Samson Agonistes
[1] It is generally thought that Samson Agonistes was begun around the same time as Paradise Regained but was completed after the larger work, possibly very close to the date of publishing, but there is no certainty.
[2] The title he chose emphasises Samson as a warrior or an athlete, and the play was included with Paradise Regained and printed on 29 May 1671 by John Starkey.
[4] He hoped that by giving Samson attributes of other Biblical figures, including Job or the Psalmist, he could create a complex hero who would embody and help resolve theological issues.
The Chorus discusses Samson's background and describes his various military accomplishments: Although he is great, the Chorus points out that, through his blindness (actual and metaphorically), he is a prisoner:[6] Samson reveals how he lost his power because of his desire for Dalila, and, through this act, betrayed God:[7] I yielded, and unlocked her all my heart, Who with a grain of manhood well resolved Might easily have shook off all her snares: But foul effeminancy held me yoked Her bond-slave.
The Chorus discusses how God grants individuals with the power to free his people from their bonds, especially through violent means: The last two hundred and fifty lines describe the violent act that actually occurs while the play was unfolding: Samson is granted the power to destroy the temple and kill all of the Philistines along with himself.
When the temple's destruction is reported, there is an emphasis on death and not peace: Manoah describes the event as "Sad, but thou know’st to Israelites not saddest / The desolation of a hostile city" (lines 1560–1) The final lines describe a catharsis that seems to take over at the end of the play:[4] The Persons Samson Agonistes combines Greek tragedy with Hebrew Scripture, which alters both forms.
[10] In his introduction, Milton discusses Aristotle's definition of tragedy and sets out his own paraphrase of it to connect it to Samson Agonistes:[4] Tragedy, as it was anciently composed, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other poems: therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such-like passions, that is to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated.
[11]Milton continues, "Of the style and uniformity, and that commonly called the plot, whether intricate or explicit... they only will best judge who are not unacquainted with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three tragic poets unequaled yet by any, and the best rule to all who endeavor to write tragedy".
[13] Acts of violence are an important theme within Samson Agonistes as the play attempts to deal with revenge and the destruction of God's enemies.
[15] Likewise, David Loewenstein remarks that "the destruction and vengeance depicted in Samson Agonistes, then, dramatizes a kind of awesome religious terror".
[16] Gordon Teskey describes the plot of the work when he says, "delirious violence of the hero of Samson Agonistes, who cancels the Philistine hallucination of a unified and harmonious world".
Although Samson is the hero and he causes the violence, Elizabeth Sauer points out that "Milton devotes nearly twice as many lines to the Chorus' reactions in the denouement than to the Messenger's description of the catastrophe in order to deemphasize spectacle and performance and instead to highlight the interior drama while encouraging active interpretation of the reported events".
[21] The depiction of Dalila, and women, is similar to that in Milton's divorce tracts and, as John Guillory states and then asks, "We scarcely need to observe that Samson Agonistes assumes the subjection of women, a practice to which Milton gives his unequivocal endorsement; but is there any sense in which that practice of subjection is modified by the contemporaneous form of the sexual divisions of labor?".
