Chaste bodies and poisonous desires in Milton's Mask.(essay)(Critical essay)

RAVING AT CLUB COMUS

Milton's Mask (1634) has long been acknowledged by critics as an argument that virginity may serve women as a protective shield from the dangers of seduction. But just as the characters use disguises to make themselves more appealing to their audiences, so too does the masque conceal a more troubling, yet nonetheless alluring, portrayal of desire's intimate and material workings in seventeenth-century England. At the Seventh International Milton Symposium (2002), Tour de Force UK Limited and the Beaufort Troupe performed a rendition of A Mask set in the Carolina Low Country. (1) The drama delightfully engaged the sensual underpinnings of the story and brought them into contemporary context, highlighting the ubiquity of desire and its relationship to power and dominance.

This production demonstrated that the masque's happy ending and glorification of virtue are haunted by the specter of an erotic desire that cannot be so easily dismissed. This point is not merely a contemporary one, however. The text's thematic and performative complexity demands further critical consideration of the ways in which bodies become political sites for the exchange of sexual desires and not simply voices of morality. Milton's Mask, often read as a paean to the power of chastity, still has something to teach us about the necessity of desire.

In the production, the representation of Comus and his crew illustrated A Mask's potential to stage alternative desires and sexualities. Comus's world was constructed as a rave--that is, an infamous all-night, urban dance party. Often kept secret and attended by invitation only, raves produce a dark, throbbing sensuality based on pounding techno music, closely packed and intertwined bodies, and shadowy rooms lit by colored spotlights and glow-in-the-dark sticks twirled by the dancers. These gatherings are also notorious for the mood-enhancing drugs bought and sold there. Ecstasy bonds the participants in a euphoric suspension of reality that, while allegedly pleasurable, is potentially dangerous to both body and mind. Invoking the rave setting for this production convincingly expressed the transgression of Comus's invitation to the Lady to taste of his poisoned cup amidst the dark music and pulsing dance of his followers.

The program cast Comus as a "a lounge lizard from the degenerate club scene." He did not appear to be a stereotypical lizard, however: wearing a tight, black vinyl suit, sporting elf locks on his head, and swirling his dark, scarlet-lined trench coat, Comus strutted and slithered around the stage with his knobby, three-foot-long wand. His costume evoked the gothic style of dress often seen at raves, a style supported by the figuration of his wand as a giant green glow-stick. His mixed-gender Crewe of followers dressed even more sinisterly, in silver, scarlet, and black vinyl miniskirts and spandex shorts, revealing sequined halter and tank tops, and, for many, leather masks of the style worn by executioners or sadistic dominatrixes. They waved their arms, rolled upon the floor, and crawled against the walls and each other, setting a dark, sexual tone whenever they were onstage.