ABSTRACT
Masques and family portraits tell the same story: guaranteeing his lineage, “the patriarch absorbs female creativity.” In comparison to John Milton’s prospective stance in the Spirit’s epilogue, Ben Jonson’s and William Shakespeare’s masques are not only past in fact but in essence. This chapter proposes a feminist inquiry into Shakespeare’s presence in Milton’s Comus by considering the relation of Prospero’s interrupted betrothal masque of Ceres in The Tempest to Milton’s masque. The myth of Ceres and Proserpine in the betrothal masque of The Tempest temporarily disrupts Prospero’s powerful illusions only to reinvest the patriarchal world bravely reconstituted under his direction with a surer command over the female body. There are two important interruptions in The Tempest, and they are intimately – familially – related. The masque undertakes, then, to supplement memory with myth; the last task of Miranda’s education will be to recognize herself as Proserpine, daughter of the Ceres with whom Prospero presents her.
