Milton's melodious verses were only one feature in a more ample entertainment.

That they pleased we may be sure, for we find him shortly afterwards engaged on a similar undertaking of much greater importance, commissioned by the Bridgewater family.

In those days Milton had no more of the Puritanic aversion to the theatre-- "Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild," than to the pomps and solemnities of cathedral ritual:-- "But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high-embowed roof, With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light: There let the pealing organ blow, To the full-voic'd quire below, In service high and anthems clear, As may with sweetness through mine ear Dissolve me into ecstacies, And bring all heaven before mine eyes." He therefore readily fell in with Lawes's proposal to write a masque to celebrate Lord Bridgewater's assumption of the Lord Presidency of the Welsh Marches.

The Earl had entered upon the office in October, 1633, and "Comus" was written some time between this and the following September.

Singular coincidences frequently linked Milton's fate with the north-west Midlands, from which his grandmother's family and his brother-in-law and his third wife sprung, whither the latter retired, where his friend Diodati lived, and his friend King died, and where now the greatest of his early works was to be represented in the time-hallowed precincts of Ludlow Castle, where it was performed on Michaelmas night, in 1634.