwined(both metrically and contextually) that they can be considered as one.
Eld. Bro. Unmuffle ye faint stars, and thou fair Moon
That wants’ to love the travellers benizon,
Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud,
And disinherit Chaos, that raigns here
In double night of darknes, and of shades; [ 335 ]
Or if your influence be quite damm'd up
With black usurping mists, som gentle taper
Though a rush Candle from the wicker hole
Of som clay habitation visit us
With thy long levell'd rule of streaming light, [ 340 ]
And thou shalt be our star of Arcady,
Or Tyrian Cynosure. 2 Bro. Or if our eyes
Be barr'd that happines, might we but hear
The folded flocks pen'd in their wattled cotes,
Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, [ 345 ]
Or whistle from the Lodge, or village cock
Count the night watches to his feathery Dames,
T' would be some solace yet, some little chearing
In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs.[ii]
The appeals coalesce into a singular exordium, which requests remission from “this close dungeon of innumerous boughs.” These two speeches are tightly connected in form, welded together in a single iambic line. The elder Brother ends his by the 1st 3 iambic feet of the line 341: “or Tyrian cynosure”, which the second brother picks up, ending it with iambic fourth and fifth feet: “or if our eyes”. The break is of the length of a common caesura. The line does not contain a pause in both the Trinity and the Bridgewater manuscripts. If it were not for the stage direction, one can hardly tell that the speaker has been changed in between the 2 lines. The entire debate is characterised by such metrical befuddling, except for one occasion where the change in the speaker is implemented by a separate line. In this debate, the fusion of the lines underlines the agreement between them even in disagreement. However, in the altercation between Comus and the Lady, this technique can be spotted twice but interestingly, whenever the Lady cuts him off while he is speaking it is only to voice her disagreement.
Granted the exordiums complement each other, the first is given to the Elder Brother. There is a consistent presence of light and illumination in the lines of the Elder Brother, a “radiant light” which is present even when the “sun and moon/were in the flat se sunk.” Thus, it is hardly surprising that his first reaction to the “dark soul, and foul thoughts” is to ward off the “double night of darkness” that is hindering his sight. The Younger Brother is much the same, yearning for sound: not the cacophony of “folded flocks” but the resolute voice of his Elder Brother. When the Second Brother speaks, we seem to move closer to the real world and away from the sacramental world with its mythological constructions, but this is only superficially true. He admits that his Elder Brother’s voice gives him assurance and peace in line 347. This further posits that though he plays an integral role in this debate, his function is more of an attentive pupil whose inquisitive nature propels the Master to new observations. He does anticipate some of the central themes the masque deals with (with the aid of his brother). But the first few reactions that he gives to the pessimistic fears of the younger brother are juvenile and foolish:
What need a man forestall his date of grief,
And run to meet what he would most avoid? (l. 61-62)
The younger brother merely wants to haste his sister’s rescue but the Elder Brother’s composure at the present moment seems to be lacking in logic and practicality. He exhibits a sort of denial when he flatly dismisses the possibility of his sister being in peril- “not being in danger, as I trust she is not” (l. 369). In a dark and cold forest, the Lady is in danger from both humans and wild animals. Against these plausible dangers, the Elder Brother’s argument that her only aggravations are the darkness and the silence is diminutive. He also reasons that “Wisdom’s self/ Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude”, claiming that their lost sister has left them in a conscious decision in order to retire to something like the “peaceful hermitage” of Il Penseroso to contemplate.
While the Elder Brother speaks on the darkness and claims that his sister’s inner virtue provides all the light she requires, the Younger Brother still dwells on the safety of his sister. Contrasting his brother’s ridiculous idealism the Younger brother exhibits farcical practicality
For who would rob a hermit of his weeds,
His few books, or his beads, or maple dish,
Or do his grey hairs any violence? (i. 389-91)
The Elder Brother is fiercely optimistic in nature and he admits to it (“That I incline to hope, rather than fear”). He tries to warn his younger sibling in matter of extreme pessimism by labelling it as “over-exquisite” but reveals himself to be equally extreme in his optimism. But surprisingly we find that he does concede to the point made by the Younger Brother and redirects his optimism towards something more grounded and philosophically sane. He reminds his brother of the “hidden strength” that their sister possesses, which also happens to be the central theme of the masque:
“‘Tis Chastity, my brother, chastity.” (l. 419)
The Elder Brother’s exemplary portrayal of chastity, prior to the debate between the Lady and Comus, anticipates and complements the Lady’s verbalization of Chastity. Elder Brother’s comparatively naïve imitation of conformist icons of radical chastity exposes some mythological and psychological complexity in its development and expression that a more sophisticated account of the virtue might knowingly repress or refine. Such is the case with the complex image of Minerva and the gorgon shield, which flashes up out of an Ovidian repository that forms the sad intimation of the Lady’s suffering. “Rigid looks of chaste austerity” indicate the double power of chastity over the predatory eye. The archetypal virgin, Minerva, goddess of wisdom and militant chastity, petrifies her foes both with her looking and with how she looks. She arrests and intimidates the gaze of the potential voyeur with an impenetrably inflexible and keen gaze of her own, as well as with an armoured body-image resistant to violence of thought or action. Her petrifying power results from her appropriation of and merger with Medusa, her opposite. In the Elder Brother’s iconography, Minerva wears rather than carries the Gorgon shield, suggesting in the figure a coincidence of female opposites. [iii]
He now adds to imagined list of perils that can befall their sister, taking into consideration “Infamous hills, sandy perilous wilds.” His final claim is that no matter how big the dangers are, natural or supernatural, their sister is shielded by the “complete steel” of her chastity. Aside from numerous references to non-Christian allusions like Dian, Minerva and Cupid for added authority he also comes up with theologically steadfast allusions. He foresees her angelic protection. However, this is in contradiction to his earlier where he claims that chastity is enough to protect itself. He reassured his brother with more cogent optimism, claiming that their sister is guarded by angels who watch her and protect her. The second brother concurs with his elder and applauds divine philosophy. This can be construed as Milton’s criticism of scholastic philosophy, which according to him is the topic of “dull fools.”
Most critics have dismissed this debate as ineffectual. Barabara Traister calls it a pointless debate that takes the brothers nowhere until the Attendant Spirit comes to sort them out. The brothers , however, reach the conclusion far before the Attendant Spirit arrives. The brothers essentially present Milton’s opportunity to add philosophical speculation. The speeches of the Elder clearly enlarge the theme of the Lady’s debate with Comus. Sears Jayne sees the Brother’s function as “expository” and their debate embodies an affected piece of theological and philosophical ideas of chastity and virtue.
Rather than a discourse of conflicting opinions, the disputation has often been considered as a single train of thought. The reasons behind doing that are perfectly understandable, primarily due to the lack of contest in the debate. Instead of rebuttals and refutations each is influenced by the other and there is more of acknowledgement and averting of opinions than forceful contradictions. The Elder Brother is the idealistic optimist who is steadfast in his faith in chastity, while the younger brother is the practical pessimist who is acutely aware of the perils in the forest. Their temperaments contrast each other and complement each other at the same time.
Another reason for critics to consider this as a pseudo-debate has much to do with the fact that they are alone. This is quite a deviation from the usual public disputations. The academic discourses of Milton’s Cambridge days were nothing short of public performances, and both the defens and the opponens were very much concerned with the audience. The form of the masque itself is intimately related to the audience, sometimes requiring the contribution of the audience to the dance at the conclusion of the masque. At the onset of the play, the audience was very much involved in the action when the Egerton children were presented to their parents in the middle of the attendant spirit’s song. However, there is zero awareness of the audience in the speeches in the Brother’s debate. The brothers are concerned with each other only.
Their solitude is further underlined by the united exordiums, in which the Elder Brother’ call for light and the younger brother’s call for sound show them to be lost in darkness and silence. The traditional exordium attempted to capture the attention and sympathy of the audience and occasionally to invoke an agent of inspiration. In the exordium to Prolusion 6, for example, Milton combines flattery with invocation in saying that his listeners are incarnations of the muses and that they therefore provide all the inspiration he needs.[i]
Quite similarly, the two brothers plead Nature to give them both illumination and sound. In the usual exordium the orator calls inspiration and eloquence, which are the pralles of illumination nd sound respectively. The association between illumination and spiritual enlightenment is underlined by the Elder brother when he claims that “he has that light within his own clear breast/May sit in the centre, and enjoy bright day.” This exordium is critical in understanding the basic harmony that exists beneath the surface between the two disputants. They do call upon the stars, the moon and the spirit of sound in a united exordium as their audience. Yet the two separate appeals are so intricately intertwined(both metrically and contextually) that they can be considered as one.
Eld. Bro. Unmuffle ye faint stars, and thou fair Moon
That wants’ to love the travellers benizon,
Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud,
And disinherit Chaos, that raigns here
In double night of darknes, and of shades; [ 335 ]
Or if your influence be quite damm'd up
With black usurping mists, som gentle taper
Though a rush Candle from the wicker hole
Of som clay habitation visit us
With thy long levell'd rule of streaming light, [ 340 ]
And thou shalt be our star of Arcady,
Or Tyrian Cynosure. 2 Bro. Or if our eyes
Be barr'd that happines, might we but hear
The folded flocks pen'd in their wattled cotes,
Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, [ 345 ]
Or whistle from the Lodge, or village cock
Count the night watches to his feathery Dames,
T' would be some solace yet, some little chearing
In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs.[ii]
The appeals coalesce into a singular exordium, which requests remission from “this close dungeon of innumerous boughs.” These two speeches are tightly connected in form, welded together in a single iambic line. The elder Brother ends his by the 1st 3 iambic feet of the line 341: “or Tyrian cynosure”, which the second brother picks up, ending it with iambic fourth and fifth feet: “or if our eyes”. The break is of the length of a common caesura. The line does not contain a pause in both the Trinity and the Bridgewater manuscripts. If it were not for the stage direction, one can hardly tell that the speaker has been changed in between the 2 lines. The entire debate is characterised by such metrical befuddling, except for one occasion where the change in the speaker is implemented by a separate line. In this debate, the fusion of the lines underlines the agreement between them even in disagreement. However, in the altercation between Comus and the Lady, this technique can be spotted twice but interestingly, whenever the Lady cuts him off while he is speaking it is only to voice her disagreement.
Granted the exordiums complement each other, the first is given to the Elder Brother. There is a consistent presence of light and illumination in the lines of the Elder Brother, a “radiant light” which is present even when the “sun and moon/were in the flat se sunk.” Thus, it is hardly surprising that his first reaction to the “dark soul, and foul thoughts” is to ward off the “double night of darkness” that is hindering his sight. The Younger Brother is much the same, yearning for sound: not the cacophony of “folded flocks” but the resolute voice of his Elder Brother. When the Second Brother speaks, we seem to move closer to the real world and away from the sacramental world with its mythological constructions, but this is only superficially true. He admits that his Elder Brother’s voice gives him assurance and peace in line 347. This further posits that though he plays an integral role in this debate, his function is more of an attentive pupil whose inquisitive nature propels the Master to new observations. He does anticipate some of the central themes the masque deals with (with the aid of his brother). But the first few reactions that he gives to the pessimistic fears of the younger brother are juvenile and foolish:
What need a man forestall his date of grief,
And run to meet what he would most avoid? (l. 61-62)
The younger brother merely wants to haste his sister’s rescue but the Elder Brother’s composure at the present moment seems to be lacking in logic and practicality. He exhibits a sort of denial when he flatly dismisses the possibility of his sister being in peril- “not being in danger, as I trust she is not” (l. 369). In a dark and cold forest, the Lady is in danger from both humans and wild animals. Against these plausible dangers, the Elder Brother’s argument that her only aggravations are the darkness and the silence is diminutive. He also reasons that “Wisdom’s self/ Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude”, claiming that their lost sister has left them in a conscious decision in order to retire to something like the “peaceful hermitage” of Il Penseroso to contemplate.
While the Elder Brother speaks on the darkness and claims that his sister’s inner virtue provides all the light she requires, the Younger Brother still dwells on the safety of his sister. Contrasting his brother’s ridiculous idealism the Younger brother exhibits farcical practicality
For who would rob a hermit of his weeds,
His few books, or his beads, or maple dish,
Or do his grey hairs any violence? (i. 389-91)
The Elder Brother is fiercely optimistic in nature and he admits to it (“That I incline to hope, rather than fear”). He tries to warn his younger sibling in matter of extreme pessimism by labelling it as “over-exquisite” but reveals himself to be equally extreme in his optimism. But surprisingly we find that he does concede to the point made by the Younger Brother and redirects his optimism towards something more grounded and philosophically sane. He reminds his brother of the “hidden strength” that their sister possesses, which also happens to be the central theme of the masque:
“‘Tis Chastity, my brother, chastity.” (l. 419)
The Elder Brother’s exemplary portrayal of chastity, prior to the debate between the Lady and Comus, anticipates and complements the Lady’s verbalization of Chastity. Elder Brother’s comparatively naïve imitation of conformist icons of radical chastity exposes some mythological and psychological complexity in its development and expression that a more sophisticated account of the virtue might knowingly repress or refine. Such is the case with the complex image of Minerva and the gorgon shield, which flashes up out of an Ovidian repository that forms the sad intimation of the Lady’s suffering. “Rigid looks of chaste austerity” indicate the double power of chastity over the predatory eye. The archetypal virgin, Minerva, goddess of wisdom and militant chastity, petrifies her foes both with her looking and with how she looks. She arrests and intimidates the gaze of the potential voyeur with an impenetrably inflexible and keen gaze of her own, as well as with an armoured body-image resistant to violence of thought or action. Her petrifying power results from her appropriation of and merger with Medusa, her opposite. In the Elder Brother’s iconography, Minerva wears rather than carries the Gorgon shield, suggesting in the figure a coincidence of female opposites. [iii]
He now adds to imagined list of perils that can befall their sister, taking into consideration “Infamous hills, sandy perilous wilds.” His final claim is that no matter how big the dangers are, natural or supernatural, their sister is shielded by the “complete steel” of her chastity. Aside from numerous references to non-Christian allusions like Dian, Minerva and Cupid for added authority he also comes up with theologically steadfast allusions. He foresees her angelic protection. However, this is in contradiction to his earlier where he claims that chastity is enough to protect itself. He reassured his brother with more cogent optimism, claiming that their sister is guarded by angels who watch her and protect her. The second brother concurs with his elder and applauds divine philosophy. This can be construed as Milton’s criticism of scholastic philosophy, which according to him is the topic of “dull fools.”
Most critics have dismissed this debate as ineffectual. Barabara Traister calls it a pointless debate that takes the brothers nowhere until the Attendant Spirit comes to sort them out. The brothers , however, reach the conclusion far before the Attendant Spirit arrives. The brothers essentially present Milton’s opportunity to add philosophical speculation. The speeches of the Elder clearly enlarge the theme of the Lady’s debate with Comus. Sears Jayne sees the Brother’s function as “expository” and their debate embodies an affected piece of theological and philosophical ideas of chastity and virtue.
