John Milton (1608-1674) ‘The Lady Enters’, in Comus, illustrated by Arthur Rackham (London: William Heinemann, 1921). Plate VI, facing p.20.
In the 1634 performance of Comus, which celebrated their father’s appointment as Lord President of Wales, three of the Earl of Bridgewater’s children played the parts of the young lady who resists Comus’s temptations and her two brothers. Arthur Rackham (1867–1939) was well known as an illustrator of children’s books, including Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1900) and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1907). His twenty-four colour plates for Comus draw parallels between Milton’s masque and these childhood tales of enchanted forests and imperilled innocents.