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Drawings

Illustration 6 to Milton's "Comus": The Brothers Driving out Comus

Type
Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date
ca. 1801
Accession number
000.25
Maker
William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions
8 7/8 x 7 in. (22.5 x 17.8 cm.) mount: 21 15/16 x 17 7/8 in. (55.7 x 45.4 cm.)
Medium
pen and watercolor
Description
"The Brothers rush in with Swords drawn, wrest [Comus'] Glass out of his hand," and disperse his "rout" (stage direction following 813). Comus' palace, for which the lamp just left of the Brothers' swords serves as a visual synecdoche, and the monsters literally go up in smoke to be replaced by two trees and the night sky with two stars, upper right. Although no smoke is named in this scene, elsewhere in the text it is associated with the dark forest (5) and with Comus' crew (655). The heads of Comus' remaining cohorts are pictured, bottom to top, as a devil with pointed ears and prominent lumps or short horns on his forehead, a bird with open beak, a bearded man with short horns, and a horse with large nostrils and ears. Three bat-like wings, similar to those given to the owl-faced creatures in the fifth design, are clustered behind them. The horned figures recall two heads of the Whore of Babylon's beast in Blake's watercolor design of ca. 1795-97 for the title page to "Night the Eighth" of Edward Young's "Night Thoughts" (British Museum; Butlin 1981, No. 330.345). The Brothers seem to be looking up at the four heads rather than at Comus. The Lady, still spellbound, sits in what appears to be the same rectilinear chair shown in the previous design, although its sketchy decorations do not clearly picture humans or snakes. Comus is nude, as he was in the first design, and still holds his wand even though the attendant Spirit had specifically instructed the Brothers to "seize" it (653). Much of the smoke seems to be billowing from behind the Lady's chair. This suggests that Comus' conjurations are made possible by the Lady's own troubled state of mind - a theme first suggested in the opening design. Thus the dispersal of Comus' band indicates a change in the Lady's psychological condition. In the Boston version, the forest has replaced all but a column of flakes (lower left) and smoke behind Comus and the Lady, who now sits on a ledge between her Brothers and their enemy. We see her in three-quarter view facing to the right. The heads of the four creatures above are arranged differently; all seem reasonably human. Comus is clothed and turns more toward us. The rear-most Brother is placed slightly to the right of his companion; he too turns his face toward us. The Lady's hands rest on her thighs, as in the fifth design of the Boston series. There is no lamp.
Credit
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Department
European Art
Find out more
View in the Art Museum catalog(Opens in new tab)
The Lady's brothers, armed with magic powers bestowed by the attendant Spirit, chase Comus and his evil associates from their sister, still bound to the enchanted chair.

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