Milton's Comus Being the Bridgewater Manuscript With Notes and a Short Family Memoir

Published by J M Dent and Sons, London, 1910.

Comus is a masque (a private theatrical pageant) written by John Milton and performed for John Egerton, 1st Earl of Bridgewater at Ludlow Castle to honor the Earl's new post as Lord President of Wales. The Earl's two sons & daughter performed in this masque. The plot concerns two brothers & their sister who become lost in the woods. The debauched god Comus, son & cup bearer to Dionysus, approaches the sister disguised as a villager, promising to lead her back to her brothers. Instead, he holds her captive in his palace and tries to persuade her to drink from his cup, representing earthly pleasures. She refuses; the masque is meant to be a sort of ode to virtue. 

With additional notes and a family memoir by Lady Alix Egerton, featuring biographical sketches of the family along with 8 tinted photogravures of family portraits along with 3 facsimile prints of the original text.