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Books like Comus

Loved Comus by John Milton? Here are 8 books with the same pull, and why each one fits.

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8 books

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  1. 1A Midsummer Night's Dream

    A Midsummer Night's Dream

    William Shakespeare

    A court-adjacent comedy of enchantment in a wood, with spirits and magic that act on mortal lovers.

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  2. 2The Tempest

    The Tempest

    William Shakespeare

    A late play with a spirit servant, a masque inside the action, and a magician who controls what happens to others.

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  3. 3Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue

    Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue

    Ben Jonson

    A Jacobean masque that stages a moral choice between pleasure and virtue, written for the same courtly form.

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  4. 4The Faerie Queene Book II

    The Faerie Queene Book II

    Edmund Spenser

    Its Bower of Bliss episode tests a knight's virtue against a sensual enchantress in a sequence close to Milton's temptation scenes.

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  5. 5Lamia

    Lamia

    John Keats

    A poem about an enchantress who takes a human lover and hides her true nature, drawn from classical and romantic sources.

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  6. 6Circe

    Circe

    Madeline Miller

    A retelling of the Circe myth that gives a voice to the enchantress, the mother of Comus in Milton's account.

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  7. 7Metamorphoses

    Metamorphoses

    Ovid

    The classical source for many of the myths Milton draws on, including transformations of humans into animals and the figure of Bacchus.

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  8. 8Sidney's Arcadia

    Sidney's Arcadia

    Philip Sidney

    A pastoral romance of shepherds, lost travellers and moral trials in a green setting, the kind of world Milton's masque draws on.

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