The profession of virginity in <i>A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle</i>

Shullenberger, William

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511483752.005

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“…53 Sabrina employs not the power of logic or pedagogical authority but the ability to break "the charmed band" (904) when she is "right invok't" (854) through magical incantation and song; she "baptizes the lady," as William Shullenberger felicitously suggests. 54 The healing balm which Sabrina brings and with which she is so evocatively associated is the specifically physical and kinetic kind of ethical nourishment to which Vives and Taylor allude when they speak of the power of the first nurse as first teacher.…”

Section: Ludlow's Instructorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Masculinities of John Milton

Hodgson¹

2022

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The Masculinites of John Milton is the first published monograph on Milton's men. Examining how Milton's fantasies of manly authority are framed in his major works, this study exposes the gaps between Milton's pleas for liberty and his assumptions that White men like himself should rule his culture. From schoolboys teaching each other how to traffic in young women in the Ludlow Masque, to his treatises on divorce that make the wife-less husband the best possible citizen, and to the later epics, in which Milton wrestles with male small talk and the ladders of masculine social power, his verse and prose draw from and amplify his culture's claims about manliness in education, warfare, friendship, citizenship, and conversation. This revolutionary poet's most famous writings reveal how ambivalently manhood is constructed to serve itself in early modern England.

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Section: Ludlow's Instructorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Masculinities of John Milton

Hodgson¹

2022

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“…Sexual‐fluids interpretations include Flosdorf, as vaginal fluid or semen; John T. Shawcross, as semen from Comus's masturbation; Edward Le Comte, approving of Flosdorf's suggestion (1); William Kerrigan, as “a symbol for sperm” manifesting the Lady's desire (47); B. J. Sokol, as a symbol of menarche, or, “if actual fluids are supposed,” then menses (323n48); John Leonard, rejecting the idea that the Lady responds sexually, but entertaining the idea of “Comus's spillages,” or maybe just animal glue, which was applied hot (130); Debora Shuger, as analogue for Milton's nocturnal emissions (1‐3); James W. Broaddus, as vaginal secretions (passim); William Shullenberger, as “seminal” (84); Ronald Corthell, as possibly “emissions from Comus” (125n5). Nonsexual interpretations of the gums include Archer, as birdlime (99); Camé, as tree gum (51); Margaret Hoffman Kale, as Dionysian “sap” or life‐force (88); Matthew Steggle, as a “contact poison” like Medea's, based on tree gums (329); Beth Bradburn, as a nonsexual personal exudate representing the Lady's protective virtue (30‐31); and Leonard's alternate suggestion of hot animal glue.…”

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Yet Once More, “Gumms of Glutenous Heat”

Gillum

2010

Milton Quarterly

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Since 1973, line 917 of Milton's A Mask has attracted an extraordinary amount of critical attention, with at least sixteen authors offering interpretations in depth or in passing. The line is part of Sabrina's incantation in the ritual that releases the Lady from Comus's enchanted chair: Next this marble venom'd seat Smear'd with gumms of glutenous heat I touch with chast palms moist and cold, Now the spell hath lost his hold. . . . (916-19) 1My purpose here is to identify the physical substance smeared on the chair and briefly to explore how that identification could affect our interpretation. A number of writers have identified the "gumms of glutenous heat" as sexual fluids of some kind. It is interesting how these glosses suddenly appeared some thirty-five years ago and spread through the interpretive community to become widely held. Line 917 attracted almost no critical attention for the first 335 years or so of the masque's existence, until John Carey in 1969 wrote that the line "brings to mind the sexual heat for which Comus's enchantments are allegories" (46).Then, in 1973, J.W. Flosdorf posted a query in this journal suggesting that the gums may be the Lady's vaginal secretions resulting from sexual arousal or, alternatively, seminal fluid. In what was perhaps a sign of the times, Flosdorf's idea was inspired by a female undergraduate's question. Although Stanley Archer responded immediately that the gums are just an adhesive substance such as birdlime, other writers since have interpreted the gums literally or symbolically as semen, vaginal secretion, or menses. 2 But, given the decorum of the genre and the dignity of the occasion for performance, I doubt that Milton wanted us to imagine how semen might have got on the chair. I also doubt he imagined the Lady herself being aroused by Comus's philosophizing about the goodness of pleasure; on the contrary, the text emphasizes that her purity of mind remained untouched. Finally, although symbolic readings are available, I do not think they should provide the primary gloss for a crucial word. However, as I will show later in this note, a more basic interpretation of the gums does not exclude sexual implications from our understanding of the passage.The ordinary meaning of gum warrants attention, because the meaning in Milton's time was much narrower than it is today. The word was not used as a general term for viscous liquid or sticky solid. The OED gives this definition (gum n 2 ):

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“…That this is no hyperbole is confirmed by Comus's perturbed aside—“She fables not”—his “fear” that she has the backing of “som superior power,” the “cold shuddring” sweat she provokes in him, and his comparison of the authority of her words with Jupiter's wrathful thunder (800‐05). William Shullenberger comments, “The Lady does not imply that her doctrine or her sexuality would be defiled by her revelation of it to Comus. She implies that it would destroy him” (83).…”

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“By force or fraud / Weening to prosper”: Milton's Satanic and Messianic Modes of Heroism

Hillier¹

2009

Milton Quarterly

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The profession of virginity in A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle

Cited by 3 publications

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The Masculinities of John Milton

The Masculinities of John Milton

Yet Once More, “Gumms of Glutenous Heat”

“By force or fraud / Weening to prosper”: Milton's Satanic and Messianic Modes of Heroism

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