“The thick-locked boughs shut out the tell-tale sun,
For Venus hated his all-blabbing light.”
Shakespeare refers to “the tell-tale day” (R. of L. 806). In Odyssey, viii., we read how Helios (the sun) kept watch and informed Vulcan of Venus’s love for Mars. descry, etc., i.e. make known our hidden rites. ‘Descry’ is here used in its primary sense = describe: both words are from Lat. describere, to write fully. In Milton and Shakespeare ‘descry’ also occurs in the sense of ‘to reconnoitre.’
[142.] solemnity, ceremony, rite. The word is from Lat. sollus, complete, and annus, a year; ‘solemn’ = solennis = sollennis. Hence the changes of meaning: (1) recurring at the end of a completed year; (2) usual; (3) religious, for sacred festivals recur at stated intervals; (4) that which is not to be lightly undertaken, i.e. serious or important.
[143.] knit hands, etc. Comp. Masque of Hymen:
“Now, now begin to set
Your spirits in active heat;
And, since your hands are met,
Instruct your nimble feet,
In motions swift and meet,
The happy ground to beat.”
[144.] light fantastic round: comp. L’Alleg. 34, “Come, and trip it, as you go, On the light fantastic toe.” A round is a dance or ‘measure’ in which the dancers join hands, ‘Fantastic’ = full of fancy, unrestrained. So Shakespeare uses it of that which has merely been imagined, and has not yet happened. It is now used in the sense of grotesque. Fancy is a form of fantasy (Greek phantasia).
At this point in the mask Comus and his rout dance a measure, after which he again speaks, but in a different strain. The change is marked by a return to blank verse: the previous lines are mostly in octosyllabic couplets.
[145.] different, i.e. different from the voluptuous footing of Comus and his crew.
[146.] footing: comp. Lyc. 103, “Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow.”
[147.] shrouds, coverts, places of hiding. The word etymologically denotes ‘something cut off,’ being allied to ‘shred’; hence a garment; and finally (as in Milton) any covering or means of covering. Many of Latimer’s sermons are described as having been “preached in The Shrouds,” a covered place near St. Paul’s Cathedral. The modern use of the word is restricted: comp. l. [316]. brakes, bushes. Shakespeare has “hawthorn-brake,” M. N. D. iii. l. 3, and the word seems to be connected with bracken.