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Drawings

Illustration 4 to Milton's "Comus": The Brothers Meet the Attendant Spirit in the Wood

Type
Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date
ca. 1801
Accession number
000.23
Maker
William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions
8 3/4 x 7 1/8 in. (22.2 x 18.1 cm.) mount: 21 15/16 x 17 7/8 in. (55.7 x 45.4 cm.)
Medium
pen and watercolor
Description
The design illustrates the entry of the attendant Spirit and his conversation with the Brothers (stage direction and 490-658). The former is now "habited like a Shepherd," with a satchel hanging at his left side, its strap crossing over to his right shoulder, and a crook balanced by his left upper arm. The two gentle youths now hold their swords, if somewhat limply, as they are armed by the Spirit with knowledge of Comus' evil powers and their sister's peril. The attendant Spirit, who the Brothers believe to be Thyrsis, their "father's Shepherd" (493), holds the golden flower of haemony (see the second design). In his conversation with the Brothers, the Spirit refers to the moon goddess "Hecate" (535). This would seem to be the most direct prompting for Blake's introduction of the dark and heavily draped figure and serpents in the sky, but another relevant passage is Comus' apostrophe to "Dark veil'd Cotytto" and Hecate, who ride together in a "cloudy Ebon chair" as nocturnal allies in debauchery and sorcery (128-44). Blake's picturing of the serpents, apparently pulling Hecate (or a composite figure of Hecate/Cotytto) in a "chair," is indebted to a Roman frieze, showing Ceres pursuing Prosperpine in a snake-drawn chariot, reproduced in Bernard de Montfaucon's Antiquity Explained. [1] This borrowing is given iconographic justification by the identification of Hecate and Cotytto with each other, and with Prosperpine, in contemporary handbooks of classical mythology. [2] Further, the story of Prosperpine and Ceres centers, like Comus, on a struggle between the forces of darkness and of light over a young woman's fate. In the Boston version, the Brother on the right turns his back to the viewer; the Brother on the left gestures palm outward with his left hand. Two foreground tree trunks have been added immediately left and right of the Spirit/shepherd, whose left hand reaches down to grasp his crook. The foliage above these figures is wider and the serpents and their driver are smaller. The short and faint lines extending from the draped figure's hand in the Huntington version have become clearly drawn reins leading to the neck of each serpent. A crescent moon has been added just to the right of the driver's head, unmistakably identifying her with the moon. Her long hair is pictured, for she is no longer hooded. Because of these changes, Franson 1978-79, 167-71, argues that the figure in the sky is Cotytto in the Huntington design and Hecate in the Boston version. Notes 1.(London: n.p., 1721), 1: P1. 20. Blake may have studied the French edition (Paris, 1719) of this important work in William Hayley's library; see the auction catalogue of Hayley's books, Mr. Evans, 13-25 February 1821, lot 1854. Morton Paley has pointed to this same design in Montfaucon as a source for plate 46 of Blake's Jerusalem; see " 'Wonderful Originals' - Blake and Ancient Sculpture," in Blake in His Time 1978, 175. The association between Hecate and a serpent-drawn chariot is traditional; see Ovid, Metamorphoses Bk. 7 lines 290-92 of the Arthur Golding translation. Blake also pictures a moon goddess drawn by two serpents on plate 14 of his Job illustrations, first executed as a watercolor ca. 1805-1806 (Pierpoint Morgan Library; Butlin 1981, No. 550.14). 2. See for example [J. Lempiere], Bibliotheca Classica; or, A Classical Dictionary (Reading: T. Cadell, 1788), entries for "Cotytto" and "Hecate." In the ninth edition (1815) of this standard handbook, Cotytto is also identified with Ceres.
Credit
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Department
European Art
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View in the Art Museum catalog(Opens in new tab)
The attendant Spirit, disguised as a shepherd and holding a magic flower, tells the Lady's brothers of Comus's evil intentions. Hecate, a threatening moon goddess at the top of the design, rides on a cart pulled by serpents.

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