[Milton-L] Milton, Marx and silkworms

[John Leonard]

I have been following this thread very inattentively, so I apologize if this 
has already been said, but I have not yet noticed anyone make a connection 
with A Masque 715-16 ('And set to work millions of spinning worms, / That in 
their green shops weave the smooth-haired silk') or with 'Milton's mulberry 
tree' at Christ's College, Cambridge, which still stands today (at least did 
in the 1980s when I had supervisions at Christ's) and which is traditionally 
said to have been planted by J.M., but is actually too old (!) for that 
story to be true, and is now thought to have been planted at the behest of 
James I as part of a (failed) attempt to start a silk industry in England 
(mulberry trees being the 'shops' in which silkworms produced silk).