Comus

The two brothers rush in and drive off Comus and his creatures. However, the brothers fail—as the Attendant Spirit informs them—to use the correct formula for breaking Comus’s spell, so the Lady is still bound to the enchanted chair. The Spirit, though, has a ready solution: He proposes to summon the goddess Sabrina from the river Severn (which flows near Ludlow, where the masque is to be performed). Sabrina has the power to unlock the spell, thematically reinforcing the necessity of divine grace. 

Milton provides a long backstory about Sabrina, who evolved from being a “gentle Nymph”(Line 824) to become “goddess of the river” (Line 842). In this, Milton adapts and expands Edmund Spenser’s account of Sabrina in his epic poem, The Faerie Queene. Sabrina is a figure from Celtic mythology and British legend. Geoffrey of Monmouth mentions her in his 12th-century The History of the Kings of Britain. She is drowned in the river by her stepmother, Guendolen, but she becomes the river’s presiding divine spirit. In addition to signifying divine mercy and intervention, she reinforces the text’s emphasis on chastity, as the Spirit describes her as interceding on behalf of “virgin[s], such as was herself” (856).