[122. Rain influence.] See [note on Hymn on the Nativity 71].
[124.] What is the antecedent of whom?
[125.] What ceremony is here introduced?
[128.] Do not misunderstand the word mask. Its meaning becomes plain from the context.
[131.] To what pleasure does L’Allegro now betake himself?
[132.] Among the dramatists of the Jacobean time Ben Jonson had especially the repute of scholarship. The sock symbolizes comedy, as the buskin does tragedy. Compare [Il Penseroso 102].
[133-134. Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,]
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
The couplet seems intended to convey the idea of a counterpart or contrast to the learned sock of Jonson. So considered, it is by no means an unhappy characterization.
[135.] The last of the “unreproved pleasures” that L’Allegro wishes he may enjoy, seems not so much planned to follow the rest in sequence of time as to accompany them and be diffused through them all. Observe the ever in this line. The eating cares are a reminiscence of Horace’s curas edaces, Ode II 11 18.