In the talk of the two Brothers in regard to their lost sister, the idea of the Masque is explicitly presented by the elder Brother. He had said:
'My sister is not so defenceless left
As you imagine; she has a hidden strength
Which you remember not.'
The second Brother replies:
'What hidden strength,
Unless the strength of Heaven, if you mean that?'
And then the elder Brother gives expression, in a long speech, the gem of the Masque (vv. 418-475), to the power of chastity and purity over the unchaste and the impure.
In the service of this idea, the poet started, no doubt, with Comus, the personification of unchaste and impure revelry (κῶμος), and therefrom constructed his plot, in which a pure maiden is brought within range of the wiles and temptations of the enchanter. And as the daughter of the noble family for which the Masque was written was to play the part of the tempted maiden, in the presentation of the Masque, the incident of her being temporarily and necessarily left alone by her brothers in the forest, would be readily suggested to the poet. It afforded him, too, an opportunity of paying a high compliment to the children of the Earl of Bridgewater.
The traditional story may therefore be safely regarded as a figment.