S.B. to Dundee.
Produced by A. PARRY GUNN.
Incidental Music by THE STATION STRING QUARTET.
Characters :
The Attendant Spirit, afterwards in the Habit of Thyrsis.
Comus, with his crew. The Lady.
First Brother.
Second Brother.
Sabrina, the Nymph.
Introduction.
The Masque, or Mask, was a fashionable form of entertainment in England towards the close of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. It seems to have originated in the practice of introducing, in solemn or festive processions, men wearing masks, who represented imaginary or allegorical personages. At first it was simply an acted pageant or spectacle, but it gradually developed into a regular dramatic entertainment with dialogue, music and decorative scenery. In the hands of Fletcher and Ben Jonson , the dramatic masque attained a high degree of literary beauty.
Under the growing influence of Puritan sentiment, the taste for such diversions gradually declined; yet In this time of reaction was produced the finest masque in English literature, and one of the most splendid poems ever written - the " Comus " of Milton.