The Uncertain World of 'Samson Agonistes' (Studies in Renaissance Literature)

THE UNCERTAIN WORLD OF 'SAMSON AGONISTES' Edited by John T. Shawcross Studies in Renaissance Literature

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Studies in Renaissance Literature Volume 6

THE UNCERTAIN WORLD OF SAMSON AGONISTES

Milton's dramatic poem Samson Agonistes is rich with ambiguities, and here Professor Shawcross proposes that they are intentional: the actual words, the dates of composition, the genre and the characters ± particularly Samson and Dalila but also Manoa, Harapha, and the Chorus. Ambiguity also lies in Milton's presentation of political issues both philosophical and practical, his treatment of gender concepts, the constant questioning of the reader, and the poem's e€ect. Discussing all these elements, Shawcross follows with a detailed reading of the text which argues that it remains purposefully ambiguous, re¯ecting Milton's own recognition of the uncertainty of the content, and suggesting that Milton himself would question some of the `solutions' that modern scholarship has o€ered in the last two decades. Professor John T. Shawcross is Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Kentucky.

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Studies in Renaissance Literature ISSN 1465±6310

Founding editor John T. Shawcross General Editor Graham Parry Editorial board Helen E. Wilcox John N. King Graham Parry Volume 1: The Theology of John Donne Je€rey Johnson Volume 2: Doctrine and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Poetry Studies in Donne, Herbert, Crashaw and Vaughan R. V. Young Volume 3: The Song of Songs in English Renaissance Literature Kisses of their Mouths Noam Flinker Volume 4: King James I and the Religious Culture of England James Doelman Volume 5: Neo-historicism: Studies in Renaissance Literature, History and Politics edited by Robin Headlam Wells, Glenn Burgess and Rowland Wymer Studies in Renaissance Literature o€ers investigations of topics both spanning the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and growing out of medieval concerns, up to the Restoration period. Particularly encouraged are new examinations of the interplay between the literature of the English Renaissance and its cultural history. Proposals or queries should be sent in the ®rst instance to Graham Parry at the address below, or to the publisher; all submissions receive prompt and informed consideration. Professor Graham Parry, Department of English, University of York, Heslington, York YO1 5DD, UK

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THE UNCERTAIN WORLD OF SAMSON AGONISTES

John T. Shawcross

D. S. BREWER

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# John T. Shawcross 2001 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2001 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 0 85991 609 X

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Su€olk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604±4126, USA website: http://www.boydell.co.uk A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shawcross, John T. The uncertain world of Samson Agonistes/John T. Shawcross p. cm. ± (Studies in Renaissance literature, ISSN 1465±6310; v.6) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0±85991±609±X (alk. paper) 1. Milton, John, 1608±1674. Samson Agonistes. 2. Samson (Biblical judge) ± In literature. I. Title. II. Studies in Renaissance literature (Woodbridge, Su€olk, England); v.6. PR3566.S47 2001 822'.4 ± dc21 00±058554

This publication is printed on acid-free paper Typeset by Joshua Associates Ltd, Oxford Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Su€olk

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CONTENTS Preface Chapter 1 The World of Samson Agonistes

vii 1

Chapter 2 Uncertainty and the Text

17

Chapter 3 The Dramatic Work and its Reading

35

Chapter 4 Samson: God's Champion, a Type, or Individual?

48

Chapter 5 Dalila: Seductress or Wife?

63

Chapter 6 Politics in the Destabilized Text

81

Chapter 7 Biographical Intrusion

92

Chapter 8 The Uncertainties of Irony

102

Chapter 9 A Hermeneutics of the Text

102

Chapter 10 Samson Agonistes and Consistencies of Belief

138

List of Works Cited

145

Index

153

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PREFACE John Milton's dramatic poem Samson Agonistes has long been a favorite work of many people, and has long been read as simply a version of the story of Samson in the Bible and its author's ``last'' view of his world, now blind and victim of domestic and political strife. Its ``strange'' prosody seen in terms of English syllabic verse, its Hebraic origin in Greek form with Christian import, its alleged ®guration of a Christ ®gure, its relationship with its ®rst publication's companion poem Paradise Regain'd (or lack thereof), its nonconformity to expected stage presentation have all evoked numerous critical statements since the mid-eighteenth century. In the last half of the twentieth century it has also been scrutinized as possibly not just a simple version of the confused Samson legend of the Bible, and Samson has been examined as not just a folk hero, positive of evaluation, but a negative ®gure to be rejected as exemplar. It has been speculated as earlier work in composition, or at least earlier in its ®rst inspiration and partial writing, yielding perhaps an ``un®nished'' text. Biographical substance in any direct way has been rejected (and then reasserted). On one hand there is misogynistic Milton's view of woman and the wrestlings with power structures in the patriarchal world of both gender and government. On the other there is some infrequent rebuttal through its presentation of a renovated woman and an ideal concept of marriage. Basic to many of these arguments is the assumption that the author is expressing his own beliefs and attitudes when Dalila and Samson's relationship with her are introduced, yielding a masculinist Milton of the most extreme kind. In turn are provoked defenses of Milton through a reading of Dalila in positive terms and through argument of genderizations during his lifetime (which, indeed, continue in contemporary life). The dramatic poem has taken on political dimensions in the past and in the present. My study of Milton and this text raises fundamental objections to the usual interpretations I hear and read: ``biography,'' prosody, the dates of composition and the reliability of text, the generic expectations, the ®gure of Samson and his seeming typology, the political philosophy which its author would read out of that text, and, most importantly for today's critical world, the female/male questions that are raised and Milton's attitude toward them. I have previously published some of my conclusions about a few of these questions and some of my readings of the vii

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Preface work.1 I know that many of those conclusions and readings have been (and are) strongly disagreed with, and I suspect, from ensuing commentary, that some of them were not always examined cogently. For some critics, apparently, one must be on this side or that, and so, for instance, I am known as an early-dater of the work, although that hardly represents my position. The present study adapts and revises sections of these previous materials, some of which I would not, and thus do not, express with exactly the same words, and reexamines the issues noted above. I do not ®nd that my views have changed over these many years but the words expressing them have, for greater exactness and, I hope, clarity. Some of the focus in this present study is on the character of Dalila and the episode in which she appears, and thus I engage certain feminist critical positions, but much of the focus is also on the political advice±admonition±philosophy that I see as fundamental within the work. The feminist and political issues I ®nd to be dependent rather than absolute: dependent upon people, dependent upon morality and its idealism, dependent upon compromise and its inherent indecision. The ®gure of Samson, and its possible psychological manifestation for the author (an aspect of the ``biographical'' that has little been examined), is also part of the burden of this brief foray into a text that has more uncertainties, it seems, than the oratorical rhetoric that sustains its dialogues. The bulk of this study moves toward Chapter 9, which o€ers a reading of the dramatic poem with assumption of readings presented in the preceding chapters, and with further comments upon some literary matters like language and the device of prolepsis. I view this study as one developed through cumulative considerations of various issues, building toward the hermeneutics decoded. Content readings review prior commentary, o€er speci®c interpretations of the poem, and generally conclude that the world of 1

Among these are: ``The Chronology of Milton's Major Poems,'' PMLA 76 (1961): 345±58 (on prosody and dating of the poem); ``Irony as Tragic E€ect: Samson Agonistes and the Tragedy of Hope,'' Calm of Mind, ed. Joseph A. Wittreich (Cleveland, OH: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1971), pp. 289±306 (on genre, political signi®cance, and interpretation of the poem); ``The Genres of Paradise Regain'd and Samson Agonistes,'' Composite Orders: The Genres of Milton's Last Poems, ed. Richard S. Ide and Joseph A. Wittreich, special issue of Milton Studies 17 (1983): 225±48 (on companion poems and genre); Paradise Regain'd: ``Worthy t'Have not Remain'd so Long Unsung'' (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1988), passim (especially as companion poem); John Milton: The Self and the World (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), passim (especially pp. 163±66, 227±31); and ``Misreading Milton,'' The Miltonic Samson, ed. Albert C. Labriola and Michael Lieb, special issue of Milton Studies 33 (1996): 181±203. I quote Milton's poetry from my edition of The Complete Poetry of John Milton (Garden City. NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1970), and his prose from original editions except for De doctrina christiana. For the latter and other references, see Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953±82), eight volumes, cited as Yale Prose.

viii

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Preface Samson Agonistes remains uncertain. Other concerns, like dating and genre, the state of the biblical text and the chronological ages of Samson and Dalila, all impinge upon readings of the past and upon the interpretations given here. These concerns likewise are uncertain of conclusion ± I do not say ``ambiguous,'' for it seems to me there is less ambiguity in, say, the date (both the 1640s and the 1660s) than ``uncertainty'' about when speci®c sections were written, revised, and ®nalized. This is, I daresay, an ``old-fashioned'' study in that I do not have an agenda overriding what I read as the substance of the poem, or even a thesis that I seek to ``prove'' through that reading. Issues are laid out and, for the most part, allowed their own viability. I do argue that the drama o€ers a ``solution'' to the dilemma of life that the True Believer Milton sought to express for himself and for others in all his work: God is omnipotent, God is merciful, God will save His true servants. This consistency of thought that I see in Milton's writing may provide a thesis-statement underlying the poem, and this is speci®cally examined in the ®nal chapter. Milton's stated intention in Paradise Lost applies here, particularly when Samson Agonistes is compared and contrasted with its companion Paradise Regain'd: his ``great Argument'' is to ``assert Eternal Providence,/ And [thereby] justi®e the wayes of God to men.'' Not unlike the longer epic, the dramatic poem etches those people and their attitudes that see God's ways as unjusti®ed, capricious, ultimately uncaring, and that cast what they see as provided in Eternal Providence as useless in understanding life, here and now or afterward, useless in determining who we are, why we exist, and certainly not o€ering joy or comfort. But this study is not directed toward proving that as a thesis; rather it looks at numerous issues that the dramatic poem generates for a scholar and for any reader. Noncontent issues, like the text and the date of composition, even though they may impinge on content issues, remain uncertain. Content issues raise uncertain conclusions as well, and perhaps Milton was aware that readers might champion one conclusion over another, just as he may, at least subconsciously, have known that there would be those who would advance Satan as hero of Paradise Lost ± one to be emulated against perceived tyranny. In the case of Satan and the justi®cation of God, Milton o€ered signposts for the ®t reader to reject Satan and his thinking and to understand God's ways toward men. In the case of Samson Agonistes, such signposts may be less ecacious and more ambiguous. Yet as in all his work, I believe, the underlying belief in God's mercifulness and salvation of his true servants comes through, and it is thus my ``thesis'' that the dramatic poem has much of uncertainty about it, which will not be and need not be removed, but that it depicts yet once more Milton's consistency of belief.

ix

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Chapter 1 THE WORLD OF SAMSON AGONISTES

A

S a result of recent feminist critical movements, the two important female characters in John Milton's major poems have come under particular scrutiny, with an accompanying reassessment of Milton himself as male author. These ®ctionalizations are Eve in Paradise Lost, a portrayal of the female progenitor of human life in the Bible, generally believed to have had real existence, and Dalila in Samson Agonistes, a rendition of Delilah in the biblical story found in Judges. She and the Samson story are treated as truly historical because they are biblical, by some people as actual persons in every detail. But the points of tangency between these two female literary personages are slight and their di€erences at least those one always ®nds between individuals. The new critical scrutiny has also involved revisions of Samson as symbol during the mid-seventeenth century, within the dramatic poem, and for a political present. The privileging of the feminine discourse and the political issues has, unfortunately, disengaged parts of the poem from the whole and has frequently ignored the literary nature of the work. The study here presented reviews much that has gone before in the reading of the dramatic poem but extends and ampli®es and reinterprets that commentary, and o€ers an approach to the text that rei®es both the world of the poem and the uncertainties of the world of the poem as not only reader-available but writer-created. In the dramatic poem we see Milton expanding the bare biblical story of Samson's work at a grist mill as the captive of his tribe's enemies, the Philistines, and his being galvanized into the Great Deliverer it had been prophesied he would be when he pulls down the pillars of the Philistine temple, killing the lords and aristocracy gathered therein. Whether he is indeed through his action the Great Deliverer and how one understands the person Samson at this momentous event are questions that have arisen for readers of Milton's text, a text thus seen as recounting the Bible story but subverting it through analysis into a questioning not only of whether such action accomplishes delivery and exempli®es championship, but also of motivation and the possibility of renovation. Perhaps, however, the emphasis should be put on Samson the individual as example of what can happen to others and not upon his being a ``Great Deliverer''; perhaps the political admonition is that change, correction of wholesale injustice, must start with 1

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes the individual, each individual in the oppressed and bondaged group, whether a member of the tribe of Dan or the republican of mid-seventeenth century England. The layers of narrative in the Judges account, extending over a number of years of development, give rise to the thought that Milton recognized the instabilities of the text and the character depicted therein, tried to make sense of that text, but ultimately failed to amalgamate a consistent whole for all readers. The narrative of Samson in Judges is in fact out of place among its companion stories, since, unlike other Judges, Samson derives from a sun deity (with potential in typological thinking of the Son), his hair metaphorizing the sun's rays,1 and since he does not function as judge as, more typically, Gideon or Jephthah does. The Judges of the biblical book were the leaders of Israel against its enemies after the death of Joshua (Joshua xxiv:29±31; Judges i:1) to the reign of Saul and other kings (1 Samuel viii:10€.). The designation ``leader'' is not appropriate for Samson, who acted always by himself. From an Israelite point of view a judge would be cast as ``deliverer'' from the Philistines if he, like Othniel, delivered Israel from a Chushan-rishathaim (iii:7±11). Samson's actions never achieve that. Yet Samson is said to have ``judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years'' (Judges xv:20) and again after his death and burial, the verse says, ``he judged Israel twenty years'' (Judges xvi:31). The citation of ``Israel'' here is in error: there were many tribes of Israelites, Dan being but one of them. If Samson ``judged,'' he would have judged only the Danites. The Samson episode employs ``Israel'' only three times ± in the very ®rst verse of chapter xiii: ``And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years,'' which is incorrect since only the Danites were in the hand of the Philistines; and these two aforemented references to Samson's judging. The ®rst citation stating Samson's judging of Israel lies between his succumbing to the woman of Timnath followed by his slaying of the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass and his going to Gaza, meeting a harlot and then Delilah. The second citation may be a summary statement of the total years of his judging, simply repeating the ®rst citation, which could mean that his being a ``judge'' did not extend even into the ®rst days in Gaza. Yet the ®rst citation may also be summary of his whole life. The text recounting Samson's life and exploits, apparently thrust into the historical account of Judges, begins with the verse cited above (xiii:1). It would seem, thus, that the episode of Philistine dominance over the ``Israelites'' (for which we should read Danites) in which Samson's birth, life, and death are recalled was a total of forty years, and that Samson's two periods of ``judging'' have been made equivalent with the length of this full episode, a questionable use 1

For one discussion of this etymological and folk-culture understanding of ``Samson,'' see Michael Lieb, Milton and the Culture of Violence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 229±30.

2

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The World of Samson Agonistes of ``judged'' in terms of Samson's very early years at least. While the Danites apparently remained under the control of the Philistines, there is no further reference to the Philistines in the book of Judges after Samson's demise although there are references to the Danites. What, therefore, does ``forty'' mean? (The citation in xvi:31 has generally been taken as cumulative, it would seem, and Samson's assignment as judge has thus usually been twenty years. ``Forty'' is often a standard symbol of privation, trial, and tribulation, and forty years has the added concept of a generation.) It would thus appear that Samson's age upon consorting with Delilah was twenty or so, and that roughly twenty years elapsed between that time and his death, a period spent in company with Delilah, in thwarting the Philistines (rather than ``delivering'' the Israelites from them), and in the grist mill. Or were the years before Delilah entered the narrative part of the twenty years and did less time elapse after she entered? In any way of reading the biblical text the word ``judged'' is uncertain and confusing. The biblical text moves quickly from Samson's having his eyes put out and making him ``grind in the prison house'' (xvi:21) to the growth of his hair ``after he was shaven'' (xvi:22) to Dagon's feast day (xvi:23), the scene of Milton's dramatic poem. Aside from the di€erences in biblical and modern time designations, the whole account is fraught with error and improbable statements (as one would, indeed, expect of an account of a folk hero), but the movement from ®rst incarceration to Dagon's feast covers little time and the noticeable growth of his hair might have taken about a month. Perhaps the best one can conclude is that the biblical story was interpolated into Judges because of Samson's alleged exploits against the Philistines, and adjustments to relate that legend to the biblical book were inserted. The angel of the Lord says that ``he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines'' (xiii:5) and Samson entreats the Lord after his slayings at Ramath-Lehi, ``Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant'' (xv:18). But one must wonder what kind of ``great Deliverance'' the killing of 1000 Philistines at RamathLehi and 3000 Philistines at the feast of Dagon could possibly be: these exploits are not equivalent to Othniel's prevailing against Chushanrishathaim and the forty years of ensuing rest. The Danites are not delivered from the Philistines in any way. Samson's age, a debated question recently in cyberspace, seems therefore to be somewhere in the mid-twenties (or forties, if we credit two twenty-year periods). In Milton's dramatic poem many readers have felt an older Samson, one wearied not only with exploits and labor but with age; still the references to ``old'' in lines. 69, 572, and 925 talk of a future old age. The Chorus addresses Manoa: ``Thou in old age car'st how to nurse thy Son,/ Made older then thy age through eye-sight lost'' (1488±89); this does not make Samson ``old,'' only appearing old. Delilah surely was young (twentyish at most?) and as we have seen not much time could have elapsed between Samson's fall and Dagon's feast, so that Dalila, though she looks at ®rst like a ``Matron'' to the 3

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes Chorus, should not have been more than around twenty. To see Milton's Samson and Dalila as young, about twenty to mid-twenty, is to color our reading of the poem; as fortyish, we have a quite di€erent coloration. Prior to the opening of the dramatic poem, Samson has succumbed to Delilah's blandishments and revealed the secret of his strength as being in his hair, which is then shorn, making him easily subdued by Delilah's countrymen, the Philistines, for whom she has acted as spy.2 To incapacitate him further, he is blinded. That central event in Samson's story, of course, occurs before the poem opens and is referred to often as it proceeds, especially in the episode in which Dalila appears. But emphasis on the event and thus by extention on Dalila misdirects a reading of the poem that surely has Samson as focal character, the alteration of his psychological status developing the rising action (the epitasis), and its ``completion'' in the climax, a catastasis provided by the Ocer and the Philistine demands. The poem is not about Samson's seduction by Delilah but about what has been construed as Samson's recovery of self through trial and repentance, his renovation. His change or alleged change will be examined in Chapter 4. Since in the prepoem the seduction by Delilah brings the climax of the narrative of Samson's fall, its reprise and reversal are central to any alteration of self which may lead to reversal of that fall and return to moral and historical purpose. Some have viewed this episode as the hinge of the drama, for Samson's succumbing to Delilah's temptation is the culmination of the episodic movement of his biblical life. In the central episodes of the dramatic poem, Samson is o€ered, ®rst, the lure of ease by his father Manoa, who intends to bribe the Philistines for release of his son; second, the lure of wife and home by a reformed or allegedly reformed Dalila; and third, the lure of championing his God by the violence of combat with Harapha, a giant and representative of Dagon, the ®sh-god of the Philistines. This third lure is an express form of the Lucan third temptation which basically involves the question, Whose god is God? as do, however, the other episodes in the poem as well.3 At play here are concepts of heroism, fundamental to classical epic and rejected as less heroic in the proem to Book IX of Paradise Lost. ``False'' heroism arises from ``Warrs, hitherto the onely Argument/ Heroic deem'd, chief maistrie to dissect/ With long and tedious havoc fabl'd Knights/ In Battels feign'd'' (PL IX, 28±31). In 2

3

I refer to the prior biblical account (Judges xiii±xvi) through use of ``Delilah'' and to Milton's text through use of ``Dalila.'' The tempting of Jesus in the Wilderness by Satan is told in Matthew iv:1±11, Mark i:12±13, and Luke iv:1±13, and of course is the subject matter of the dramatic poem's companion Paradise Regain'd. The standard temptation of the Flesh, the World, and the Devil (as will be detailed later in this chapter) metaphorizes a human's dilemma to remain morally upright in the sin-laden world. The challenge by Satan of God's word and the rejection of Satan by Jesus, saying, ``Thou shalt not Tempt the Lord thy God,'' appears in the temptation to violence and vainglory, placed third in Luke (and Milton) and second in Matthew.

4

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The World of Samson Agonistes the eyes of his followers Satan's action in the War in Heaven in Books V and VI is heroism; in Milton's it is ``false.'' The true heroism that underlies the di€use epic, though often unrecognized, as it was by that early reader of the manuscript, Thomas Ellwood, and that is explicitly exempli®ed in the brief epic, Paradise Regain'd, must emerge in the dramatic poem without being diverted by such lesser heroism as combat with Harapha would exhibit. Samson, in this third temptation, has not yet been galvanized into the ``hero'' he will (or will seem to) become; rather the episode has him entertain the possibility of being a ``hero'' in popular, somewhat shallow terms only.4 Samson resists all three temptations, is ®nally enjoined by a public ocer to go to a feast in honor of Dagon as an exhibit and to perform feats of strength, doing so through vague awareness of ``rouzing motions'' within himself, and pulls down the pillars, as reported by a messenger (the standard nuntius of classic drama). While initiation is a major subject of Paradise Lost, it is trial and repentance that encompass recovery for Adam and Eve in Book X and that underlie the action of the saints in Books XI and XII. (Initiation indicates a human's entry into his human world and his growing knowledge of it, thus enacting transformation of self. The demands of living and its pitfalls [``trial''], during which, in moral terms, one falls into sinfulness, initiates the self into rebirth. As Carl Jung wrote, ``without sin there is no repentance and without repentance no redeeming grace.''5 The ``recovery'' or ``rebirth'' or ``renewal'' requires repentance such as Adam and Eve exhibit as Book X closes.) While initiation and trial are the major subjects of Paradise Regain'd, it is the absence of the need for repentance that obviates recovery for those who follow the Incarnated Son, Jesus. The subject of Samson Agonistes is not initiation, but trial and repentance, initiation having 4

5

See later and discussions of ``the hero'' in my With Mortal Voice: The Creation of Paradise Lost (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982), Chapter 4, 33±41, and of ``true heroism'' in my Paradise Regain'd: ``Worthy t'Have not remain'd so Long Unsung'', Chapter 6, 70±91. According to William Arrowsmith, ``heroism . . . arise[s] from a fortuitous and accidental eruption of the irrational in the nature of things''; see ``The Criticism of Greek Tragedy'' in Robert W. Corrigan, Tragedy: Vision and Form (San Francisco: Chandler, 1965), 267. The ``planned'' heroism of Samson, as Deliverer, thus seems to be inconsistent with Greek concepts of heroism, which will therefore enter the dramatic poem only with Samson's ®nal fortuitous act of irrational inspiration. The dramatic poem becomes an answer to the question of what does a ``hero'' do (as Samson was construed in the earlier part of his biblical legend) in defeat? Or do we, instead, recognize an analysis that posits Samson's not having been a hero despite his and others' early opinion, until he reaches that classic de®nition and until he asserts the kind of heroism I have discussed in the aforementioned books? Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, trans. R. F. C. Hall. Edition 2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 30. ``Perfect'' repentance, contritio, ``regards sin as the opposite of the highest good''; ``imperfect'' repentance, attritio, ``reprehends it not only on account of its wicked and hideous nature but also from fear of punishment'' (29n). The sequence from ``imperfect'' to ``perfect'' is well demonstrated by Adam and Eve. It is a sequence Samson must learn.

5

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes preceded the opening of the poem. As in Areopagitica where Milton accepts the nonexistence of innocence for humankind (``Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather,'' 12) and where recovery is prepared for by trial (``that which puri®es us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary,'' 12), the dramatic poem assumes the initiation of Samson into impure being. He had reexperienced the Fall by deceit and most signi®cantly by will, becoming a ``proud Aspirer,'' like one given to ``proud imaginations,'' one of ``proud ambitious heart,'' phrases used of Satan in the long epic.6 The important episode in Samson's life, Delilah's fraud, which leads directly to the situation in which we see him as Milton's poem opens, is clearly only background in the poem, not its subject. The poem iterates the trials that Samson has previously undergone, through the temptation motif, for only by reversal will return be possible, each temptation leading to an aspect of repentance and culminating in full repentance and reversal of the two avenues to sin, deceit and will. As various critics have detailed, the dramatic poem's central three sections are built on the temptation motif as established for the Christian in Jesus's temptation in the wilderness (Luke iv:1±13): the temptation of the ¯esh, of the concept of necessity and gluttony, of the Self in relation to itself; the temptation of the world, of fraud and covetousness, of the Self in relation to the community; and the temptation of the devil, of violence and vainglory, of the Self in relation to the godhead.7 These three temptations appear as the three central episodes of the poem, with a prologos, a parados, and the ®rst episode between Samson and the Chorus preceding, and with a ®fth episode between Samson and the Public Ocer, an exodos, and a kommos following. (See Chapter 3, p. 37, for this standard Greek dramatic terminology.) The symmetry is noteworthy: it emphasizes the centrality of the Delilah episode in Samson's prior life and the need for reversal of that episode's deceit before repentance can proceed. But that deceit is not only Delilah's fraudulence as ``wife,'' but Samson's selfdeceit through his excessive pride and self-aggrandizement. The temptation motif ®rst presents Manoa o€ering ``ease'' to the ¯esh: ``if 6

7

For Eve and Adam the initiation has been accomplished by the deceit perpetrated on Eve, to be reversed by the truth of the protevangelium, and the willfulness of Adam's act, ``not deceav'd,'' to be reversed by the sacri®ce of Jesus and by the acceptance of God's will. For humankind, born with the sin original of its grand-parents, the message should be clear: recognition of the Truth, acceptance of Justice, and hope in the Mercy of Providence. Milton in Paradise Lost delineates and allegorizes the two broad, basic means by which humans sin: by deceit and by willfulness. Meta Schon Wallace compares the Christian pattern of temptation, trial, and grace in Paradise Regain'd, Samson Agonistes, The Faerie Queene (Book I), and Macbeth in her doctoral dissertation at the University of Arkansas (1978); see Dissertation Abstracts 39 (1978): 3607A±08A. This pattern has four elements: an annunciation of some mission or quest; a series of temptations based on the ancient trial of the Flesh, the World, and the Devil; the acceptance or rejection of grace; and the ful®llment or failure of the annunciated mission.

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The World of Samson Agonistes the punishment/ Thou canst avoid, self-preservation bids'' (504±505).8 For Manoa ``the pains and slaveries'' are ``worse then death in¯icted'' (485). His argument, not unlike that of Satan to Jesus in Book I of Paradise Regain'd, is Reject not then what o€erd means, who knows But God hath set before us, to return thee Home to thy countrey and his sacred house, Where thou mayst bring thy o€ 'rings, to avert His further ire, with praiers and vows renew'd. (516±20)

Samson's rejection involves concepts of his Self: he will not ``sit idle on the houshold hearth,/ A burdenous drone; to visitants a gaze,/ Or pitied object'' (566±68); and acceptance of his Self: ``All otherwise to me my thoughts portend,/ That these dark orbs no more shall treat with light,/ . . . My hopes all ¯at, nature within me seems/ In all her functions weary of her self,/ My race of glory run, and race of shame'' (590±91, 595±97). This temptation motif in the dramatic poem leading to positive assertion and triumph is a reversal of the ironic or paradoxic success of the temptation motif prior to the beginning of the poem, by which Samson's succumbing has led to his enslavement. The Chorus, in lines 541±46, 553±57, refers to Samson's prior rejection of ``Desire of wine and all delicious drinks'' such as other famous warriors partake. This is part of his vow as a Nazarite, but the rejection of this aspect of concupiscentia carnis underscored the super®ciality of mere avoidance of what some think necessary, particularly since it is not, as it were, of his own rejection of wine through ``temptation,'' but of an imposed vow. ``Nonsinning'' which results not from considered choice but only from prohibition only does not constitute resistance to temptation, or, in this case, control of the Self. We think of the prohibition given to Adam and Eve and the choices to which each separately succumbs. (But Samson is culpable in the ®rst instance, and he did not avoid the other two injunctions of the Nazarite, as we will note, one through fraud but one through obliviousness to injunction.9) Samson in the past has resisted (it would seem) one aspect of the ®rst temptation but has not come to a rejection of conceived desires of the ¯esh, nor therefore to an acceptance of the Self. It is something like outward appearance that may, and in this case does, mislead and obscure the inward being. The temptation to which Samson has submitted in the past was his 8

9

We might compare the narrative voice's epitome of Belial's words concerning the fallen angels' further action: ``Thus Belial with words cloath'd in reasons garb/ Counsel'd ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth,/ Not peace'' (PL II, 226±28). The biblical Samson seems not to have kept these vows, as Dennis T. Olson writes: he attended drinking feasts, touched the carcass of the dead lion, and had his hair cut by Delilah. See Oxford Companion to the Bible, ed. Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), ``Nazirite,'' p. 552.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes carnal desires for both the Woman of Timnah and Delilah. Neither ``marriage'' partner ± and Milton's making Dalila Samson's wife is a meaningful alteration of a clearly sexual liaison ± should have been sought by him, as not being of his nation, and neither was pursued for any given reason other than his ¯eshly desire. Having succumbed to the temptation of the ¯esh, Samson is no longer in charge of his Self and it is evident that further lures will succeed, not once but twice. Samson's ®rst encounter with the temptation of the Woman of Timnah and what ensues, where he fails, is followed by opportunity for renovation when he sees Delilah, which he also fails. In De doctrina christiana Milton wrote that it is by ``MAN'S RENOVATION that he is BROUGHT TO A STATE OF GRACE AFTER BEING CURSED AND SUBJECTED TO GOD's anger'' (Yale Prose, VI, 453).10 Most signi®cantly, Samson's succumbing to Delilah has led to the breaking of another condition of his vow as Nazarite, the cutting of his hair. He will say later in the poem to Harapha that God gave him ``this strength, di€us'd/ No less through all my sinews, joints and bones/ Then thine, while I preserv'd these locks unshorn,/ The pledge of my unviolated vow'' (1140±44). Again we have an outward show of obedience which Samson psychologically allows to mislead and obscure his inward being. The locks unshorn have numerous possibilities of interpretation, including the physical manifestation of power, of a sun (Samson as mythic sun-deity) in its intense power, as well as the image of youth with its virility and the image of strong sexuality.11 The 10

11

The question of authorship of De doctrina christiana does not change my point, for Milton's authenticated writing shows no discrepancy with this de®nition. The locks and their not being cut are symbolic, even though there are commentators on the Bible and on Milton's poem who take the prohibition literally, it seems. The hair would ultimately be cut and regrow; in the poem there is reference to the return of Samson's growing locks (see Judges xvi:22), but as symbol of a returning of power. As Michael Lieb has informed me, ``The term `Nazarite' means that which is separated, consecrated, and the noun nezer means not just `consecration' but `crown.' As part of the de®nition of nezer, the BDB (in 2b) refers speci®cally to `woman's hair (orig. prob. of long hair as sign of consecration, as in Nazirite vow, cf. Nu 6:19 infr., and nazir).' That is, the concept of unshorn hair is conceptually and etymologically linked up with Nazaritical consecration. Num. 6:7 refers to the fact that the `consecration' (nezer) of the Nazarite is upon his head in the form of his unshorn hair: in e€ect, it is his crown, a sign of his consecrated state. When the time of Nazaritical consecration is completed, the nazir `shall shave the consecrated head at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and shall take the hair from the consecrated head and put it on the ®re under the sacri®ce of well-being' (Num. 6:18).'' [Reference is to A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles Briggs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), known as BDB for its editors.] Let it be noted that Samson would thus not ± and understandably not ± have reached complete consecration at the time of Delilah's shearing of his hair. Perhaps Samson's questionable exploits prior to his shearing account for his not having reached Nazaritical consecration. The importance of these symbolic meanings of hair for Eve should also be remarked. Milton's lines in IV, 304±308, are: Shee as a vail down to the slender waste Her unadorned golden tresses wore

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The World of Samson Agonistes violation of the vow involves the third temptation, for though it is accomplished by fraud, it implies in him a lack of faith with whom the vow was made (that is God), and proceeds from Samson's lack of true resistance to the lures besetting the Self. A major factor within this ®rst episode, however, is the irony (the dramatic irony) of Manoa's plea to have Samson return to his father's house.12 Of course, the implication is to God the Father's house, as one assumes the Great Deliverer of the end of the poem will ``return'' ± that is, if Samson's act is considered the action of a Great Deliverer and as condoned by God. Samson epitomizes his current condition as ``all the contest is now/ 'Twixt God and Dagon; Dagon hath presum'd,/ Me overthrown, to enter lists with God, His Deity comparing and preferring/ Before the god of Abraham'' (461±65). Samson refuses Manoa's acceding to the power of Dagon through bribery of Dagon's people: his refusal asserts a preference for the God of Abraham and it

12

Dissheveld, but in wanton ringlets wav'd As the Vine curls her tendrils, which impli'd Subjection, but requir'd with gentle sway. In its de®nition of nazir, the BDB o€ers ``untrimmed vine (like Nazirite with unshorn hair) Lev. 25:5, 11,'' and James Strong's Exhaustive Concordance associates this with ``an unpruned vine'' (de®nition 5139). The term pera' used in the injunction to ``let the locks [pera¸] of the hair of his head grow'' (Num. vi:5) implies that which is ``dishevelled'' (Strong). Eve is thus likened to a Nazarite; Num. vi.2 speci®cally says, ``either man or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite, to separate themselves unto the Lord.'' The subjection of the Nazarite is to the Lord God, and for Eve, it would seem, to the Lord God through Adam (IV, 299). While Adam's hair ``manly hung/Clustring, but not beneath his shoulders broad'' (IV, 303±304, in agreement with 1 Corinthians xi:14±15, ``if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him, But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering''), Eve's serves as a ``veil'' and as sign of some potential vacillation in ``gentle sway'' but at the same time as sign that the subjection (which puns on ``lying beneath'' her shoulders) should be gentle governance. The diculties of con¯ation of Mosaic and Pauline concepts for the believer in the Bible repeatedly create uncertainties, and Milton's attempts to reconcile those texts has led to critical impasses in the divorce tracts and the epic speci®cally. Here, in our reading of Milton's lines, Adam's clustered hair should imply something like a Nazaritical context, with subjection unto God only, but it cannot be long since Paul labelled that ``a shame.'' Eve's dishevelled ringlets, likened to the curling tendrils of the vine, which horticulturally must be controlled and cut (like the vegetation in Eden referred to by both Eve and Adam), o€er the symbol of one separate to God, but in the gender®cation of the New Testament and Pauline gender-hierarchy also the symbols of woman who requires the gentle sway of husband and of woman in need of modest veiling of her bodily parts ± a strange (proleptic) need before the Fall. Is not this Milton trying to make sense of the misogynistic Paul's less-than-astute reading of the Old Testament? (Pertinent New Testament texts include Ephesians v:22±24, ``Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife . . so let the wives be [subject] to their own husbands in every thing,'' and 1 Peter iii:1, ``Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands.'') Individually in their falls Eve and Adam will renounce their separateness to God. Milton's erasure of Samson's mother, although she is very signi®cant in the biblical account, is most provocative; see Dayton Haskin, Milton's Burden of Interpretation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 138±46.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes provides a small victory in the contest between Dagon and God for Samson's Self. Manoa, functioning as a kind of agent for the rival god Dagon, becomes a false Father, who must be denied. One remembers Jonathan and his ``false'' father Saul, and Jonathan's eating of the honey, ignorant of Saul's injunction. The act de®es Saul's command not to partake of food, although Jonathan had not heard it, as his ensuing remark assigning the Israelites' lesser achievement against the Philistines to that command and its observance proclaims. With his action of putting his hand with honey to his mouth, Jonathan's eyes are enlightened (1 Samuel xiv:24±30). De®ance of false commands may bring truth, but for Samson a contrastive narrative does not: his vow that ultimately comes into play has not been made to a false father but to a true father, but he does not maintain that vow. Samson had extracted honey from the carcass of a lion, eating of it and giving some to his mother and father without indicating its source. He has broken his vow against touching dead carcasses, but unlike Jonathan he has not been enlightened by eating of the honey through his not maintaining God's command. The action forms the basis of a riddle which the Philistines solve through information given them by the Woman of Timnah (Judges xiv:5±18). Samson should have been enlightened as to fraud, but, of course, he has learned nothing. The Philistine solving of the riddle provokes Samson to slay the thirty men of Ashkelon, thereby again breaking his vow as Nazarite against the touching of dead bodies, in order to procure festal garments in forfeit of his verbal (if fraudulent) defeat. The narrative, contrastive with the Jonathan story, plays upon the signi®cance of the eating of the honey as a clue to enlightenment. For Samson that enlightenment should have been the keeping of his own counsel, but the eating of the honey fails to e€ect wise action and leads to a breaking of a command from the true Father by touching of the dead carcass. Having learned nothing, Samson repeats his seduction with Delilah. Indeed, three times Delilah shows her fraud by accepting his word that binding him in certain ways would allow him to be subdued by the Philistines, until he most unenlightenedly succumbs to Delilah's nagging and gives up the secret of his hair. Samson has been given opportunity of renovation in his encounter with the ``woman in the valley of Sorek'' and thrice more in her wheedling of him for his secret, and each time he fails. The biblically later contrastive narrative of Jonathan manifests Samson's continuing self-indulgences, his nonconquering of the ®rst temptation, and his lack of control of Self. In terms of Samson as human being the biblical account makes clear humankind's lack of learning from experience and repetition of unwise action because of desires of the ¯esh. The second temptation presents Dalila o€ering herself in a kind of reprise of the temptation of the ¯esh, just as Belial suggests setting women in Jesus's eye and Satan o€ers a banquet of cates (some of which are interdicted) served by ``Tall stripling youths'' with ``Nymphs of Diana's train, and Naiades/ . . . 10

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The World of Samson Agonistes And Ladies of th' Hesperides, that seem'd/ Fairer then feign'd of old, or fabl'd since'' ``distant more/ Under the Trees,'' in the second temptation of the brief epic (II, 352±58).13 From Samson's point of view Dalila speaks ``feign'd Religion, smooth hypocrisie,'' ``pretended'' love, as in the past. Her fraudulence in the past is continued in her ``circling wiles'' in the present, with its serpentine image. Her reason for her actions is loyalty to her nation, governors, and god, thus involving the lure of power. Samson accuses her of being incapable of resisting Philistine gold, thus involving the lure of wealth. And in rebuttal, she proclaims that she will ``be nam'd among the famousest/ Of Women, . . . who to save/ Her countrey from a ®erce destroyer, chose/ Above the faith of wedlock-bands'' (982±86), thus raising the lure of glory, as well as power. The world and the relationship of Self to her community de®ne the temptation that she has succumbed to, over the expectations of marriage and the union of wife and husband. Against the situation I have pointed to just above, with Jonathan's not following ``false'' commands, lies the possibility of Dalila's not following the bidding of her authorities, but she, of course, does not think of them as ``false.'' Signi®cantly her name etymologically means ``weakness,'' as Michael Lieb has pointed out.14 (Compare SA, 773±74: ``First granting, as I do, it was a weakness/ In me.'') It does not contribute to her being one of serpentine image; instead it suggests that like Eve she is susceptible to deceit (of her governors), becoming fraudulent herself. The problem that perspective indicates is, Whose god is God? Whose nation is the true nation? We err in reading Milton's text if we assume that under all conditions wedding vows (or any other man-made vows) take precedence over duty to a conceivedly true god or his people. As with the ®rst temptation, the second temptation operates paradoxically 13

14

That this second temptation repeats in part the ®rst is seen in Dalila's, like Manoa's, prospect of ``leisure and domestic ease'' ``At home,'' and her o€er to intercede with the Lords to ``fetch [Samson]/ From forth this loathsom prison-house'' (917, 920±22). It also preludes the potential of the third temptation in the violence Samson expresses as possible when he tells Dalila that his waking ``sudden rage'' could ``tear thee joint by joint.'' In Milton and the Culture of Violence, Lieb has examined sparagmos (bodily mutilation and dismemberment) in Milton's works. In his ®nal chapter, ``The Politics of Violence,'' he is concerned with Samson and Harapha, but he notes that ``Harapha and Dalila should be viewed as counterparts, both subject to the sparagmos Samson would enact'' (252±53 n24). In Paradise Regain'd, of course, the storm scene of the second temptation preludes the potential violence of the third temptation of the tower. See Michael Lieb, The Sinews of Ulysses: Form and Convention in Milton's Works (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1989), Chapter 7, ``The Theology of Strength,'' 125. The full chapter should be consulted for its extensive discussion of issues of strength (koach) and weakness (Dildelah), as well as the process of lustration, raised here in this chapter. Lieb also points out the rapha¸ in the name Harapha, which means ``the giant'' and paradoxically implies the opposites, weakness and cowardice, relates to the verb ``to heal,'' making him the agent of healing Samson's guilt and inaction through his challenge of supposed strength but actual weakness.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes in the past, applying here through the action of the protagonist's antagonist. But the protagonist's succumbing to the second temptation in the past was also a negative action: Samson's not thinking of community, of his nation, of his glori®cation as Great Deliverer has caused his fall to the fraudulence of Delilah. His not overcoming desires of the ¯esh, as conquering of the ®rst temptation would have achieved, has not made possible the conquering of the second temptation, or of the third. Here in the present of the dramatic poem (not of the Bible) the reversal comes through Dalila's acknowledgment of the lures that did (and some say still do) in¯uence her, and through Samson's contrast of her country, ``an impious crew/ Of men conspiring to uphold thir state/ By worse then hostile deeds,'' that is ``Not therefore to be obey'd'' (891± 95), with his country whose ends give a ``name so dear.'' Twentieth-century history has provided numerous examples of this contrast for those who follow their country while others follow their country (leaders and religion being included) with only one's philosophic and moral stances delineating which, if either, is ``therefore to be obey'd.'' We cannot logically say our nation and our religion are the ``true'' ones and all others false any more than those in, say, certain contemporary foreign countries can say that their nation and their religion are the true ones and therefore ours are false. Allowing Dalila sincerity on her part in the past and her present actions lets us recognize that again a major factor is, Whose is the true God, the elect nation? Some of the answer lies in the attitudes toward religion which these gods seem to project. Importantly here, for Dalila, as well as Dagon, marriage has not been the sacred relationship that it supposedly is for Samson, or for the God of Abraham: as Mary Ann Radzinowicz writes, the ``de®nition of matrimony'' for Dalila is ``intercourse of body,'' for Samson, ``companionship of mind.''15 The contrast needs annotation: ®rst, such a statement re¯ects the Samson of the poem, but not the Samson of the prepoem, who has taken to ``wife'' both the Woman of Timnah and Delilah for manifestly carnal reasons only and, second, the statement presents a Delilah of the past and rejects the words of Dalila of the poem as sincere. The angles of critical vision for the two characters may thus be confused and rest on an acceptance of Milton's Samson as honest and Milton's Dalila as dishonest. Critics who assume that Dalila is ``evil'' and that her god and country are false and nefarious are not reading a dramatic poem (see Chapter 3). Rather there is an assumption that in the poem Samson's god is unquestionably the true god because he would seem to be Milton's God, whose choosing of the Israelites from among the other possible tribes and outlying peoples has led to the Christian God that Milton believed in. Unlike the second temptation of Paradise Regain'd where Jesus is o€ered kingdom, wealth, power, and glory, the temptation of Samson in the past has 15

Mary Ann Radzinowicz, Toward Samson Agonistes: The Growth of Milton's Mind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 37.

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The World of Samson Agonistes involved his inattention to these things as Great Deliverer of those whom he represents, though they should have: indeed his Self has revelled in his fame and self-aggrandizement. Instead Samson's temptation has proceeded successfully through an advancement of conceived Self and its desires. Implied are the ®rst and third parts of the temptation motif, ¯esh (concupiscentia carnis) and the devil (superbia vitñ).16 It is Dalila in the dramatic poem who gives voice to the temptations of kingdom, wealth, power and glory in her past action; past action which makes of her a ``satanized'' Delilah. Some recent criticism of the poem, in other words, errs by ignoring the theme of the temptation motif and by pulling out the Dalila episode from the rest of the poem as if it were the whole. The third temptation pro€ers violence and the pride of triumph, the kinds of lures that Samson has stood for in the past: Fearless of danger, like a petty God I walk'd about admir'd of all and dreaded On hostile ground, none daring my a€ront. Then swoll'n with pride into the snare I fell . . . (530±32)

Samson has most disastrously fallen to pride in the past, distancing him in his own mind from God and from the purpose of his life as Great Deliverer. Harapha brings out what remains of Samson's vainglory, but whatever achievement can lead to pride has now been transferred to God: ``I know no Spells, use no forbidden Arts;/ My trust is in the living God'' (1139±40). Samson makes clear that their ``combat'' will ``decide whose god is God,'' for Samson, as champion of ``the power of Israel's God,'' will ``challenge Dagon to the test'' to see ``whose God is strongest, thine or mine'' (1176, 1150±55). Samson's answer to Harapha's charge that he is ``A Murtherer, a Revolter, and a Robber'' resolves the problem of pride in the past, admits his failing, and reasserts the primacy of nation and God over personal being: I was no private but a person rais'd With strength sucient and command from Heav'n To free my Countrey . . . I was to do my part from Heav'n assign'd, And had perform'd it if my known o€ence Had not disabl'd me, not all your force . . . (1211±19)

Samson has thus been put into a position involving the third temptation and has rejected its lure; he has admitted his known o€ence, which led to succumbing to the desires of the ®rst temptation, and has reasserted the national±religious basis for his existence, the forgetting of which, along with 16

See n13 above.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes his desires, led to succumbing to the second temptation, and has rejected the pride which overhung his actions in the past. The question of the true god is fundamental to this episode as it also has been in the other two episodes. Or rather, as it is in all ®ve episodes, for in the ®rst between Samson and the Chorus there is a stress on ``Israel's Governours, and Heads of Tribes'' who reject the ways of God by despising, envying, or suspecting ``Whom God hath of his special favour rais'd/ As thir Deliverer'' (242, 272±74); and in the ®fth between Samson and the Public Ocer the potential ``sin/ By prostituting holy things to Idols'' is countered by God's ``important cause'' that leads Samson to venture ``to displease / God.'' The expected and achieved triumph of Samson, doing ``Nothing dishonourable, impure, unworthy/ Our god, our Law, my Nation, or my self '' (1424±25), in the Temple of Dagon, ``place abominable,'' is an impressive answer in the poem for the poem to the question ``whose god is God.'' The Harapha episode raises connections with the second major injunction of the vow of the Nazarite, the touching of dead bodies, as noted before. In the past, Samson had violated this law as Harapha reminds him in the slaying of the thirty men of Ashkelon (1185±88). Samson's rejoinder that he ``took thir spoil/ To pay my underminers in thir coin'' (1203±204) indicates that his vow was not uppermost in his mind and that his own sense of expediency has ruled him. He has broken his vow. It is Harapha who lets us recall the vow when he in ironically prissy tones says, ``To combat with a blind man I disdain,/ And thou hast need much washing to be toucht'' (1106±107). Though Harapha, of course, is in no way connected with any Nazarite vow, the reader should be sensitive to the idea in the background, for Samson himself has said that he lives ``a life half dead, a living death,/ And buried; . . . / My self, my Sepulcher, a moving Grave,/ Buried'' (100±103). Samson threatens that his hand may survey the giant, that he may ``with one bu€et lay thy structure low,'' and that he may ``swing thee in the Air, then dash thee down/ To th' hazard of thy brains and shatter'd sides'' (1230, 1239±41). Should Harapha be such a corpse, Samson as blind man would probably not touch him: his vow would be maintained by the judgment placed upon him, in spite of what could have been his own action. But most signi®cantly Samson's threat of swinging Harapha in the air and then dashing him down is a reference to the so-called giants of the Earth, who in their assault on Olympus were equated with Satan and his cohorts in their assault on Heaven, and speci®cally to the means by which Herakles defeated the giant Antaeus, part of the double simile ending Paradise Regain'd. The Christian identifying of Herakles with Christ adds a subtle way in which Milton allows for a kind of typing of Samson as a ®gure of the Christ who will triumph over earthly matter. Like Herakles (Christ) defeating Antaeus (Satan), Samson is potentially the human as agent for the true God, defeating Harapha as agent for the false God through an act that metaphorizes the need to disengage false agency (and its potential evil) from the world of earthliness 14

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The World of Samson Agonistes by exposing it to the world of light and air. But this denies Samson as God's Champion: the typing of Samson, which has become something of a critical commonplace, is possible only after he has been galvanized into God's deliverer again, only when he has become the ``greater Man'' that Paradise Lost hopes to fashion. Within the dramatic poem we do not see an enactment of Samson as the ``greater Man,'' as a type of Christ. He shows faith ®nally by putting himself under God's guidance through the ``rouzing motions,'' but his obedience, a not very active and forthright obedience, has been only a rejection of the lures o€ered by Manoa and Dalila on personal levels. His de®ance of Harapha is not resistance to temptation at all but rather an assumption of the role as Champion as he conceives it. He has made big strides toward the ``action'' of the ®fth episode only: he is not regenerated, not yet renovated. Some of what has preceded has been said in some way before, but most of these remarks have not been recognized or placed in these interrelationships. The discussion, however, indicates that there is much more to the dramatic poem than just the Dalila episode and attitudes toward woman. A further matter that may have signi®cance as to how we read the poem (and how biographical it may be) but that has had almost no attention paid to it is the question of its re¯ection of contemporary literature, particularly that of more ``literary'' form. An essay by Dennis Kezar attacks that question on two levels: formerly entitled ``Verbal and Visual Similarities Between Becon's The Sick Man's Salve and Samson Agonistes,'' it pursues the importance of the ars moriendi tradition, and noteworthy is the fact that Thomas Becon's work is ``the only Puritan art of dying written explicitly in the form of a closet drama.'' Published in 1561 it was frequently reprinted and in¯uenced writings by Thomas Wright and William Perkins. Kezar ®nds passages in Milton's poem relevant to the consolatory strategies of The Sick Man's Salve, and proceeds to examine correspondences with Eikon Basilike and with William Marshall's iconographic frontispiece to that work, the latter in the Chorus's ®nal representation of Samson.17 On a somewhat di€erent level are the ``Memorable Scenes'' he ®nds in Andrew Marvell's ``An Horatian Ode'' and the dramatic poem, although a medium between them is Eikon Basilike. The uncertainties that such in¯uential concepts, theatrical forms, and poetic expressions set up in reading Samson Agonistes as a rather tortured expression of Milton's personal involvement in and evaluation of the political and poetical world of the 1640s through 1660s are worthy of exploration. One such investigation is that by Anne Baynes Coiro, who reads Samson Agonistes ``as moving and agonized a meditation on Milton's poetic career as it is on his political career.''18 She reads, for example, the monument that 17

18

See Dennis Kezar, ``Samson's Death by Theater and Milton's Art of Dying,'' ELH 66 (1999): 295±336. Anne Baynes Coiro, `` `Fable and Old Song': Samson Agonistes and the Idea of a Poetic Career,'' Milton Studies 36 (1998): 123±52; see p. 124.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes Manoa proposes as equatable with ``the lyric monument insuring the laurel crown and everylasting fame'' for the poet (125), but this becomes ``a terrifying thought'' with his poetry ``a moving grave, captive among his foes.'' The closing lyric, which will be discussed frequently in this text, becomes an ``imitation'' of himself, a ®tting, satiric jab at the shadowy selfreference that permeates the full poem. This parody of Restoration drama suggests an equation of Milton and Dalila in the hope for fame, doublemouthed as it is, if not double-faced (971), and in the image of the selfbegotten bird, the Phoenix, a secular bird whose fame survives (1699±1707). The poem as literary work, a literary work embodying hopes of a poetic career as adumbrated in Reason of Church-Government (1642), provides another ``World of Samson Agonistes.''

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Chapter 2 UNCERTAINTY AND THE TEXT

T

HE text of Samson Agonistes poses a number of problems: its received text in terms of orthography, punctuation, capitalization, and the like; and therefore, its exactness of words and its prosody; its date of composition and even its date of publication. While no problems with speci®c line lengths and lineage or with images have been raised, such a destabilized text does not o€er strong reliability. Some questioning of the similes at the end of the poem as to meaning, application, and appropriateness of their being included has been voiced. The dramatic poem appears in only one text, that of 1671, printed like its companion Paradise Regain'd by J. M., identi®ed as John Macock(e). The lack of other renderings of the text, whether in full or part, in manuscript or print, limits an interpreter of the text to this one edition, and its problems therefore cast uncertainties over a number of matters readers would like to explore. PRINTING AND TEXT

Changes were made in the type as the 1671 volume was being printed, with two states in signatures B, C, F, H, K, M, N, and P. Samson Agonistes is given on sigs. I±P. The ®nal gathering is a half sheet, and the preliminary material before the beginning of Regain'd is apparently a quarter sheet, of course unsigned. Signature [A] does not seem to be part of the ®nal printed sheet, signature P, as would often occur in contemporary printing practice. Harris F. Fletcher1 reports that signatures B and following were printed before the preliminary material in signature [A], and that the introductory material for Samson Agonistes on I1±4 (eight pages; in order, title page, ``Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy,'' ``The Argument,'' and ``The Persons'') was printed continuously with the rest and without interruption. He noted only that the title pages of both works employed a di€erent font in the second ``X'' of their dates (MDCLXXI). That the printer made errors or his copy text was dicult to follow seems clear from the fact that P4, in two states, has Errata for both poems, involving word changes, spelling, punctua1

Harris F. Fletcher, editor, John Milton's Complete Poetical Works Reproduced in Photographic Facsimile (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1948), IV, 43 and passim (28±43).

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes tion, and omission; the rather careless printer made numerous errors in line numbers in both Paradise Regain'd and Samson Agonistes, as well. Page P3v is an ``Omissa'' sheet for Samson Agonistes; the omissa to be inserted are present lines 1527±35 and 1537. They thus enter a speech by the Chorus that makes sense as ®rst printed but which now becomes separated into three ``sections'': they add a line for Manoa, give the Chorus two more lines, and assign Manoa two lines (the ®rst ``section'') which are immediately followed by one line from the original speech of the Chorus (the second ``section''); and they insert a ®nal line which is added to the rest of the original speech (the third ``section'') and necessitated a change of an original comma to a period for an emended text. The omissa, therefore, seem not to represent a simple case of compositorial omission.2 To make the text and the process of correction even more suspect is the fact that the errata are far from being complete. In ``Notes on the Text of Samson Agonistes '' William Riley Parker3 detailed a number of the diculties that one encounters. For example, he wrote about spelling inconsistencies, ``there are about sixty words for which the 1671 text o€ers two di€erent spellings, ignoring capitalization'' (82), and about ultimately prosodic matters, ``When the rhythm of a line is a€ected, it is another matter, and the editor has a decision to make when confronted with inconsistencies'' (84). Capitalization shows similar variance, and not counting parentheses, ``there are 313 lines with no punctuation at all'' (90). ``A modern editor of Samson Agonistes must deal with a number of errors in punctuation,'' which are then speci®ed, and an editor who ``wishes to retain the original pointing as an important aid to understanding Milton's rhythms . . . will soon discover that the original pointing (for whatever reason) sometimes obscures Milton's sense'' (90). On the other hand as Parker points out, some of the spellings and other mechanical matters are in agreement with what seem to be Milton's personal practices, particularly some that have often been cast as idiosyncratic. Is the uncertainty of text the result of the compositor only? or the compositor and one or more amanuenses? Is it the result of various recensions, perhaps with more than one hand entering the production of what became the source for the copy text? And can we then rely on the text we are deconstructing as being that which o€ers the unmodi®ed 2

3

Is it possible that the revision represented by the omissa is another example of Milton's tinkering with his text as he did between the 1645 and the 1673 versions of ``On the Morning of Christs Nativity,'' 143±44, and the various alterations of the 1637/1645 ``A Mask'' and the 1638/1645 ``Lycidas''? See Stephen B. Dobranski's discussion of these textual matters in ``Samson and the Omissa,'' Studies in English Literature 36 (1996): 149±69. He posits, cogently, that the printer was responsible for the errata but Milton himself for the omissa and that the alteration of text should be dated between the time of reviewing (or proo®ng) it (in mid-1670?) and its ®nal setting (1671). He notes that the changes create a reversal of attitudes shown previously by Manoa and by the Chorus, with perhaps a revitalization of the Good Old Cause. William Riley Parker, ``Notes on the Text of Samson Agonistes,'' 80±90, in Milton Studies in Honor of Harris Francis Fletcher (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961).

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Uncertainty and the Text characters and language created by Milton? That question should bother a reader about the assignment of the deconstructed text to Milton's beliefs in each and every instance, without uncertainty being raised. The title page for Samson Agonistes, on sig. I1r, and paged [1], its blank verso being [2], and ``Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy'' being 3±5, was set and then altered, a fact that J. Milton French and Parker both pointed out, but without full description.4 The title page was fully set with lines being centered, but with the date being ``MDCLX''. (The question of a period after the date must be raised; it may have been there and moved later when the date was corrected, or it may not have been set, although, as would be normal, Macock gave ``MDCLXX.'' on the title page of The History of Britain.) It has not been pointed out that the title page for Paradise Regain'd has the same problem. They both add ``X'' from a di€erent font o€setting the date; then ``I.'' is added from the original font. That is, ``MDCLX'' is given, centered; then it becomes ``MDCLXX'' but o€-centered; and ®nally ``MDCLXXI'' even further o€-center. The error is more understandable if the date were to be ``1670'' (MDCLXX) with simply X omitted than if it were to be ``1671'' (MDCLXXI) with XI omitted. In this latter case ``MDCLXI'' might more expectedly occur when originally set. The licensing sheet, A1v, gives the date ``July 2. 1670.'' and we know that it was advertised by John Starkey, the publisher, in a catalogue that internally gives 29 May 1670 as its date. It is also listed in the Stationers' Register under 10 September 1670 and in the Term Catalogues dated 22 November 1670. No copy with a di€erent date is known. Was there some kind of holdup in distributing the work and a decision then made to revise the dates on the title pages? Or is the axed date of 1671 a postdating of a volume actually put out in 1670 (a not uncommon practice by publishers), as Nicholas von Maltzahn has speculated?5 But the further curiosity is that the signature ``I'' is added to the Samson Agonistes title page, centered on the new, full date! Printers did not normally sign title pages, whether initial or internal, and not even when an internal title page was included in the pagination, as here. The upshot of these data is that the poem had been completed prior to at least mid-1670 and was being set in mid-1670; and that later for the actual publication (or distribution) in 1671 the compositor reviewed his text, erred in signature-recording as he made the date accurate, and discovered haphazardly some errata, perhaps including the omissa or perhaps being given a textual change by Milton, created after mid1670. (Milton altered his texts even after they had been published and so the

4

5

See J. Milton French, The Life Records of John Milton (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1958), V, 29, and William Riley Parker, Milton: A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), II, 1138. See Nicholas von Maltzahn, ``The First Reception of Paradise Lost (1667),'' Review of English Studies 47 (1996): 488.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes omissa may be changes made by him after the book was in press rather than by a careless printer; see n2.) Early editions after 1671 were based on the second edition of 1680 (or rather that of the 1688 edition added to the 1695 edition of the complete poetry which was based on 1680), and, apparently, it was these texts that were read by the few commentators who discussed the dramatic poem through at least 1752 when Thomas Newton's variorum edition appeared. The text with all the changes to it indicated by the 1671 errata was not printed until John Mitford's edition in 1851. Fletcher summarizes the problems of that text: The 1680 texts were printer's texts. That is, the 1680 compositor took a copy of the 1671 edition and set his type from it carelessly and haphazardly, following his own caprice in capitalization, spelling, and punctuation, making many mistakes, and paying no attention whatever to the errata printed at the end of the book, although he properly placed the Omissa in the text of Samson Agonistes (40).

VERSE AND RHYME

Recognizing the diculties of the text we are reading, we observe Samson's ®rst speech, lines 1±79 and 110±14 being iambic pentameter lines without rhyme (blank verse). There are catalectic syllables (or what used to be called feminine endings) in lines 6, 25, 50, 74, 113, and other lines show various elisions not indicated by orthography. The intervening lines, 80±109, constitute an ode of varying line lengths, again with various elisions. The pattern is that of the full poem, blank verse with some feminine endings and odic passages, the former primarily within the ``narrative'' episodes and the latter emerging in the stasima (or choral odes). Most lines can be scanned under these observations or with adjustment, but a few like 775 (``Curiosity, inquisitive, importune'') or 973 (``On both his wings, one black, th' other white'') or 1255 (``Whether he durst accept the o€er or not'') raise questions about the printed text if not necessarily about the accuracy of the text as Milton might have written it or at least wanted it. (Line 775 is an alexandrine; 973 is defective, unless it should be `the other' yielding three syllables; 1225 is hypermetric, unless it should be `th'o€er,' yielding two syllables and a strange stressing.) Some shifting accentuation in lines also gives one pause, and the odic passages employ other feet than iambs. For example, in lines 80±109, we cannot be sure how line 81 is to be read: ``Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse.'' The apparent ®ve feet seem to be a pyrrhic, a trochee, an iamb, a trochee, and an iamb, except that the ®rst trochee (``cov er'') and the ®rst iamb (``a bly dark'') either has elision of ``e'' (``cov ra bly dark'') or of ``a'' (``cov er bly dark'') or the iamb should be read as an anapest (which would seem to be unlikely in this passage). (The elision of ``e'' is most likely despite the lack of an apostrophe.) The combination of trimeters with pentameters (line 82 and 20

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Uncertainty and the Text lines 80±81, 83±85, for instance) strikes one as showing in¯uence from the kind of prosody ``Lycidas'' exhibits; these odic lines, 80±109, vary between the two lengths of lines without apparent pattern. The appearance of rhyme in a few passages has led to speculations about why Milton included it, particularly alongside so many blank verse and unrhyming odic lines, with suggestions that it is there to de®ne the Chorus and its attitudes (eliciting critical views of the chorus and what e€ects the rhyming creates), that it is a remnant from earlier writing not completely revised, that it is humorously sententious, thus pointing to irony toward the sentiment of the lines, or that Milton simply ¯agged either in writing or in listening. On the other hand, Keith N. Hull remarks that ``Rhyme leads us to expect order but gives us doubtful order at one level, chaos at another,'' and argues for God's intentionality for Samson in the ``sonnet'' constituted by the ®nal lines of the poem, 1745±58, this ``orderly rhyme sequence . . . simultaneously undermining order and certainty through nearly chaotic meter.'' In passages concerned with the ``universal,'' Milton ``upholds the rhymewisdom connection, and the reasonable, clear, orderly interpretation of events.''6 There is, thus, movement from disorder to order in the poem as seen by the employment of rhyme, similar to the movement toward organized ottava rima one discerns in ``Lycidas.''7 Related to the feeling that the rhyme sets up humor are some of the Chorus' lines describing Dalila and lines said by Harapha. In view of the prefatory statement about not mixing tragic sadness and gravity with comic stu€, the text has been construed as not really ®nished, just as A Mask was revised in certain ways in 1637 from its form in the Trinity MS, and then in holograph corrections, and then even further in 1645, with the possibility also remaining that even then it was not artistically ``®nished.'' The question arises whether lines such as ``Femal of sex it seems'' (711) or ``And thou hast need much washing to be toucht'' (1107) are indeed humorous or purposely ironic through such humor or basically undermining of belief in the Chorus and of heroic stature for Harapha. If any of this has any cogency in it, then the characters we analyze may only be what is there, not what Milton would have wanted to be there; or, subtle Milton has given us clues as to how we should read those characters (especially the Chorus), which have often been misread. 6

7

Keith Hull, ``Rhyme and Disorder in Samson Agonistes,'' Milton Studies 30 (1993): 171, 179± 80, 175, respectively. See also, among other studies, Robert Beum, ``The Rhyme in Samson Agonistes,'' Texas Studies in Language and Literature 4 (1962): 177±82, and Michael Cohen, ``Rhyme in Samson Agonistes,'' Milton Quarterly 8 (1974): 4±6. Much concern, particularly in terms of dating the dramatic poem, arises from Milton's argument against rhyme in ``The Verse,'' prefacing Paradise Lost. Perhaps rhyme was purposefully employed, as Coiro has observed (133), to indicate ``troublesome and modern bondage'' that is a ``key concept and a key term'' in the dramatic poem. She notes also the frequent internal rhyming. See John T. Shawcross, ``Some Literary Uses of Numerology,'' Hartford Studies in Literature 1 (1969): 25±31.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes That is, a reading of the text as representing Milton's deep-seated and unquali®ed attitudes may be suspect or may simply be di€erent from what some readings have told us. DATING

What of the possibility of earlier writing being at the root of the drama, its ®rst composition date being earlier than what one would expect for its being ®nished in mid-1670? And what of its prosody that has elicited numerous attempts to explain it, particularly in the odic sections? Most writers have looked at the lines in terms of English syllabic meter, but what if Milton were experimenting with Greek dramatic meters in English, the kind of thing he seems to be suggesting in talking of its being ``of all sorts, call'd by the Greek Monostrophic, or rather Apolelymenon, without regard had to Strophe, Antistrophe or Epod, . . . or being divided into Stanza's or Pauses, they may be call'd Allñstropha.'' His experiments in the Fifth Ode of Horace and ``Ad Ioannem Rousium'' (with its prosodic note) give credence to the possibility.8 Parker argued for an earlier date of composition in the later 1640s, Allan H. Gilbert wondered whether indeed it was ®nished, and A. S. P. Woodhouse postulated 1660.9 Others have countered with biographical or political arguments against an early dating, and most have simply been silent about the issue even though one date or the other might embolden their interpretations.10 Part of Parker's argument depended upon Milton's biographical world after the attacks on his divorce tracts in 1645, which sent him back to personal studies and poetry and kept him from public controversy or position until 1649. In the midst of those times he seems to have worked on The History of Britain and perhaps other prose, collected and published the shorter poems, continued work on what became Paradise Lost, and produced translations of Psalms lxxx through lxxxviii, which Parker saw as re¯ecting political/military unhappiness and despair, and which he links with the mode of the dramatic poem. In the midst of those times, of course, the Civil Wars raged between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians, and the trial and 8

9

10

See John T. Shawcross, ``The Prosody of Milton's Translation of Horace's Fifth Ode,'' Tennessee Studies in Literature 13 (1968): 81±89. Thinking only in terms of English syllabic verse, Samuel Ernest Sprott wrote, ``It is dicult to say whether Milton would have regarded the lines [in the choral odes] as being trochaic with the last foot catalectic, or as iambic with the ®rst foot catalectic'' ± Milton's Art of Prosody (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), 132. William Riley Parker, ``The Date of Samson Agonistes,'' Philological Quarterly 28 (1949): 145± 66, and Milton: A Biography, II, 903±17; Allan H. Gilbert, ``Is Samson Agonistes Un®nished?'' Philological Quarterly 28 (1949): 176±94; A. S. P. Woodhouse, ``Samson Agonistes and Milton's Experience,'' Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Third Series, 43 (Section 2) (1949): 157±75. I think of the important studies of Jackie Di Salvo, `` `The Lord's Battells': Samson Agonistes and the Puritan Revolution,'' Milton Studies 4 (1972): 39±62, and Joseph Wittreich, Interpreting Samson Agonistes (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).

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Uncertainty and the Text execution of Charles I occurred in January 1649, after which the Interregnum began with its hope for Milton in governmental change as well as his return to public life. The received text of Samson Agonistes, if it is re¯ective of an inchoate composition in this period of 1646±49, can be read as a psychological analysis of the author at that time, frustrated by attempts to wrest the true servants of God from the Philistines who denied divorce, who continued to censor and control thought, who rejected anti-episcopal arguments and instead promulgated a rather rigid confession of faith and catechism, and who maintained allegiance to monarchy through custom, rejecting logic and true liberty. But even those who fought against the monarchy but did not accept some of the aforementioned religious and social actions associated with the new establishment, Milton is seen in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates to recognize, would not take steps to reject monarchy and its supposed attendant ways of life.11 An equation with the Danites at the end of the dramatic poem is possible for these people who do not act to achieve liberty once shown the way and once the way has been prepared. Those who meant only ``license'' created much disillusionment for Milton. These political implications of the text of the dramatic poem, regardless of dating, will be discussed further in Chapter 6. In 1649 with hope of a new government of the people and the potential freeing of ``Truth, and Right from Violence'' and the clearing of ``Public Faith . . . from the shamefull brand/ Of Public Fraud,'' his plea in August 1648 in Sonnet 15, Milton may have shelved this poetic statement of the iniquities of people who spout objections and anger and threats but who do nothing because the Commonwealth, if truly a common weal, gave promise of reform and the ascendency of Truth and Right. Governmental work ensued also, of course, to deter private studies and writing, and in the years between 1649 and 1660 what time and energy and emotional stability allowed for private work seems primarily to have been given over to renewed writing of Paradise Lost, which was completed in the ensuing years. Thomas Ellwood's often repeated remarks on his reading of the manuscript of the epic seem to refer to around 1665, and that poem was published in 1667. All we have to suggest that Milton may have picked up the manuscript of Samson Agonistes, if indeed it was begun in the forties, during the Interregnum are the political parallels that have been o€ered, although, of course, such parallels may have been sharp remembrances of the 1650s when he worked on the drama in the later 1660s. The dating of Samson Agonistes in the period of 1667 through mid-1670 also has psychological/political import. On the one hand there is Paradise Regain'd as ``sequel'' to the longer epic but then there seems to have been a 11

See my essay ``The Higher Wisdom of The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,'' 142±59, in Achievements of the Left Hand: Essays on the Prose of John Milton, ed. Michael Lieb and John T. Shawcross (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974).

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes conceived need for a companion poem to it to contrast with the ®gure and message of the brief epic. That statement suggests a recognition on Milton's part of failure in the long epic as far as at least one typical and receptive reader was concerned (Ellwood), and thus a need for the sequel. With production of Paradise Regain'd Milton would have understood that readers could there dismiss, as program for themselves, ``the pattern of a Christian Heroe '' and ``the seeds of vertu, and publick civility'' (The Reason of Church-Government, 38, 39), because of the nature of the Son (the ®gure of the poem whom many people then and now erroneously within the poem call Christ). The reader ®nds it improbable to imitate the Son (``Christ'') because of his divinity, his separateness from mere mortal person.12 A more human character, one who indeed showed and even exempli®ed depravity, would more e€ectively, the thinking apparently was, raise for human readers a more telling examination of what a Christian hero might be and what within that person were the latent seeds of virtue that could be nurtured to make a hero, to epitomize virtue and public civility. Perhaps Milton in his ``older age'' (actually only around sixty) bemoaned his lack of achievement in inculcating what he considered virtue and public civility in all the work of his life: his arguments against episcopacy, for divorce, against pre-publication censorship, for educational reform, against monarchy, for personal and individual development of a paradise within. While he could dismiss the ignorant rabble in ``Ad Patrem,'' the Tetrachordon sonnet, and ``Ad Joannem Rousium,'' those who seemed to agree with at least some of his positions nonetheless gave up ``thir understanding to a double tyrannie, of Custom from without, and blind a€ections within'' (The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 1). ``For indeed none can love freedom heartilie, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but licence.'' And so the companion poem for his brief epic. On the other hand the period of the Restoration, when his governmental ideas seemed to lie fallow, although as seeds they were germinating the Whig ascendency in the period after his death,13 demanded a kind of parable of the true servants of God against the monarchic Philistines who kept them in bondage, spiritually and politically. The work that emerged, regardless of its relationship with his other two major poems, o€ers an example of rejection of 12

13

The error in such a reading is that Milton is presenting not a ®gure to be imitated but a ®gure who exhibits the qualities that should be inculcated within each human being, leading one to be a ``greater Man'' and to achieve a ``Paradise within happier farr.'' See my monograph on Paradise Regain'd noted before. For the poems as companion poems see also essays by Balachandra Rajan, ``To Which is Added Samson Agonistes,'' in The Prison and the Pinnacle, ed. Balachandra Rajan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), 82±110; and Joseph A. Wittreich, `` `Strange Text!': Paradise Regain'd . . . To which is Added Samson Agonistes,'' in Poems in their Place: The Intertextuality and Order of Poetic Collections, ed. Neil Fraistat (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 164±94. See George Sensabaugh, That Grand Whig, Milton (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1952.

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Uncertainty and the Text the ease of custom and an illumination by inward eyes (dispelling the ``blind a€ections within''), leading to a rejection of licence and to the exertion of goodness through faith in one's god. Still, the dramatic poem has been interpreted as presenting an overlay of despair for germination of the seeds of virtue it describes. Is it a positive statement or a negative statement or both? As both, it takes on irony, the uncertainties of text, of interpretation of message, of understanding of characters, of its nature as dramatic work ± poem or play. As a work of the 1667±70 period it seems to re¯ect disappointments of the past and anxieties over the present and future. But as a work of the late 1640s and the late 1660s it may re¯ect the disappointments and anxieties which always exist for the high-minded reformer, and which, while rooted in speci®c times and actions, ®nally epitomize the way the world always is.14 To cast the dramatic poem in only one period of production delimits it politically, making it potentially the result of immediately contemporary life only. While the later date for composition may suggest remembrances of things past as well as recognition of things current, its vital character of Samson o€ers less of a symbol for the 1660s than for the 1640s when the ``noble and puissant Nation'' that might be foreseen emerging from the civil struggles and defeat of monarchy could be likened to ``a strong man after sleep, . . . shaking her invincible locks.'' Di Salvo's discussion and contemporary examples of this symbolization of Samson attest to his signi®cance for the 1640s and early 1650s. The Samson of the dramatic poem remains a symbol but any likening to the nation now epitomized by the Restoration government does not foresee ``kindling [of] undazl'd eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain it self of heavn'ly radiance'' (Areopagitica 34). Is the story of Samson a potentially meaningful correlative or intertext in 1667±70, to symbolize the vehicle for a prompt and expeditious achievement? There allegedly had recently been ``an Eagle muing her mighty youth'' that proved itself neither an eagle nor capable of renewal because of custom and ease, and inability to sever spiritual power and civil. The symbol of Samson is in the text but its ful®llment is possible of tangible realization, in 1667, only in a distant future. The received text seems to o€er instruction for the future but its vehicle seems to hark backward to what has not proved cogent. Would Milton, that kind of uncertainty in the text seems to query, have newly conceived of that vehicle as having political e€ect in 1667? The earlier date for fairly total composition also runs into logical questions 14

For a discussion of the way in which Milton's experiences ®ll the poem ``with ambiguous signs and events requiring interpretation and political response from both the characters in, and the readers of, the dramatic poems'' (236), see Barbara K. Lewalski, ``Milton's Samson and the `New Acquist of True [Political] Experience,' '' Milton Studies 24 (1988): 233±51. On the other hand, Christopher Hill tries to discount the poem's ambiguities in historical matters in ``Samson Agonistes Again,'' Literature and History, Second Series, 1 (1990): 24±39.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes through the uncertainties of the text. The lack of real uplift and hope as we end the poem, the colossal wastage of being and e€ort, the misguidedness of Samson, not his being some kind of eagle shaking his locks and looking into the sun (associated as he was as sun-deity), but one who has erred repeatedly, one who exempli®es a career of violence and de®ance of God's laws and the Nazarite's prescriptions, all these matters depress the expectations and prophetic ideals of Areopagitica. While there may be unhappiness with the Civil Wars and with the lack before the end of 1648 of movement truly to bring the king and monarchic bureaucracy to accountability, Milton can still look to Fairfax as a potential leader to overcome avarice and rapine though he has been a military commander bringing victory home, engaging violence. The violence of Samson, so analogized, is a means to an end though it is the end that is important. An end could be seen in August 1648 when Fairfax captured Colchester and brought hostilities to conclusion, and even the biblical catastrophe wrought by Samson on the Philistines might lend itself to like expectation. Would Milton in 1648 have looked on the analogy of Samson with Parliamentarian victory (had he indeed made it) as breeding endless war because of the destruction involved, or seen it, as symbol, as a positive foreview? Yet the poem does, in its uncertainties, raise questions about positive and lasting achievement when the people are like Manoa and the Chorus, a matter to be taken up further in Chapter 8. Was perhaps the discouragement that Milton must have felt with Fairfax's resignation and retirement in July 1650 over the impending invasion of Scotland an apprehension of the ``endless warr'' that will persist ``Till Truth, and Right from Violence be freed''? Is this and the course of events within the Protectorate and with the return of monarchism through the instrumentality of adherents of both sides re¯ected in the despair and tragic tone that readers experience in the published poem? While Psalms lxxx±lxxxviii and their translations may not look happily on the then course of events (April 1648), yet there is some looking forward to enlightenment: Rise God, judge thou the earth in might, This wicked earth redress, For thou art he who shalt by right The Nations all possess. (Psalm lxxxii:8, lines 25±28) The Lord shall write it in a Scrowl That ne're shall be out-worn When he the Nations doth enrowl That this man there was born. (Psalm lxxxvii:6, lines 21±24)

At least, such foreviewing at the time these psalms were written seems to be that 26

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Uncertainty and the Text Truth from the earth like to a ¯owr Shall bud and blossom then, And Justice from her heav'nly bowr Look down on mortal men. (Psalm lxxxv:11, lines 45±48)

although he also asks, ``Why wilt thou Lord my soul forsake,/ And hide thy face from me'' (Psalm lxxxviii:14, lines 57±58). The Chorus will say (1749± 50), ``Oft he seems to hide his face,/ But unexpectedly returns.'' Do we read this as assurance for the questioning Psalmist? or is it an avoidance of reality? Does the Chorus re¯ect the answer to be heard in the late 1640s when Parliamentarian action looked toward alteration of governmental controls or an answer that may always occur from those who avoid action and decision? The Psalmist, depressed, can be viewed as a Samsonlike ®gure, that seen in the beginning of Milton's dramatic poem, who says, ``I am a man, but weak alas/ And for that name un®t'' (Psalm lxxxviii:4, lines 15±16), where a marginal note indicates that the Hebrew is ``A man without manly strength.'' The Prologue of the poem echoes in Them from thy hand deliver'd o're Deaths hideous house hath barr'd, Thou in the lowest pit profound Hast set me all forlorn, Where thickest darkness hovers round, In horrid deeps to mourn. (Psalm lxxxviii:5±6, lines 23±28)

But the Chorus's words may also re¯ect the attitude possible once the king and his adherents have been defeated: the Lord has emerged to lead to victory over the ``oppressors.'' The ambiguities of the text, that is, o€er an ending in the dramatic poem that sees a 1648±49 hopefulness in the defeat of the Royalists and the ascendancy of the Parliamentarians through the grace of God, previously hidden, descending on the adherents of Milton's Truth and leading to the new government, or an ending that sees a 1667±70 despair because deliverance is not truly achieved through inaction, through reliance on God working alone, through the Violence that has not been freed from Truth and Right. Or are both readings possible, suggesting further development for the full poem if the earlier date has validity or remembrance of the past with its mighty eagle symbol dashed by vain attempt and ®nal rebu€ if the later date has sole validity? ORTHOGRAPHY AND PROSODY

Two matters that have been noted earlier and that may provide evidence of dating are orthography and prosody. The instability of the received text, of 27

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes course, makes such ``evidence'' uncertain, for we cannot be absolutely sure how the text we have was created. It may present a text partially written down by Milton himself, if early of date; a text recorded and/or transcribed by one or more amanuenses in one or more renditions (such amanuenses possibly having been students of Milton and following his practice or being speci®cally instructed as to the mechanics of the text, and yet erring or recording their own practices); and a text composed by a printer following the copy-text but also lapsing into practices not underlying that text. As Parker remarked, a number of spellings that present Milton's practices, some a bit unusual in most people's thinking, come through. What di€erences from Milton's practices are observed are normalizations (like ``therefore'' rather than ``therfore'') or commonplace (like ``antient'' rather than ``ancient''). Original orthography by someone other than Milton for the whole of any passage is uncertain, for there is no passage in which the spelling is noticeably unMiltonic, although the Dalila episode exhibits more un-Miltonic spellings than any other. Rather orthography used by Milton comes through in all parts, and ``distinctive'' spellings can be found throughout.15 The prosody of the dramatic poem is a questionable commodity as suggested before. Not only are we uncertain of the text at crucial spots for a prosodic analysis, but we cannot probably be sure that the prosody we are dealing with is always English syllabic verse. It may be Greek dramatic rhythms, particularly in the odic passages, which are obviously very di€erent from the seemingly blank verse lines of nonodic passages. (Blank verse is common, of course, in Elizabethan drama.) However, employing the text as received and working with the statistics that Ants Oras presented,16 I have 15

16

Note these representive words: ``unwholsom,'' 9; ``burdensom,'' 54; ``carelesly,'' 118; ``grovling,'' 141; ``welcom,'' 260; ``verdit,'' 324; ``degeneratly,'' 419; ``anough,'' 455, 1468, 1592; ``loathsom,'' 480; ``e€eminatly,'' 562; ``houshold,'' 566; ``medcinal'' and ``asswage,'' 627; ``femal,'' 711; ``bin,'' 874; ``perfet,'' 946; ``falshood,'' 955; ``comliness,'' 1011; ``Ebrews,'' 1308, 1319, 1540; ``chuse,'' 1478; ``souldiery,'' 1498; ``uncontroulable,'' 1754. The thirdperson pronominal adjective has had a lot of attention paid to it; the word is spelled ``thir'' in ll. 13, 15, 114, 137, 140, 141, 176, 251, 257, 259, 262, 269, 274, 279, 286, 304, 343, 345, 426, 438, 443, 484, 500, 501, 646, 660, 683, 693, 892, 921, 1023, 1026, 1110, 1132, 1183 (State 2), 1188, 1203, 1204, 1215, 1265, 1267, 1270, 1277, 1281, 1286, 1288, 1320, 1327, 1338 (2), 1340, 1360, 1365, 1367, 1399, 1401, 1402, 1418, 1421, 1448, 1460, 1464, 1469 (2), 1474, 1485, 1487, 1589, 1613, 1614, 1616, 1621, 1622 (2), 1654, 1669, 1672, 1676, 1678, 1681, 1684, 1696, 1739. It appears as ``their'' in ll. 190, 192, 244, 264 (all Episode 1); 437 (Episode 2); 886, 887, 888 (``theirs''), 897, 899, 916, 935 (all Episode 3); 1114, 1183 (State 1), 1213, 1214 (all Episode 4). Episode 1 between Samson and the Chorus therefore shows eight spellings of ``thir'' and ®ve of ``their''; Episode 2 between Samson and Manoa, eight of ``thir'' and one of ``their''; Episode 3 between Samson and Dalila, two spellings of ``thir'' and seven of ``their''; and Episode 4 between Samson and Harapha, seven of ``thir'' and three of ``their.'' If spelling does provide clues as to composition, it may be signi®cant that more seemingly un-Miltonic spellings (not only the third-personal pronominal adjective) appear in the Dalila episode than in any other. ``Milton's Blank Verse and the Chronology of his Major Poems,'' SAMLA, Studies in Milton, ed. J. Max Patrick (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1953), 128±97.

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Uncertainty and the Text examined such metric matters as run-on lines, and others, and observed that they are closer to the prosody of ``Comus'' than even to Paradise Regain'd, which is distant from Paradise Lost.17 Oras saw a pyramidic movement in prosodic time, thus concluding that Samson Agonistes was the last written poem, whereas a more logical development would be that from more endstopped lines to fewer end-stopped lines (more run-on lines, more enjambement) as the poet developed his skills (as is observable to anyone who has attempted to encourage creative writing in instructional situations). (Of course, a metric might be used for speci®c e€ect, like the closed two lines of the heroic couplet.) One need look only at the dated sonnets to see Milton developing this metric with the sonnets prior to 1649 (Sonnets 12±15) contrasting with those after that date (Sonnets 16±23). Using Oras's statistics and de®nition, we can range Samson Agonistes near Sonnets 12±15 in the percentage of run-on lines (42.1 and 42.9 respectively), and earlier than Sonnets 16±23 (48.2, written 1652±58?), Psalms i±viii (58.4, written 1653), and Paradise Lost (58.8).18 It is thus interesting to compare the prologos and parados (1±175, 175 lines) with the Dalila episode (710±1009, 300 lines) for this metric: the ®rst section shows end-stopped lines 65%, run-on lines 34%; in the second section end-stopped lines constitute 55.7%, run-on lines 44.3%. If these statistics have validity for dating, then the Dalila section as we have it should have been written at a distance in time from the beginning of the poem. Another comparative statistic is provided by the section with the Messenger (1541±1659, 119 lines), which contrasts strongly with the ending of the drama (1660±1758, 99 lines): 60.5% and 39.5% for the Messenger section, and 54.5% and 45.5% for the ending, suggesting ``earlier'' composition for the exodos and more recent writing or greater revision for the ending. (Indeed, the Messenger section may strike readers as overwritten, drawn out, not poetically as successful as earlier portions.) While orthography and prosody undoubtedly result from scribal or compositorial work, there is evidence in the orthography that does come through that Milton himself may have written down an early version of his poem, working on it perhaps a bit later through the help of an amanuensis (examples of holograph material after he became Secretary for Foreign Tongues in 1649 are very few and incidental), and revising and developing it sometime in the late 1660s through a scribe. And there is evidence, thus, that signi®cant prosody places some composition of the poem in a period 17 18

See ``The Chronology of Milton's Major Poems,'' noted before. Psalms lxxx±lxxxviii, written in April 1648, ®t into these statistics although they are all in quatrains, usually with end punctuation in the second and fourth lines, which would yield a percentage of 50 each for end-stopped and run-on lines. There are also textual problems such as the need for some punctuation at the end of some lines; for example, at the end of both ®rst lines of Psalm lxxxi:.2 (lines 5±6 of the full psalm translation). However, even using the texts of these psalms as given for the 512 lines, we ®nd 276 end-stopped and 236 not endstopped; that is, run-on lines have a percentage of 46.0.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes before the 1650s, and revisions and additions later. The orthography and prosody suggest that the composition of the dramatic poem as we have it occurred at di€erent periods, not simply within a limited range of three years (1667±70). PRELIMINARY MATERIALS

The two preliminary items need separate consideration. The Argument, not dissimilar to prose outlines for other dramas found in the Trinity MS, is fairly detailed and in agreement with the completed drama, except for the odd statement given between Manoa's leaving to seek Samson's ransom and the appearance of a Public Ocer: Samson ``who in the mean while is visited by other persons.'' These persons in the ®nal text, of course, are Dalila and Harapha, but they were clearly not part of the outline which Milton worked from to begin with. Their entrance into the account of Samson's last day is not part of the biblical story, Harapha being totally invented as a character. The episodes seem to be later additions to the planning of the full work, and this is understandable since they are not part of a reading of the Bible. The need for some action between Manoa's leaving and the Public Ocer's arrival was recognized, and having already presented Samson in soliloquy and in consult with the Chorus (in Episode 1), some other kind of confrontation was to be devised. Without Episodes 3 and 4 the drama would have been closer in length and development to the ``standard'' Greek drama. With the addition of Dalila and Harapha other aspects of Samson's being ± sensualist and braggadocio ± could be presented to be reversed from the past and assimilated into a Samson who would be able to assert himself again in some way, but also a more mythic structure could be incorporated, a revision of the triple equation of temptation. Joining the temptation of Self in the Manoa episode was now the temptation of worldly achievement and fraud and the temptation of violence and pride. One ®nds in the Argument some Miltonic spellings (``Ebrew,'' ``e're long,'' ``mean while,'' ``Philistins,'' ``thir,'' and ``threatnings'') and only normalized words in disagreement with his practices (``discourse,'' ``friends,'' ``somewhat,'' ``where,'' etc.). The two occurrences of ``-ick'' (``publick'') suggests a date of writing around 1644 or earlier when holograph materials indicate he was altering his spelling to ``-ic.'' The list of Persons also gives ``Publick Ocer.'' There is only one example of ``-ick'' (again ``publick'') in the poem (1327) but twenty-two occurrences of ``-ic.'' Perhaps, however, this spelling of this particular word is the compositor's. Among the subjects listed in the Trinity MS are items concerned with Samson, dating around 1641. Did Milton, we can thus ask, work out a prose outline of the Samson story, biblically generated, sometime between 1642 and 1644, with work being done on the dramatic poem as ``free'' (nonpolemic) time arose, from 1645 until 1649, when polemic and governmental time encroached? 30

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Uncertainty and the Text The entries in the Trinity MS result from his going through the Bible jotting down subjects with references. In the column ®rst noting Numbers, he proceeds to Judges with three topics prior to chapter xv and another afterward from chapters xix, xx, etc. He ®rst sets down ``Samson in Ramath Lechi Jud. 15,'' adds to the left ``Samson pursophorus or Hybristes, or,'' and alters the ®rst item above the line by ``marriing or'' [that is, ``Samson marriing or Ramath-Lechi Jud. 15'']; and second, ``Dagonalia. Jud. 16.'' The reference to Samson's marriage thus is to the Woman of Timnah since that account occurs in Judges xv, followed by his slaying of Philistines with the jawbone of an ass at Ramath-Lehi. The woman of the valley of Sorek (Delilah) is not mentioned until Judges xvi:4€. and is not cited by Milton in these manuscript notes. The ``Dagonalia'' refers to Judges xvi:23€. It is quite logical that Milton developed brief dramas ± the kind of thing he apparently did with sections that became parts of Paradise Lost ± on these topics, employing them in the recountings of the past in the completed dramatic poem. The ``Dagonalia'' thus may have been developed further as presented in the Argument, which agrees with that label as topic, but having as yet not included that which became the Dalila and Harapha episodes, he merely notes, ``in the mean while is visited by other persons.'' The two episodes, comprising ll. 710±1286 (547 lines) of this 1758±line dramatic poem, a little less than a third of the whole, could not have been in his mind as developed when he wrote the Argument. It may also be signi®cant that the Argument calls the work outlined a ``Tragedy,'' which is in accord with other dramas proposed in the Trinity MS, a poetic shift not yet having occurred to his thinking, as with Paradise Lost. The preface, however, is concerned with ``That Sort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy,'' and the noun may be generic rather than speci®c. But it suggests a change of poetic genre for the ®nal composition ± a poem which ``never was intended'' ``to the Stage'' rather than a ``tragedy'' intended to the stage. The other item needing separate consideration is the discussion of a dramatic poem which gives a mixture of spellings found in Milton's practice and of spellings not employed by him. Among those that might have been written by him ``sowr'' (twice), ``Epod'' (perhaps), and ``®ft'' seem to be a bit less usual; those that would not have re¯ected his practices are commonplace (like ``authority'' and ``antient''). The confusion in the last paragraphing (where a sentence begins a new paragraph that clearly should be part of the former one) and the fusion of two sentences as the ®rst sentence in that new paragraph (the second with a changed subject, which can be seen to create a new paragraph) indicate a problem either in transmission or in setting the text. Nothing here suggests that Milton himself may have written down the original of the statement and thus there is nothing to date it before 1667±70. The subject matter, however, does suggest that it was written in 1668±70 in defense of its form and prosody to counter the kind of need that arose in 1668, after John Dryden's Essay of 31

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes Dramatick Poesie appeared, when ``The Verse'' of Paradise Lost was deemed necessary to justify that work, being added in the second 1668 issue of the epic. Perhaps the very popular ``The Indian Emperor'' of 1665 helped provoke the stress on ``dramatic poem'' called tragedy as opposed to ``poetic drama'' called tragedy. This play with collaboration from Dryden's brotherin-law and Milton's friend, Sir Robert Howard, who championed blank verse as the character Crites in the Essay, is an heroic play in couplets. Possibly Dryden's ``Secret Love, or the Maiden-Queen,'' a tragicomedy, ®gures in Milton's reaction as well, particularly when we read his strictures of ``the Poets error of intermixing Comic stu€ with Tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar persons.'' In any case, ``Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy'' does seem to go out of its way to justify the work in form, in classical and biblical precedents, and in ``The measure of Verse us'd in the Chorus'' being ``of all sorts'' (rather than the single measure of the heroic couplet?). (Odic passages also occur in the prologos and in Samson's speech after episode one, lines 606±51.) The contrast of ``the best rule to all who endeavour to write Tragedy'' with such contemporary work as Dryden's seems an implicit criticism of what drama had become. Should not the statement ``Division into Act and Scene referring chie¯y to the Stage (to which this work never was intended) is here omitted'' be thought of in this light? It was not intended to stage presentation in the commercial theater and thus not a ``play'' in the usual sense, the emphasis on dramatic poem obviating its categorization with current stage presentations. That strange, misplaced, and misunited statement, ``It suces if the whole Drama be found not produc't beyond the ®ft Act,'' may simply record misunderstanding and error on the part of a scribe, or at least a poor copytext causing confusion for the printer. Since Milton says that his drama has omitted division into act and scene, to refer to a ®fth act within his drama is contradictory, and besides, what sense does the statement make? I wonder whether the critical explanations and extrapolations of that sentence are not unpro®table and super¯uous because it may not represent what Milton wanted to say. (See later for discussion of ``beyond the ®ft Act.'') SIGNIFICANCE

The question of text and the date or dates of its composition are signi®cant for two matters particularly. Because Samson makes much of the duty of a wife to a husband in his argument against Dalila, recent commentators have examined Milton's views on the subject of marriage and of husband and wife, working most frequently out of the divorce tracts, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce and Tetrachordon. Some criticism has also contrasted Eve and Dalila, and Adam and Samson, and the idea of woman and marriage thereby, with frequent assignment of Adam's views after the Fall (in Book X, that is) 32

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Uncertainty and the Text and of Samson's views to Milton himself. The divorce tracts, written between 1643 and 1645, during which time Milton was estranged from his ®rst wife, Mary Powell Milton, do evidence concepts of ideal marriage and of the primacy of the husband (St. Paul being cited to dispense with argument on the male orientation of the issues). But Adam's misogynistic statements (and his assigning the fault of his Fall not only to Eve but to God himself, which should negate his remarks as being competent) are certainly not Milton's in the divorce tracts, and Samson's recourse to the duties of the wife try to selfjustify his carnality and to obviate criticism of all his actions. Samson's argument presents only a male view of ``ideal'' marriage, which is closer to the Milton of the divorce tracts, arguing often from a male point of view to the male parliament, than the reading of Paradise Lost. Decidedly for the Milton of the pre-Fall (in Book IV, for instance), the male view of marriage that Samson expresses is not the ideal: the ideal marriage is a union, a consonancy, a conversation of the wedded two, epitomized in the epic as ``hand-in-hand,'' where each is an individual but where they are also joined into oneness. That ``ideal'' marriage is not the fallen marriage of the divorce tracts, which can only hope to move toward it, or of Samson, who asserts a Pauline masculinist position. A date of composition for the dramatic poem not long after Milton's divorce views had run into ridicule and opprobrium in 1645 suggests the importance of the question in his mind and much for a reading of the dramatic poem: a woman who has not been ®t helpmate in the past and a man who has exhibited male arrogance, not union; a woman who may have come to understand the meaning of marriage and a man who has suddenly remembered an ideal of marriage though still from a male point of view. Certainly the Samson of the Bible and of legend (where he is not married to Delilah) was not a man who paid attention to ideal marriage at all; Milton's stress on the issue in the poem suggests a current signi®cance, for some people, dating it in the later 1640s rather than in 1667±70 when he had experienced apparently rather ``ideal'' marriages (with nonetheless a dominance of the husband) with Mary (after her return in 1645 till her death in 1652), with Katherine Woodcock Milton (1656±58), and with Elizabeth Minshull Milton (1663 till his death in 1674). Or possibly those ``ideal'' marriages from Milton's point of view played into this Samson's nonbiblical understanding of his marriage and covenant, here ignoring the sexual/carnal fountainhead for his having taking up with Delilah in the pre-poem. The Samson of the poem is a di€erent Samson from that in the Bible! The reading of Eve and those sections of the epic before the Fall and after the reconciliation with God, led by Eve, o€er a ``balanced and mature attitude toward woman and the feminine'' (155) that James P. Driscoll argues could not have existed prior to the writing of Samson Agonistes, where instead Samson depicts ``a shallowness of mind or mental blindness rooted in 33

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes repression of anima'' (170).19 The developing psychological picture of Milton that Driscoll ®nds advances four arguments for dating the dramatic poem, basically and in inception, earlier than the epic: complexity and ambition and marks of a more youthful author, the sharp disparities in and causes of the a‚ictions of the biblical blind hero and the poet, the divergent attitudes toward women, and ``the portrayal of Eve and her bond with her husband [which] shows more subtle and mature artistry'' (155).

19

James P. Driscoll, The Unfolding God of Jung and Milton (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993). See especially pp. 151±55 for discussion of dating.

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Chapter 3 THE DRAMATIC WORK AND ITS READING

T

HE dramatic character (in a dramatic work as well as on the stage) operates with its own integrity. That ``integrity'' may ultimately de®ne a pernicious, lying deceitful person within the literary work, but that person must be understood from that dramatic character's own existence, not from some prejudgment. (Compare, for instance, Iago in Shakespeare's Othello or Thersites in Troilus and Cressida.) Of course, an author may be doctrinaire and o€er only a mouthpiece for personal views or a ®gure espousing opposed views which are to be negated (or even ridiculed) in the course of the action. But generally a dramatic character takes on its own life, a personality that acts and thinks in de®nition of that individual being. Some characters will be better de®ned than others, those who are leading performers in the drama; some will be de®ned largely in relationship with the leading performers. In Samson Agonistes it is Samson who is the leading character with Manoa, Dalila, and Harapha as other characters whose relationship with him in the work de®ne a reading of them. Manoa and Dalila (as Delilah) have prepoem existences that are recalled in the narratives recounting the past. Are their existences in the present the same as their existences in the past? Do not their existences in the present o€er dramatic characters with their own integrity within the drama? Are they not di€erent from the ®gures of the biblical story? The Public Ocer and the Messenger are functionary only, o€ering nothing of individual selves, and the Chorus operating as a voice and in the exodos as two voices is de®ned in relationship to Samson, but it also exhibits a variability, a mercurial stance depending on the speci®c circumstance in which and with whom Samson is involved. Its ``integrity'' is there though based on reaction. Some criticism has seen the Chorus as Milton's voice, not recognizing its reactive stance and its inconsistencies. The lack of attention to dramatic characters in looking at Milton's dramatic poem and its author is a common critical failure of readers of this work. Since Milton's God is Samson's God, since Milton emphasized marriage and ``companionship of mind,'' Samson has been seen primarily in positive terms within the poem, and Dalila only in negative ones.1 Readers of Milton's 1

Note, for example, Catherine Belsey's statement that ``Dalila transgresses the ideal [of marriage] in every way. She is all body'' (John Milton: Language, Gender, Power [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988], 56). Belsey is talking of Delilah, of course; her prejudged, negative

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes works seldom seem to entertain the possibility that he and his text o€er ambiguity rather than personal ideological positions. This crux will be taken up later, but we should note that some critical misreadings of the Chorus's words as consistently presenting Truth rather than the Chorus's changeability, ignorance, self-serving, and male-orientation create a resultant prejudiced interpretation toward Milton. The indictment of Milton as misogynist is a result of this critical ineptitude (where the Chorus is read as Milton); and issues of Whose god is God? and What is Truth? and How is Salvation (personal or political) achieved? are not recognized as the burning questions they are in the poem. One cannot ignore the dramatic structure, the play of imagery, the movement of the work, nor a development of the character of Samson. William Riley Parker discussed the poem in relation to Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus; Carole Kessner has shown the importance of Euripides' Herakles; and I have suggested in the pageant-like sweep and movement of the central episodes and the ending Euripides' The Trojan Women.2 All of these in¯uential works, and more, nullify pulling out any single episode to dominating position in the full dramatic poem. And the temptation motif, as well, points to development and intensity, not separations. That word development is of major importance, for the poem builds toward its climax, working upon what has been achieved in its prior sections. Each episode is signi®cant in that development; each advances the fashioning of the hero, who in that hero's failing and renovation (whether male or

2

reading of Dalila (that is, really, of Delilah) is revealed by such comments as ``Dalila is no Lady, but an inveterate enemy of virtue, lascivious, treacherous, destructive'' (53): it should be obvious that Dalila, the character of Milton's dramatic poem, evidences in the poem none of these characteristics. William Riley Parker, Milton's Debt to Greek Tragedy in Samson Agonistes (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1937); Carole S. Kessner, ``Milton's Hebraic Herculean Hero,'' Milton Studies 6 (1975): 243±58; Shawcross, ``The Genres of Paradise Regain'd and Samson Agonistes,'' 233±34. Mark Kelley is currently working on the in¯uence of Euripides' The Bacchñ on the dramatic poem. See also Stella P. Revard, ``Dalila as Euripidean Heroine,'' Papers on Literature and Language 23 (1987): 291±302. Among the echoes from Greek drama that have been cited for SA, 1010±45, are Euripides' Hippolytus, 616€., ``Great Zeus, why didst thou, to man's sorrow, put woman, evil counterfeit, to dwell where shines the sun? If thou wert minded that the human race should multiply, it was not from women they should have drawn their stock, but in thy temples they should have paid gold or iron or ponderous bronze and bought a family, each man proportioned to his o€ering, and so in independence dwelt, from women free. But now as soon as ever we would bring this plague into our home we bring its fortune to the ground. 'Tis clear from this how great a curse a woman is,'' and Medea, 573± 75, ``Yea, men should have begotten children from some other source, no female race existing; thus would no evil ever have fallen on mankind.'' See also Martz, cited in Chapter 4, n24, and Damico, cited in Chapter 4, n37. A major study of Milton's dramatic poem in relation to drama is Richard S. Ide's ``The Renaissance Dramatic Heritage of Samson Agonistes,'' 152±77, in Soundings of Things Done: Essays in Early Modern Literature in Honor of S. K. Heninger, Jr., ed. Peter E. Medine and Joseph Wittreich (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997).

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The Dramatic Work and its Reading female) allegorizes humankind. Unknowingly, some commentators have misread the poem in the way that Samuel Johnson did when he lamented its not having what he called ``a middle,'' and so one has been supplied. Concern with Milton's attitude toward woman, its translation into the world of Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, as well, perhaps, as its absence in Paradise Regain'd except as it emerges in the reading of Belial's suggestion and the ``Tall stripling youths'' and the various woman ``distant more/ Under the Trees,'' combined with Milton's remarks in the divorce tracts, has led to skewed emphasis on one episode and one character rather than to stress on the protagonist. Milton's dramatic poem is built on the structure of Greek drama: there are a prologos, a parados (or choral ode bringing the Chorus on stage), followed by ®ve epeisodia, each followed by a stasimon (or choral ode), and ®nally an exodos in which is contained a kommos (or lament). The episodes confront Samson and the Chorus, Samson and Manoa, Samson and Dalila, Samson and Harapha, and Samson and the Ocer. The balance of the organization is noteworthy, setting up the Dalila episode as focal, as it should be because of the climax that Delilah's act has brought for Samson: it is the in¯ectional point in Samson's career after which, his strength gone, he is captived and blinded, enslaved by the Philistines. At this point the dramatic poem begins. The organization also centralizes the triple temptation, as we have seen. The ®rst episode has Samson abjectly giving information to a group of compatriots, who speak as one voice, while, contrastively, the ®nal episode has him de®antly rejecting the demands of an ocer acting for the Philistine lords. While Prometheus Bound and Oedipus at Colonus o€er somewhat similar structures, they are not symmetric or so arranged, and so do not o€er like episodes or ending. Indeed, Milton's poem has more episodes than any extant Greek drama. These variations underscore Milton's use but transcendence of Greek drama. The addition of episodes in which Samson ``is visited by other persons'' has created this di€erence from the Greek drama that Milton was ®rst developing. Since Prometheus Bound was apparently part of a trilogy which is not extant, it does not contain the whole of the literary concept being fashioned by Aeschylus, as Samson Agonistes does for Milton's literary vision. We come to anticipate two further dramas, Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus the Fire-Bearer. On the other hand Oedipus at Colonus assumes knowledge of Oedipus Rex and even, it seems, of Antigone, appearing as if it were the third play in a trilogy, but it was not, having been written separately very late in Sophocles' career. Some of the parallels with Samson Agonistes are strong, but Milton's dramatic poem supplies the background material which brings us to understand what has happened to Samson before the work opens and prepares us to understand the characters and action of the work while those characters are before us and the action is occurring. Contrastively, The Trojan Women is more of a pageant cut from the full swath of what might 37

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes have been a long presentation of war; it is not clearly a beginning, a middle, or an end. Samson Agonistes, like the Euripidean drama, combines all of these into one. Yet in reverse of The Trojan Women, whose main characters are about to embark for Greece to ``the new long day'' which ``dawneth to slavery,'' the people of Dan are enabled supposedly to embark on a new long day which dawneth to freedom from the Philistines. But Milton's is an ironic ending as comparison with that of Oedipus at Colonus or that of The Trojan Women manifests. For the Danites do not achieve freedom, remaining in Philistine control for many years afterward. In all, Milton's work seems to take on many features, situations, action, and the accompanying language of numerous extant Greek plays. It is a distillation, one might say, of the prototypical Greek drama. Milton called his work a dramatic poem and wrote a preface concerning the dramatic poem called tragedy. In it he says that the work was never intended to the stage, that he has purposely omitted division of it into act and scene (since that refers chie¯y to the stage), and that it should not be produced beyond the ®fth act. The ambiguous sentence is ``It suces if the whole Drama be found not produc't beyond the ®ft Act,'' and it illogically was originally printed as a new paragraph. The scribal text presented for publication clearly had problems, as I previously remarked. Part of the discussion talks of David Paraeus's ``tragedy'' on Revelation and its division into ``acts.'' Milton seems to be saying of his dramatic poem that it has anities with such ``dramatic'' revised texts and that in its ®ve episodes it is complete. That is, no successive drama was necessary to complete the full story (as in a play like Agamemnon); there is no need for a drama saying something about the signi®cance of Samson's life and action or the further history of the Danites and Philistines. May this be so because that signi®cance and what could be an ensuing history if readers comprehended that signi®cance is already part of the drama, when rightly understood? This is not unlike Paradise Lost which Ellwood didn't comprehend, and so we have the ``unhidden'' signi®cance of the Son in Paradise Regain'd. Building on these statements two recent commentators have o€ered structures in dramatic acts for Milton's dramatic poem, both repeatedly calling the work a ``play.''3 Mary Ann Radzinowicz divides it into Act I (Exposition, 325 lines, preliminaries and episode one), Act II (Complication, 384 lines, episode two), Act III (Apparent settlement, 351 lines, episode three), Act IV (New complication, 380 lines, episodes four and ®ve), Act V (Settlement, 318 lines, exodos and kommos). It is clear that she is following a version of supposed Elizabethan dramatic structure, strangely combining the Harapha and Public Ocer episodes into one act and missing the movement (``crescendo'' in Burkian terms, or ``build'') to the anagnorisis/peripeteia 3

See Radzinowicz, Toward Samson Agonistes, 13±14, and John C. Ulreich, Jr., ``'Beyond the Fifth Act': Samson Agonistes as Prophecy,'' Milton Studies 17 (1983): 317, n51, and 302±303.

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The Dramatic Work and its Reading when Samson alters his three ``I will not come'' responses to acceptance as the ``rouzing motions'' are felt (with the ``inward eyes'' illuminated). Much of the problem in this scheme results from privileging the Dalila episode over the other episodes. There certainly is no ``apparent settlement'' in that episode. John Ulreich, employing the outlines in the Trinity MS for what came to be Paradise Lost as analogy, sees a structure of a Prologue, ®ve acts (the ®ve episodes), and an Epilogue. A like structure is given in comparison with the ``dramatic scheme of Amos'' (that is, the biblical book of Amos), and this leads to an emphasis on an underlying twofold structure: the tragedy of the catastrophic destruction and the prophecy lying beyond that catastrophe. Thus Ulreich delineates the work as tragedy, its completeness as tragedy, and production ``beyond the ®ft Act'' as the irony of nonliberation for the Israelites/Danites. The prefatory statement on the dramatic poem called tragedy leads us to label Milton's work ``tragedy.'' Yet Samson Agonistes seems to run counter in certain ways to both older and modern concepts of tragedy.4 The fall-ofprinces formula used by Boccaccio or Lydgate or The Mirror for Magistrates does not allow for Samson's renovation, although his fall in the past has intensi®ed the bondage of his people. Nor does tragedy accord with Samson's position as Great Deliverer rather than as one of noble estate. The Chorus, expressing the signi®cant di€erence, laments: O mirror of our ®ckle state Since man on earth unparallel'd! The rarer thy example stands, By how much from the top of wondrous glory, Strongest of mortal men, To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fall'n For him I reckon not in high estate Whom long descent of birth Or the sphear of fortune raises; But thee whose strength, while vertue was her mate, Might have subdu'd the Earth, Universally crown'd with highest praises. (164±75)

The passage raises the specter of standard tragic formula and rejects it; it rejects the crutch of the goddess Fortuna and her wheel; it argues ultimately 4

See William Webbe, A Discourse of English Poetry (London, 1586), 39; John Dryden, Heads of an Answer to Rymer (London, 1693), in The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden, ed. Edmond Malone (London, 1800), I, ii, 309; Dryden, ``Preface'' to Troilus and Cressida (London, 1679), in Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900), I, 209±11; Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (London, 1698); Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis, Seigneur de Saint-EÂvremond, Of Ancient and Modern Tragedy (London, 1672); Joseph Wood Krutch, The Modern Temper (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1929), esp. 127.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes against those who think, somewhat medievally, that ``this too shall pass'' and that cyclic time will alter the achievement or the decline of the state. ``Fickle'' takes a long view of the rise and fall of government, but that Greek concept of cycle should be rejected to be replaced by the linearity of Hebraic time, moving constantly forward. The tragedy of Samson Agonistes is partially the maintenance of the Chorus's view here at the beginning of the drama even after the catastrophe of its end. The Chorus should have altered their view of passivity to one of activity as the poem ends, for the better glory of God, humankind, and Self ± but it does not. The tragedy of Samson has not taught his people anything, it seems. The tragedy of Samson Agonistes is the tragedy in Paraeus's view of Revelation and in Ulreich's understanding of the relationship with Amos: the action of Samson and the loss of life have not delivered the purpose of those matters, but as with readers of the Bible who read its words without real comprehension of the message for them to heed, the Danites have not learned the lesson of Rainer Maria Rilke's Apollo: ``You must change your life.'' If Samson is ``regenerated,'' a word that has been frequently employed to indicate the development of the character within the dramatic poem (rather than ``renovation''), can there be tragedy? Involved is the speci®c concept of Christian tragedy, for if ``Christian'' implies that God's providence has made the outcome possible and has turned that which is ``evil'' or negative into that which is ``good'' or positive, there can be no such thing as a Christian tragedy.5 This specter has overwhelmed the reading of Paradise Lost, we might note, as the ``fortunate'' fall, a felix culpa. For the epic, however, we seem ®nally to have acknowledged that the Fall in Milton's thinking cannot be considered ``fortunate'' but that it can be turned into something positive if one has learned from it and exercises faith and obedience, that is, love, toward God. Part of the tragedy of life that Milton observes is that such experience, such a ``fall,'' seems necessary for humankind to learn to love. The Christian tragedy of Samson Agonistes alters the fatalistic world of Greek drama into the Providential world of God for His true servants.6 But the tragedy remains in the wastage of humankind in learning faith and obedience, in the lack of recognition of one's personal or of a group's hamartia (ignorance, unthinking error, excessive quality), in the unchanged and unchanging life humankind maintains. (In Of True Religion, Hñresie, Schism, Toleration, And what best means may be us'd against the growth of Popery [1673], Milton's admonition is ``to amend our lives'': ``Let us therefore amend our lives with all speed; least 5

6

Typical is the comment of David Daiches in Milton (London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1957): ``From one point of view, a Christian tragedy is a contradiction in terms: nothing to a Christian can be tragic if seen in its proper perspective. . . . [W]here God, all-just, all powerful and merciful, is in control, no injustice and disproportion can exist'' (247). See James Holly Hanford's important ``Samson Agonistes and Milton in Old Age'' in John Milton, Poet and Humanist, ed. John S. Diekho€ (Cleveland, OH: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1966), 264±86.

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The Dramatic Work and its Reading through impenitence we run into that stupidly, which we now seek all means so warily to avoid'' [p. 16]. This admonition is the basic thesis of his dramatic poem: let us amend our lives.) Showing how Samuel Johnson's misunderstanding of the dramatic poem and his requirement of a ``middle'' has led to viewing the movement of the poem as regeneration, Edward W. Tayler7 argues that ``proleptic form,'' by which is meant an anticipation of a known ful®llment, is the operative structure. The movement is linear but based on a concept of the Alpha and the Omega, set up in the ®rst lines and continued through a pervasive double vision. Christian tragedy rests on freedom of choice whereby a person (here Samson) makes decisions or acts, thereby advancing toward the Omega, which is already known, culminating in a ®nal choice that has been conditioned by preceding choices. We as audience can see in each step of the linear movement how Samson proceeds to the denouement, and we are presented with the alleged dilemma, predicated by Christian tragedy, of whether Samson's exercise of free will or God's Providence has prevailed. Tayler cogently concludes that Samson's exercise of will only would not be Christian and that God's Providence only would not be tragedy: Christian tragedy lies in the fusion of the lemmata of the alleged dilemma. While Samson in his giving himself up to the ``rouzing motions'' he experiences has nulli®ed the results of his ``fall'' of the past, there has been the wastage of a life, during his life as well as in his ``suicide.'' Whatever his new acquist, he is dead and cannot employ it further. There has also been the wastage of that life in the lack of learning which the Danites show. As Achilles bemoans to Odysseus in the underworld, glory in death cannot compensate for the loss of life (Odyssey XI, 488±91). Samson must learn like Aeneas that he must sublimate his personal desires, submitting his own will to God's will, so that he can become the Great Deliverer prophesied just as Aeneas must forge ahead beyond the security of life with Dido to achieve ordained rule and prosperity in Rome. ``Christian'' tragedy moves beyond the text and the protagonist to the ``dark world and wide'' and its people. The tragedy lies in the inaction of that dark world and wide, not in some form of ``martyrdom.'' The martyrdom of Christ is not a tragedy; the continued ``evil'' of humankind is. Further de®nitions of tragedy and its distinction from comedy as expressed in the Renaissance, the Restoration, the eighteenth century, or even modern times, generally commending the triumph of virtue and the defeat of vice, are poor epitomes of what happens in Milton's poem. In Kenneth Burke's emphasis on mathemata (learning) as the result of poiemata (the act) and pathemata (su€ering) there is meaning for the reader of Samson Agonistes:8 7

8

E. W. Tayler, ``Milton's Samson: The Form of Christian Tragedy,'' English Literary Renaissance 3 (1973): 306±21. ``Dialectic of Tragedy'' in A Grammar of Motives (New York: Prentice±Hall,1945), 38±41.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes Samson's renovation points, ®rst, to the treatment of God's agents in this world and, second, to the need for faith in God. But Samson has not understood his ensuing act at his moment of tragic vision (1381±89, 1399± 1409, 1413±26). Indeed, his act of pulling down Dagon's temple on the Philistines is, for him, simply that. It does not have for him the metaphoric meaning that even the challenge of Harapha presented: ``Whose God is strongest, thine or mine?'' (1155). The Messenger tells us that he stood with his eyes ®xed fast, ``as one who pray'd,/ Or some great matter in his mind revolv'd'' (1637±38). He then spoke, shouting that the assemblage would see another trial of strength, yet greater. This trial of strength he means to show the Philistian Lords ``of [his] own accord'': not, that is, as a result of their demands, but ambiguity allows a reading of the phrase as saying of his accord only, not with aid from his God. That this act would henceforth be interpreted as God's means of showing his power, as the Chorus unwittingly comments (1427±30, 1660±68), does not alter the realization that for Samson his act is what Manoa and the Chorus say it is: revenge. Obviously Samson's prayers have been answered: he has his strength returned, and obviously to his mind has come the way to use that strength. Samson's action attests to God's mysterious and inscrutable ways, though he, Manoa, and the Chorus do not fully understand what is pronounced in the ®nal passage as a kind of summary of the lesson to be learned. The lesson to be learned, of course, is there for the reader of the dramatic poem. Samson should be viewed ironically as one who, acting entirely out of his faith, commits an act whose meaning and consequences he does not understand ± an act that achieves what he desired and what he would have done consciously, had he been able. The ``Great Deliverer'' is thus understood not to be the rescuer of the Danites from bondage of the Philistine, as readings of the term have constantly operated under. A very di€erent ``delivery'' is intended. The individual who, following the example of Samson in having faith in God and doing His bidding, veri®es Samson as the ``Great Deliverer'' from the clutches of evil, when that individual is delivered from his former customary and self-indulgent life. The event demonstrates to the reader who is one of the ®t audience that when humankind gives itself up to the will of God without the least conscious thinking about what he is doing, humankind will have been freed from the bondage of evil. It will not be tragic. But few are ®t, and for the others, life will be tragic. Samson's renovation is equivalent to his learning to have faith in God, but he has nonetheless not learned what the reader has or can. What the Chorus has ``learned'' (though inadequately) is only hope: ``Oft he seems to hide his face,/ But unexpectedly returns'' (1749±50), much as Milton himself believed this consistently. It does not recognize in the simile of Samson ``as an Eagle'' who has ``His cloudless thunder bolted on thir heads'' (1695±96) an allusion to God (that is, to the Son) employing his powers through all time ± at the beginning of human time, in the midst of human time as in the Samson story, 42

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The Dramatic Work and its Reading at the end of time with the Judgment ± to defeat Satan and his cohorts. The full meaning of Providence is simply not understood by the Chorus or by Manoa. The meaning that the audience can derive does not come from any of the characters; it does not lie unavoidably there on the surface of the narrative. (These ironic matters will be taken up in Chapter 8.) Aristotelian concepts of tragedy have most frequently been employed to explain Milton's prefatory statement (since he cites Aristotle) and to discuss the tragic elements of the work.9 ``Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude . . . through pity and fear e€ecting the proper purgation of these emotions.'' The related matter of the tragic hero and a hamartia, which leads to the hero's fall, underlies any discussion of Greek tragic mode. We complete our reading (or viewing, for that matter) of the dramatic poem with a feeling of the tragic. In tragic formulas a catharsis such as Milton mentions in the preface should take place, and it does take place for the audience if ``calm of mind, all passion [i.e. su€ering] spent'' is a valid line.10 We may think of the way in which Samson's pride has caused him woe in the past; we may note his uxoriousness in what would have been the middle play, had a typical Greek trilogy on Samson been Milton's intention; we may cast the extant last drama in such a trilogy as the extirpation of the devils that have beset the hero and as his atonement in one great act of retribution. But more meaningful is Mary Ann Radzinowicz's observation that ``Milton aims at moderative, not extirpative catharsis, and his tragedy moderates passions other than simply those of pity and fear.''11 This angle of tragic vision suggests that the tragedy lies in the past, in Samson's wasting of time and nearly complete perversion of his God-given virtue, in the loss of more direct action, had such renovation not ®rst been necessary. The theme of renovation is not by itself signi®cant. We cannot infer that that circumstance which creates a renovated soul is good because its result is desirable. The question of Christian tragedy is perhaps just this: Is the theme renovation and the thesis that adversity will produce repentance in the good? If the answer is armative, we do not have tragedy, but a mode which moves through tragedy to Christian comedy. Or, is the theme the wastage of good and the thesis that adversity must be overcome despite grave loss? Here we do have tragedy even though the overcoming of adversity involves renewal, for the renewal will still not replace the good that has been 9 10

11

Poetics, Chapter VI, 1449b. See the discussion by Derek N. C. Wood, ``Catharsis and `Passion Spent': Samson Agonistes and some Problems with Aristotle,'' Milton Quarterly 26 (1992): 1±9, for diculties in critics' reading of the poem in terms of Aristotelian theory. An important earlier essay on this matter is Paul Sellin's ``Sources of Milton's Catharsis: A Reconsideration,'' 104±22, in Milton Studies in Honor of Harris Francis Fletcher, which speci®cally cites the signi®cance of Daniel Heinsius' De tragúdiñ constitutione (1643). ``The Distinctive Tragedy of Samson Agonistes,'' Milton Studies 17 (1983): 277.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes wasted.12 The ``Christian'' aspect of this tragedy is the way by which renovation will be e€ected. The point is that Samson Agonistes does more than present just dramatic narrative and characterization, with emphasis on story and characters. Indeed, it does not have a ``plot'' in the usual sense. Like a poem it engages a closer reading than only a visual presentation of something that might have happened, even though the stage scene does o€er an accumulation of prior elements that impinge on each successive stage in the work. The ``build'' of a modern drama is linear, foreshadowing the denouement, which comes shortly before its ending; so, Samson Agonistes. The ``build'' of a poem, however, is often convoluted; and the demands of verbal and ideational concerns of the poem are, I assume, what made this dramatic poem never intended to the stage. Samson Agonistes is not a play where the subtleties of language and image are generally lost in the rush of stage presentation, but a poem that is cast as a drama, that involves dramatic techniques and e€ects, that has a linearity as in the more modern, non-Elizabethan play. Yet it is a work for reading and mulling over. We are in a nebulous world of de®nition, but the expectations which ``play'' evokes are not totally ful®lled. Romantic and modern verse drama (not to be labelled by that unacceptable nineteenthcentury invention, the ``closet drama'') ± works like Lord Byron's ``Manfred'' or Robert Frost's ``A Masque of Mercy'' ± is closer to Samson Agonistes than to Hamlet. The genre drama, though impossible to de®ne in absolute terms, takes the form of characters on a stage speaking to themselves individually or in some kind of conversation between or among themselves. Its usual structure implies partitions of action and talk (acts and scenes); its characteristics include ``imitated human action'' (according to Aristotle) in some kind of story, with a generally external author. The drama takes on the limitations of the dramatis personae speaking in character and performing speci®c actions: it must work within the possible, although it may verge on the unconvincing since these characters are not necessarily the viewer and their actions are not necessarily the viewer's. Drama allows direct experience for the viewer without, seemingly, an authorial intervention. The emphasis is on verisimilitude. The action is supposedly occurring as it is viewed, with its pattern being devised organically. It is not recollected, as is a poem, with its pattern being shaped by hindsight. A poem, on the other hand, unclassi®ed as to subgenre, involves imagination and sense impressions arising from the verbalizations, with the authorial 12

The work has also been called a tragicomedy, apparently because of the issues just discussed. It should not be so labelled; see the discussion of Joan Hartwig in Shakespeare's Tragicomic Vision (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972) and my essay ``Tragicomedy as Genre, Past and Present,'' 13±32, in Renaissance Tragicomedy: Explorations in Genre and Politics, ed. Nancy Klein Maguire (New York: AMS Press, 1987).

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The Dramatic Work and its Reading intent clearly being to involve the reader in exercise of imagination so as to proceed to the more improbable of thought and action and ultimately the more convincing since the reader has internalized, and not just vicariously. A dramatic poem would obviously partake of both generic positions at once, but ``dramatic'' would involve more lineaments of drama and ``poem'' more substance of poetry; poetic drama would reverse the emphases to more lineaments of poetry and to more substance of drama. While the change in the character of Samson presses forward and each moment allows us simultaneously to apprehend that change, plot does not exist and visual image is less signi®cant. Samson Agonistes takes on the form of characters on a verbal stage speaking to themselves or in conversation; its structure does not imply acts and scenes, resembling instead a kind of pageant, and thus it does not emphasize a story. Legend is recalled, and what happens on this verbal stage is that the main character alters in mood, attitude, and resolve from despair to fortitude and action ± not what we consider a plot. It has been called static, and doubts have been raised about its viability on the theatrical stage (despite some apparently successful readings). Of course. We move out of ``imitated human action,'' with limitations in such action, to the realm of potential human action with few limitations placed on that potentiality. We are convinced by Samson's alteration of mood, attitude, and resolve by empathy, devised through the poetry, and we are convinced that some action ± the destruction of the Temple in any meaning appropriate to any speci®c circumstance of the reader whose ``Temple'' may be any monolithic symbol ± can be achieved to point the way to freedom from bondage by the Philistines of this world. Samson and what occurs to him and within him in the dramatic poem are metonymies, not allegories, appropriate to a poem even more than to a drama. (See pp. 58±59 and n26 as well as p. 47 n16 for comments on metonomy and allegory.) The author is external, as in a drama, except that one hears in some of the Chorus's words and in Samson's thoughts on marriage ideas which seem to voice the author's beliefs. But one reads in the language and imagery universal meanings, not just autobiographical and temporal concerns. The question of autobiography and temporality has long been an issue in interpreting the work; see Chapters 6 and 7. I do not want to quibble about de®nitions, particularly these which are so very slippery. My point is simple: Samson Agonistes has quite consistently been read as a play,13 not as a poem, and this has led to criticism referred to by Anthony Low ± some of it important and ``correct'' in its own way ± when he 13

Compare Radzinowicz's statement (``Distinctive Tragedy,'' 252) concerning the lengthy reactions of the Chorus to the Messenger's report of the catastrophe, ``That structural boldness converts the reported action into a narrated play-within-the-play and the response to the reported action, rendered by the ®rst and only antiphonal treatment of the Chorus in the play, into a surrogate audience response.''

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes writes, ``In some respects, Samson's encounter with Dalila is the most accessible and humanly understandable in the play. . . . One is unsure, as one is unsure with Milton's God or his Satan, how much can legitimately be brought in from outside the play. In practice, then, although the encounter with Dalila would seem to be straightforward enough, it has proven to be one of the play's most puzzling episodes. Critics have been unable to agree about her character, her motivations, or, as a result, the impact of the confrontation on the play as a whole.''14 As a dramatic work, that is (``play'' in the aforecited), Samson Agonistes should be cast with characters and events that are verisimilar and coherent unto themselves within the work, but as a play its episodes, particularly that with Dalila, disintegrate into almost disparate parts, and the tension between the human and the divine levels evokes external awarenesses that unacceptably dissipate it as a play. One external factor often brought to bear upon the work, unfortunately, is Paradise Lost and its characters Adam and Eve. Reading the work as a play has led to misunderstanding of what is going on in the poem, why it is structured as it is, and what Milton's act of writing was. I argue that we should read the poem as a poem ± a dramatic one, yes, but still a poem. As poem, Samson Agonistes makes clear that Milton's intention was to achieve reader internalization of the substance (or message), or emotions, or attitudes which will be found in it. This does not imply what these are, only that the work should be read (rather than literally viewed), that its ``message'' will blare out humankind's need for faith, for renovation, for personal determination of belief as to the true god and nation, and for activism under that belief, in contradistinction from Samson and Manoa or Dalila or Harapha, where in the ``imitation'' of human action of the poem the reader may have gone but by the grace of ``God.'' The genre of Samson Agonistes, then, is drama by form and characteristics, but poem by execution and structure; drama by authorial attitude toward the material, but poem by authorial intent for the audience.15 The work has the 14

15

Anthony Low, The Blaze of Noon: A Reading of Samson Agonistes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 8, and see his following discussion. See pp. 13±17 of my Intentionality and the New Traditionalism: Some Liminal Means to Literary Revisionism (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991) for distinctions of genre and mode and of authorial interaction with them. It is dicult to know how to deal with Harold Skulsky's recent argument that Milton has invented, as it were, a dramatic structure that operates as a scene of a jury trial; see Justice in the Dock: Milton's Experimental Tragedy (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995). Not only does the book run roughshod over Greek dramatic structure, but it implies a forensic mode on the part of Samson that ignores any alteration in his thinking and action within the course of the drama. (By ``forensic'' I mean the attempt to exonerate some ``crime'' of the past through current argument or action, as opposed to ``epideictic'' where future action is urged through emulation of a current person or circumstance, and to ``paranectic'' where current action is praised and urged for future continuance.) Here Milton becomes a character-presence arguing his point of view through some kind of defense that apparently

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The Dramatic Work and its Reading form and many of the characteristics of drama, but it has some characteristics and the intention of the poem. Milton was subtly directing his readers to understand Paradise Regain'd, the epic, as a public form presenting a central ®gure of heroic proportions, and Samson Agonistes, the dramatic poem, as a public form presenting a ®gure of human proportions whose actions reveal the actions of the ``typical'' individual human and the potential actions of the ``untypical'' individual human. As poem, emphasizing its generic relationship and ignoring its form, Samson Agonistes allows for internalizations that can produce a being ®nally capable of a positive action (or thought predicating such action). Thus the mode of Paradise Regain'd is comedic; that of Samson Agonistes is tragic. The allegoric dimension in the black or white, evil or good presentations of superhuman Satan and Jesus in the brief epic contrasts with the realistic humanness of Samson, Manoa, Dalila, and Harapha, who become not allegories but metonymies.16

16

would have to include, strangely enough, Samson's actions prior to the opening of the drama. That the episode in the book of Judges is problematic and, I would suggest, superimposed on it seems evident, but for Milton it was still Scripture. By these words I mean, is the character another name for Man or Woman, Great Deliverer or Treacherous Seductress? or is the character indicative of characteristics that can be assigned to Man or Woman or assigned to Great Deliverer or Treacherous Seductress? The allegoric quality of Eve, for example, as Womankind is di€erent from the metonymic quality of Dalila, who is not Womankind but a human being who in this case is female, despite Samson's verbal attempt to make her an allegory. Michael Wilding's discussion of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo is instructive here: the simplicity of its allegorical characters limits the ``politicalness'' of the novel, leading Wilding to conclude that Conrad ``seems not to be interested in any analysis of political motive or consequence or action'' (94). I think it is clear that Samson Agonistes is exactly opposite: a political work sustained by complex characters whose characteristics ± which may be shared by others ± have created, and will continue to create, a world of varied political and religious thought, with ideals advanced and quickly dashed by enemies and friends. See Social Visions, ``The Politics of Nostromo,'' 77±94 (Sydney: Sydney Studies, 1993).

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Chapter 4 SAMSON: GOD'S CHAMPION, A TYPE, OR INDIVIDUAL?

T

HE positive view of the biblical Samson, representing an agent of the true God who pulls down the pillars around the heads of those opposed to the true God and his nation, overlies Milton's poem. One can understand the ¯ickerings of a Christ typology illuminating this Samson, particularly after one has moved in the 1671 volume from the earthly Jesus who will become the Christ (with his ministry and cruci®xion after the end of the poem) to a human being who has succumbed to wrong thinking and who now, through trial, must learn repentance. In his ®nal actions he joins the presentations of Milton's contemporaries as the culture hero that Jackie Di Salvo has delineated for us.1 Milton's dramatic poem, however, is concerned with how the positive Samson recovered from his errors of the past, what those errors were, and thus how they can be overcome. While in his ®nal actions Milton's Samson may become a symbol of the Good Old Cause as Christopher Hill views the biblical Samson,2 within the full poem more has happened and is happening, setting up a criticism of the adherents of that cause which has failed through such errors as are observable in the representative Samson.3 Such underlying criticism of the adherents of the Good Old Cause, not the Cause itself, is similar to Milton's intent in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649), which he wrote 1

2

3

Di Salvo, `` `The Lord's Battells'.'' Samson as the Christ or even a Christ ®gura seems strange for Milton, as analyst of the Bible, for Judges xiii:11 says that Manoa ``came to the man, and said unto him, Art thou the man that spakest unto the woman'' and the gloss in the Geneva Bible for ``the man'' is: ``He calleth him man, because he so seemed, but he was Christ the eternal worde, which at his time appointed became man.'' Clearly Manoa's prophesied son cannot be the Christ. Samson as a type of the Christ may be another matter; Krouse cited Thomas Hayne's comparisons between Samson and Christ in The Generall View of the Holy Scriptures (London, 1640), 217±18. See F. Michael Krouse, Milton's Samson and the Christian Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949), 69. Christopher Hill, God's Englishmen: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 190±91. Compare Di Salvo's comments on the character of Satan in Paradise Lost; see War of Titans: Blake's Critique of Milton and the Politics of Religion (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983), 252. See citations of ``Israel's Governours, and Heads of Tribes,'' noted here in Chapter 1, who reject the ways of God by despising, envying, or suspecting ``Whom God hath of his special favour rais'd/ As thir Deliverer'' (242, 272±74).

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Samson: God's Champion, Type, or Individual? not to argue against adherents of the king but against those who align themselves with reform yet draw back as consequent acts, dictated by reason, arise, . . . who have resisted Charles only to balk at reasonable outcomes of their prior actions because of custom and self-interest . . . [H]is audience consists of those who ``begin to swerve and almost shiver'' through false argument and emotional tugs upon them.4

If Samson does represent the Good Old Cause, it has failed in the past because of pride, foremost, but also because of abrogation of vows and selfinterest. On the other hand, Laura Lunger Knoppers argues that the execution of the regicides and its spectacle of martyrdom in the early years of the Restoration provided Milton with example for Samson as divine witness to the Good Old Cause.5 ``In Restoration England, Samson Agonistes attempts to recoup and stabilize the shifting signs of (monarchical) power on display'' (496); it ``instills faith in the Good Old Cause of Commonwealth because of, not despite, the external signs of defeat in Restoration England'' (503). The full poem, rather than just the culminating action of the catastrophe, poses a Samson who is more than just the champion of his people. He has been a negative hero as well, one recognized during Milton's age as Joseph Wittreich has evidenced.6 ``[I]n the initial four decades of the seventeenth century,'' he tells us, ``there is a tendency to diminish Samson's supposed heroism and to ®nd in his story the `lamentable lapses' of mankind generally, to regard his strength as `nothing . . . but fantasticall . . . to the eye: as those Kingdomes which the Divell o€ered to Christ' '' (187).7 Richard Hooker numbered Samson among those who should be pitied for their errors, among those self-fashioned deliverers who, displaying zeal toward God, appropriate unto themselves the promises of Scripture; and because all they do is based on ``a certain ®gurative resemblance'' such men are mistaken for the true prophets,

Wittreich writes. My reading of Milton's political purpose in Samson Agonistes, therefore, is not simply to give hope to the Good Old Cause as the means of delivery from the evils of monarchy (whether we date the poem in the later 1640s or in 1667±70), but to point out the errors of some of the republican thinkers and the means to nullifying such errors, thereby allowing the Good Old Cause to pull down the pillars of Babel that the English Philistine monarchy epitomizes. In the poem Milton adumbrates the concept 4 5

6 7

Shawcross, ``The Higher Wisdom of The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,'' 144, 146. Laura Lunger Knoppers, `` `This So Horrid Spectacle': Samson Agonistes and the Execution of the Regicides,'' English Literary Renaissance 20 (1990): 487±504. Wittreich, Interpreting Samson Agonistes. Wittreich is quoting Edward Vaughan, A Plaine and Perfect Method for the Easie Understanding of the Whole Bible (London, 1617), 2±3.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes of God as a God of War8 and exposes the falsity and pride of alleged reasons for wrong acting and lack of acting: ease and custom, fraud with its accompanying self-interest and emotional tugs, pride and wrong reason arising from the Self (the three central ``temptations''). Samson as positive exemplar can lead to establishment of the Good Old Cause; but as negative ®gure he too often represents the would-be adherents of the Good Old Cause. The ``problem'' with these readings of Samson including Hooker's, I would posit, is that they see Samson as the deliverer from oppression, the establisher of the Good Old Cause, and a virtuous being, for only a virtuous being would be acceptable to God. Milton's analysis goes beyond that surface to see delivery and establishment ONLY through each person's emending of his life, and this can be accomplished ONLY through emulation of the ®gure of one ®nally like Samson presented in the dramatic poem. The likening of Samson to the Christ seems to be commonplace. In a poem entitled ``On the Resurrection,'' for example, George Je€reys wrote: Proof of his Goodness by his Death he gave . . . Reveng'd, to Ground, like Samson, did he go, And in his proper Mansion crusht the Foe. The Fabric Samson shook, and fell beneath; Here shakes the World at its Creator's Death.9

Erskine-Hill reminds us that Samson was considered a type of the Messiah although his story shows ``opportunity lost.''10 On the other hand, Milton's Samson ``has not quit himself like Christ,'' for Derek Wood, and one point of evidence is his lack of charity. Besides, ``Manoa and the Chorus exemplify throughout the play the darkened moral consciousness of fallen Man under the Law, denied as yet the moral example of Christ's life in time, denied as yet full understanding of the Christian meaning of history.''11 The putdown of mid-seventeenth-century republicans and their Good Old Cause by Sir John Birkenhead employs the ®gure of Samson to play upon the signi®cance of all the sons of Eve and Samson's symbolization of strength against the monarchy: 8

9

10

11

God as a god of war, a ``Godhead of dread,'' an absent yet present deity, is explored by Michael Lieb in `` `Our Living Dread': The God of Samson Agonistes,'' Milton Studies 33 (1996): 3±25. ``The cultic phenomenon depersonalizes any concept of God. . . . What emerges is an emphasis upon `place' as the site of worship and `thing' as the vehicle through which worship is enacted'' (20); thus Samson is a vehicle of God's overwhelming power. Miscellanies, in Verse and Prose. By George Je€reys, Esq. (London: Printed for the Author, MDCCLIV), 8. Howard Erskine-Hill, Poetry and the Realm of Politics: Shakespeare to Dryden (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996): 223. Derek N. C. Wood, `` `Exil'd from Light': The Darkened Moral Consciousness of Milton's Hero of Faith,'' University of Toronto Quarterly 58 (1988±89): 244±62; see p. 249.

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Samson: God's Champion, Type, or Individual? Classis IV. Casuists, Resolving Tender Consciences in these 40 years quñres . . . 62. Whether Adam's Rib hath slain more than Sampsons Jaw bone? 63. Whether England be Sampson (as Mr Goodwin tels us) because it is strong; or because 'tis imprison'd, shaven close, and hath lost its two eyes?12

These two strains, Samson's strength and political symbol, with overtones of Christ as antitype, echo throughout the literary and art world. An excellent epitome of that image is found in The Samson Monolith13 which depicts Samson's wondrous physical strength and his legend ± Samson wrestling himself free of vines that enthrall him; Samson led to the feast by a boy; Samson's foot protruding from beneath the rubble of the destroyed temple. Four scenes omit standard episodes from his life, and Forsyth remarks, ``There is no hint of the tragic ¯aw in Samson that perhaps ®rst comes to mind today ± his taste for women and his lack of judgment with regard to them'' (39); however, there are ape ®gures included, and these were medieval symbols of lust. The typology that the statuary of Samson and the lion implies is Christ triumphing over the devil, as well as the bearing of the gates of Gaza and mounting the hill before Hebron, pre®guring Christ's mounting to heaven, having broken the gates of Hell and thrown o€ the con®nement of his tomb. ``The nude ®gure at Duke thus seems to have a double role in the cycle: to evoke the narrative episodes during which Samson dominated his bonds, and to allude to Samson in generic terms as an exemplar of strength in the guise or mode of Hercules'' (43). Hercules, of course, was considered a pagan type of Christ and the nude thus iterates a subtheme of Hercules in the legend, for they were often paired in Romanesque art. With clear application to a Christ/Samson correlation, Forsyth asserts that ``death yielding life [is] the essence of Samson's riddle'' (47). What Milton's poem adumbrates is not a true ®gure of Christ in the presentation of Samson, but it does approach, ®nally, the qualities of the human Son: faith and obedience, eternal life through mortal death, and the unassailable power, not of body, but of inward being.14 12 13

14

John Birkenhead, Two Centvries of Pavls Chvrch-yard (London, 1653), 14±15. See Caroline Bruzelius with Jill Meredith, The Brumer Collection of Medieval Art: The Duke University Museum of Art (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), [21]±55 by Ilene H. Forsyth. It is dated ca. 1150s±1160s. Ignored in many discussions of Milton's work are the analogues of the Samson story that Watson Kirkconnell prints or catalogues in That Invincible Samson: The Theme of Samson Agonistes in World Literature with Translation of the Major Analogues (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964). As Kirkconnell remarks, ``any critic who has denounced Milton for his chorus' unfriendly remarks about women, as represented by Delilah, will ®nd that their language is cambric tea by comparison with that of Milton's forerunners. . . . It is childish, out of some anachronistically Romantic sympathy for Mary Powell, spitefully to indict Milton on these grounds as a woman-hater'' (vi±vii). He adds that in these analogues ``Samson foreshadows Christ yet is himself a very human sinner who rises through penitence to sainthood and revengeful martyrdom'' (vii).

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes The correspondences of Jesus, who will become the Christ, and Samson that so many commentators have discovered were set up by Milton himself through the 1671 volume, as noted before. Wittreich has discussed the way in which Paradise Regain'd interprets Paradise Lost, and then in turn how Samson Agonistes interprets Paradise Regain'd.15 Radzinowicz made the relationship particularly clear in remarking that in the conclusion of Paradise Lost ``two themes for future treatment are explicit . . . : the example of the `Redeemer ever blest' and his version of heroic fortitude, and the addition of human deeds to faith, virtue, patience, temperance, and love in proportion to the knowledge of God given to any man'' (229). Wittreich parts company with many commentators on Samson Agonistes (for example, as he himself notes, with Arnold Stein's view that the hero of each poem ``presents a human and individual way to the same truth''16) when he calls the dramatic poem a warning or negative example, thus stressing Samson's fall prior to the beginning of the work and the action required to nullify or reverse that negativity. Like others, Wittreich does not see Samson as a type of Christ but rather an ordinary man, Christ's opposite type, who must undergo the internal trials that Samson does in order to be renovated. Samson, contrasting with the Son in Paradise Regain'd, is ``a hero binding man down to the cycles of history'' (207±208). The opposed readings of the poems in the 1671 volume underscore the uncertainties of the text of Samson Agonistes. That Samson as hero binds man down to the cycles of history accords with my own view of the poem, approached from a totally di€erent angle. I have previously argued that the real tragedy of Samson Agonistes lies in our recognition as the poem ends ``that Samson's story is constantly played through time and that we are part of another recurrence'' (``Irony as Tragic E€ect,'' 293). The wisdom of putting these two works together in the same volume is the commerce which is thus established between them: we see in Samson what the Son as Man could have become had he succumbed to any of the temptations of Satan, and in the Son we see what Samson as the ``great Deliverer'' ± the ironic earthly counterpart of the true ``heavenly'' deliverer ± should have been. Perhaps commentators have misread Samson Agonistes so ineptly in the past because they have not fully acknowledged the interrelationships of the two works, seeing the second as a kind of ``King Lear'' in which the title hero's ``fall'' has really occurred before the opening of the play, a fall made visible in his incomprehensible division of his kingdom as it begins. Samson is not Lear; he is rather, to appropriate Wittreich's word, a kind of negative Christ, except that I ®nd positivity in the ®nal actions and therefore qualities identi®ed with Jesus. 15

16

Visionary Poetics: Milton's Tradition and his Legacy (San Marino, CA: Henry E. Huntington Library, 1979), 191±92. Arnold Stein, Heroic Knowledge: An Interpretation of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1965), 205.

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Samson: God's Champion, Type, or Individual? Samson, viewed as two types of the same being, sets up an ambiguity (an uncertainty in our reading of his characterization, that is) as Henry McDonald explains, for ``the calling each receives from God to free his people'' makes the two Samsons ``fundamentally similar.'' The ``unheroic, eccentric behavior'' and the mission create the ambiguity of character, the ®nal destructive act thus becoming radically ambiguous.17 Vengeance should be a private act, not a public display. The two typologies that Wittreich argues for the ®gure of Samson exist in the poem, one in early hope and poetic development, one in earlier actuality and poetic reversal. But of course the contemporary republican thinkers, no more than the tribe of Dan, did not rise to the challenge that the dramatic poem sets forth. We see it in the poem in the Chorus's All is best, though we oft doubt, What th' unsearchable dispose Of highest wisdom brings about, And ever best found in the close. Oft he seems to hide his face, But unexpectedly returns . . . (1745±50)

While the thought is one Milton strongly believed, that God would aid his true servants in the time of their adversity, it also should tell us that God bears such witness only to ``his faithful Champions,'' ``His servants . . . [who learn] new acquist/ Of true experience from this great event.'' God does not expend his great ``dispose'' on those who are not his true servants or faithful champions: the true experience of this great event for Milton's readers should be both the rejection of self-interest, fraud, emotional tugs, custom, and pride and the acceptance of action (not the passivity of letting someone else do what needs be done) even to destruction of human institution and human life.18 As the messenger says, ``Gaza yet stands, but 17

18

Henry McDonald, ``A Long Day's Dying: Tragic Ambiguity in Samson Agonistes,'' Milton Studies 27 (1991): 263±83. Too often Milton has been cast as some kind of paci®st, for he does lament war and humankind's recourse to it to resolve problems (as in Sonnet 15, as well as Sonnets 16 and 17). But he also recognized the need at times for military preparedness and action, as Robert T. Fallon has reminded us so well (see Captain or Colonel: The Soldier in Milton's Life and Art [Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984] ). Related is Lieb's examination of Milton's sparagmatic experience, particularly in the encounter of Samson and Harapha: ``The outcome of his agon with Harapha is one that moves him to an ultimate act of glorious and triumphant violence'' (Culture of Violence 260). Fallon observes the medieval chivalric code that combined courageous, physically powerful, and furious action in battle to advance the kingdom of God with the virtues of the Sermon on the Mount (242), and concludes (we think of Harapha): ``Milton condemns a certain breed of warrior, again not because he is a warrior, but because he serves a false god, and is therefore himself false'' (248). The acceptance of action even to destruction of human life is a major point of Tenure of

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes all her Sons are fall'n.'' The tragedy of the dramatic poem is that the tribe of Dan and some of the republican thinkers of Milton's day did not act, did not allow such things as self-interest, emotional tugs, custom, and pride to be overcome.19 The poem moves far away from the ephemeral concerns of the 1640s and 1660s when we take perspective: it cannot be relegated to only a rendition of the Samson legend arising from his seduction by Delilah and his recovery of strength, enabling him to pull the pillars down at the feast of Dagon and thereby destroy the ``Lords, Ladies, Captains, Councellors, or Priests,/ Thir choice nobility and ¯ower.'' As the messenger also reports, the vulgar escaped who stood without; surely no one can expect them, without some direction and some action by those of other belief, to join now the people of Israel. Certainly the con®rmed monarchists of Milton's day did not join a republican regime or thinking because of the Interregnum; and though solace might have been read by the remnants of the Good Old Cause in 1660, as Knoppers proposes,20 the antimonarchic forces were few and not immediately e€ectual. It is not until the gradual (though far from total) development of a more republican government as the century moved on that some of these ideas took hold. The di€erences in these matters in the 1640s and the 1660s, with the Interregnum existing between these dates, will be taken up in Chapter 6. Again some of this has been discussed by students of Milton in the past, but most of it has not been and has not been so interrelated and interpreted. The position and signi®cance of the Dalila episode within such a reading becomes a part of the whole, not the focus of the full poem although it is the central episode, and the character of Dalila is not the focal person in the full poem although it is major to the recovery of Samson in a reversal of the lure of the past and to the arousement of the now blinded champion to assert power, controlled against its misuse and readied for its purposeful potential. The history of Delilah's seduction of Samson and his ensuing entrapment is the climax of the prepoem and therefore o€ers the context that will demonstrate the nulli®cation of further enticement. There is, thus, focalization with the episode and with the main co-actor in that episode. Milton's Dalila is deserving of close attention as a character in her own right, as a

19 20

Kings and Magistrates , which does not argue for the execution of the king but which argues that at times the people may be driven to regicide. It is an argument that was not paid attention to then by those who espoused republican causes and that branded Milton a regicide, just as it is not credited today by those who deplore, ``But they didn't have to kill him!'' See Shawcross, ``Irony as Tragic E€ect,'' and Chapter 7 here. See Laura Lunger Knoppers, ``Milton's The Readie and Easie Way and the English Jeremiad,'' pp. 213±25, in Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Milton's Prose, ed. David Loewenstein and James Grantham Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Thomas Corns in his chapter on ``Milton and the Good Old Cause,'' pp. 269±93 of the same volume, argues that, although Milton recognized the defeat of the Good Old Cause in The Readie and Easie Way, he expected that it would rise again.

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Samson: God's Champion, Type, or Individual? person, and as a woman in the midst of a patriarchal society, not only that represented by Samson but those represented by the patriarchal Chorus and by her patriarchal countrymen and governors. But it is Samson who is central and his observable changes of attitude in the poem that carry the ``message.'' The question of martyrdom has become germane to a reading of the character Samson. A martyr, whether Samson or Jesus or some latter-day de®ant, should present to others the thinking and action which that person's being has undergone, similar thinking and action thus being evoked in others, not some sentimental wishfulness for change with accompanying pity and ine€ectuality. Over the ages people have misunderstood martyrdom, and so Samson, the biblical character, and Samson, the character in Samson Agonistes. The negative Samson of Hooker and of some religionists of the early seventeenth century was beginning to point the way to the uncertainty of `exemplar' and the need for internalization of what Samson (when truly God-inspired) should stand for, thus leading to action. Milton talked of ``the victorious agonies of Martyrs and Saints'' in The Reason of ChurchGovernment (39), indicating that any victory would involve faithfulness to the Truth and to the meaning of their lives. The question is What is the Truth? and that is the point of his argument against the Modest Confuter of the Smectymnuan position against prelacy. We also reverence the Martyrs but relye only upon the Scriptures. And why we ought not to relye upon the Martyrs I shall be content with such reasons as my confuter himselfe a€ords me . . . there may be a Martyr in a wrong cause, and as couragious in su€ering as the best: sometimes in a good cause with a forward ambition displeasing to God (An Apology against a Pamphlet, 31).

The dramatic poem explores or rather lets the reader explore whether Samson becomes a martyr in his act of destruction, whether his action is based on Truth, that is the True God and what that god stands for, and whether he has indeed died for that Truth. The negative Samson arises, I would suggest, because, ®rst, Samson's early life has not shown a commitment to Truth or to the God of that Truth, but only a blustering conceit and bravado and an emphasis on bodily pleasure; second, Samson's destruction of the Philistines was interpreted as further proof of that earlier life; and third, the result of his action brought no internalization in others of what that thinking and action would predicate as martyr. Milton's presentation of Manoa and the Chorus o€ers the kind of ``exemplar''-thinking that has ensued from the ``martyrdom'' of one like Samson: worldly acknowledgment in a monument with ¯owers in commemoration, and in holidays; pity and sanctimonious praise; and distance from the thinking and action of that martyr. Is not Milton o€ering his readers the choice of Samson as pro¯igate or Samson as eventual martyr,21 knowing that some will see Samson's action only as negative, 55

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes suicide, violence, and others as commendatory but distant from themselves, yet hoping that some will indeed learn what Samson demonstrates, a giving of one's self up to God and God's omniscience?22 In the second part of De doctrina christiana, that dealing with humankind and its worship of God and with charity, Milton discusses martyrdom in Chapter VI on zeal. The ``zeal'' of those who make a ``®rm and, when necessary, open profession of the true religion, and of our worship of him,'' ``when it leads to death or imprisonment or torture or disgrace, is called MARTYRDOM'' (Yale Prose, VI, 701; Carey translation). The key to being a martyr is that open profession, and in Samson Agonistes we have some seeming verbalizations of that profession by Manoa and the Chorus and, in the past, by Samson in justi®cation of his actions. But it is lip-service. That profession should be sancti®ed ``by our deeds when they do not fall short of our verbal profession'' (VI, 702), and of course Samson's deeds of the past have fallen short of any verbal profession, largely because they have been selfpromoting and self-gratifying; from Manoa and the Chorus there are no deeds. The former Samson is an example of the ``failure to act in a way which corresponds to . . . verbal profession,'' joining Milton's examples of Moses and Aaron in their omission to sanctify God in the eyes of the people, and David in his committing adultery (VI, 702±703). Samson, of course, is a good example of both kinds of failure. The question thus for the readers of Milton's poem is, does Samson become a martyr with his ®nal action and death, or not? If we can view him as not worthy of the name upon his ``imprisonment or torture or disgrace'' because of his past and lack of true deeds to back up his ``profession'' (acknowledging the negative Samson that Wittreich ®nds in various commentators' works), has he in the peripeteia, with the ``rouzing motions,'' rejected his former self, not now self-promoting and self-gratifying, has he accepted direction for further action from some force within (those ``rouzing motions''), and has he asserted the sancti®cation of God by his action that be®ts his profession?23 The popular view of Samson has generally been that he is a martyr and thus that he has asserted the sancti®cation of God. Milton's poem o€ers the path 21

22

23

As Knoppers remarks (56), Samson does not show the characteristics of the martyrs of John Foxe's Actes and Monuments (1563), although the Chorus and Manoa see him as a martyr (and some would say in later terms, a Christ ®gure). The idolatry of the Philistines for a false god, seemingly exposed by Samson's act, is now assumed by the Danites who create a Samson as martyr, as a secular idol: his act and all his previous acts have no relationship to a divine inspiration for them. See Laura Lunger Knoppers, Historicizing Milton: Spectacle, Power, and Poetry in Restoration England (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994). For Ulreich (`` `Beyond the Fifth Act,' '' 281) ``Samson's regeneration is a recreation, his death also a rebirth''; thus the poem becomes ``a work of tragic prophecy'' and the catastrophe is transformed into revelation. The signi®cance of a ``verbal plot'' from Samson's past garrulity to prudent speech and silence (particularly amidst the noise of the ®nal catastrophe) has been meaningfully explored by various commentators. See among these: Marcia Landy, ``Language and the Seal of Silence

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Samson: God's Champion, Type, or Individual? taken to reach that point, a path that involves renovation (already discussed in Chapter 1 and to be further examined in Chapter 8), a path that is a reversal of those aspects of his life prior to his capture, the shearing of his hair, and his blindness. It is not that he has been ``regenerated,'' and he does not particularly change (or ``develop'') with each of the three central episodes, although cumulatively by the end of episode ®ve he has. Rather the ®ve episodes present a Samson who comes to reject each of those self-promoting and self-gratifying actions of his past: his self-justi®cation of action by his being prophesied Great Deliverer, his assignment of his ills to others, his carnal desires, his violence for the sake of violence, his boastfulness. It is as if Samson is a character on the dramatic scene around whom things happen with no coherence to each other, in order to set forth one or another aspect of that character and bring that aspect into his purview in order to reject its continued cogency. The structure is one of panorama, similar to that in Euripides' The Trojan Women, as noted before.24 Critics should learn to accept Milton's generic classi®cation of his ``dramatic poem'' and not seek to ®nd parallels with Elizabethan play constructions. The ``build'' or crescendo moves to the end of Episode Five, with the height of action occurring o€stage, not in some kind of pyramidic form with the Dalila section as catastasis, as if the poem were ``Hamlet.'' Samson's riddling emphasizes his verbal world (the ``verbal plot'' as it has been labelled); the solving of the riddles is achieved only through trickery and subterfuge. It should be a verbal world that is built on intentional readings rather than their inherent meanings. Once Samson himself can reject the ecacy of the surface meanings of words and even verbal sound to appreciate the ambiguities of language and its metaphor (when it has fraudulent intention as well as when it provides potential ironic meaning) he is able to proceed to a demonstration of his renovation, which involves his solving of the riddles that language poses. As Ulreich points out the answer to the riddle about the lion and the honey is really the deliverance of Israel: ``Just as the lion which would devour Samson is devoured by him, so Samson, in seeking to destroy the Philistines, is himself destroyed; and as the death of the eater produces meat, so the destruction of Samson nourishes his people with the honey of deliverance'' (285), or, we must modify, it should have. As David Gay tells us (`` `Honied Words' ''), ``The riddle is a device of wisdom literature'' and

24

in Samson Agonistes,'' Milton Studies 2 (1970): 175±94; Stanley E. Fish, ``Inaction and Silence: The Reader in Paradise Regain'd,'' in Calm of Mind, 25±47; Robert L. Entzminger, ``Samson Agonistes and the Recovery of Metaphor,'' Studies in English Literature 22 (1982): 137±56; and Leonard Mustazza, ``The Verbal Plot of Samson Agonistes,'' Milton Studies 23 (1987): 241±58. Louis Martz compares the Dalila episode with the scene in The Trojan Women where Menelaus, weak and with indecisive bluster and torment, confronts Helen, who argues against him most unrepentantly. See Poet of Exile: A Study of Milton's Poetry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980), 284.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes the link between honey (Samson's lion) and the honey bee (Deborah) serves to contrast the wise prophetess from the errant, aimless, practical joker the biblical Samson so often is. The di€erence between Deborah's success and Samson's failures implies a gradual falling away from the ideals of the divine summons or charisma of judgeship (49).

What this leads to in Milton's rendering is a distinguishing (or separation) of ``the union of God's will and Samson's at the point of recognition from previous, reckless presumptions of this union.'' When he can ``solve'' the ``riddle'' of ``Where outward force constrains, the sentence holds;/ But who constrains me to the Temple of Dagon,/ Not dragging?'' (1369±71) ± that is, after he has been galvanized through the preceding four-and-a-half episodes ± he can decode the answer, ``If I obey them,/ I do it freely'' but ``Nothing to do, be sure, that may dishonour/ Our Law, or stain my vow of Nazarite'' (1385±86). ``I am content to go,'' he asserts, for he has changed his purpose, ``So mutable are all the ways of men.'' The reader hears echoes of ``the ways of God to men'' and interprets Samson's decision as one that again brings union with God's will. Samson's riddling can be seen as part of the motif of ``secrecy'' that Haskin examines;25 it can be compared with Jesus's secrecy, as in the parables. The developmental aspect of the dramatic poem that I propose ± the presentation of Samson, the ®ve stages in his refutation of lures of the past (including a version of the triple-temptation motif), and the decision of Samson ± vies with the linear progression of a stage play. While Samson ultimately changes from defeated entrant on the scene to triumphant expirer, stage progress has not taken place: the talk whirls around Samson as person only, and the only action is shown in movements of people on and o€ the stage and, through the classical nuntius, away from the stage. This, again, I would suggest, accounts for the dramatic poem's never having been intended to the stage, as well as the curious statement, ``It suces if the whole Drama be found not produc't beyond the ®ft Act.'' Is not Milton saying that the meaning inherent in Samson's ``change'' and action is sucent for the poem's readers? that its e€ect upon the Danites is not ultimately signi®cent? that a repetition of the drama that has been produced need not be produced again and again? but that, instead, the poem will suce if that meaning of individual change to faith and obedience is heard and achieved? The Samson we thus ®nd in the dramatic poem is a kind of ``any human'' who does not allegorize humankind but who is a metonym of all humans:26 Samson is one human who represents the wastage of life that the individual too often creates through pride and boastfulness, overweening 25

Dayton Haskin, Milton's Burden of Interpretation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 162±82.

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Samson: God's Champion, Type, or Individual? ambition resulting from what is misunderstood, carnality and pleasure principles, and misuse of god-given virtues. Samson is the human counterpart, now even after the Fall, that could have been a perfect being, coming from the hand of God. While Eve has fallen through deceit and Adam through willfulness, Samson has fallen through self-deceit and a kind of narcissism and through inattention to and misunderstanding of God's injunctions and prophesies. The ``riddles'' of God have not been understood: he himself has not been a good ``riddle''-solver. The prohibition of not eating the apple given to Adam and Eve may be contrasted with the prohibitions of the Nazarite, one of which is broken through deceit (although the repetition of that deceit impugns the obtuseness that allowed such repetitions to occur), one through inattentiveness and perverse will. The vows of the Nazarite have been broken by Samson prior to the beginning of Milton's dramatic poem. Even the honey taken out of the carcass of the lion (Judges xiv:8±9) of which he partook was not kosher. The procedures for the Nazarite who has abrogated even one of the laws is set forth in Numbers vi:9€., none of which have been carried out by Samson. The question underlying the poem of Whose god Is God? points to the metonymic function of Samson. Here is one who assumes that his god is God, and since that god is the god of the chosen people of God (the Israelites ± as well as their Christian descendents), Samson's god is the true God. Yet God has allowed the Danites to be captived, Samson to be defeated, blinded, and made a slave. A jaundiced view sees this god as a false god. Samson recognizes the problem: [I] to God have brought Dishonour, obloquie, and op't the mouths Of Idolists, and Atheists; have brought scandal To Israel, didence to God, and doubt In feeble hearts, propense anough before To waver, or fall o€ and joyn with Idols. (451±56)

Milton's task in this poem is to counter such thinking in people as that 26

As metonym, Samson indicates an association of his name (and all it brings to mind) with a human being: it stands for human being, just as ``crown'' associates ``king'' and is used in place of ``king.'' Quite di€erent is a metaphor or allegoric ®gure. Samson as metaphor would identify him with a speci®c kind of human; as an allegoric ®gure he would equate meanings not explicitly within the text. The di€erences are crucial, I think, to an understanding of Milton's dramatic poem, in both the way we read Samson and the way we read Dalila. Neither is representative of a speci®c kind of human being, but of all human beings who can perform as they do, and clearly neither is allegoric. As dramatic characters they are themselves, and yet, metonymically, they are also the possibilities that everyone may be.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes discernible through Samson's experience of the past and pro€er striking reasons to reestablish that God in people's thinking, renouncing such idols as Dagon, such slander of God through the actions of humans, and pointing out that God allows for renovation even in one so thoroughly dissolute of a worthy past, except in the eyes of those who credit warfare and killing and mere strength. To accomplish this Milton presents a central character who meets the continued challenges of life to which he has previously succumbed and, in seriatim order, conquers them. Samson doesn't ``grow'' with each episode so much as he eradicates a negative aspect of himself with each episode. The ®nal episode as Dayton Haskin proposes (178) recapitulates Samson's past: the ``resistance to Manoa's plan for ransom, Dalila's attempt at reconciliation, and Harapha's prodding to despair'' represents a recapitulation of the three resistances to Delilah's ``¯attering prayers and sighs''; but like Delilah's fourth blandishment, the Ocer's demands for his governors are acquiesced to. That ``growth'' and recapitulation is also seen in Samson's ``I cannot come'' (1321), ``I will not come'' (1332), ``I will not come'' (1342), and ®nally ``I with this Messenger will go along'' (1384). Perhaps this eradication of a negative aspect of Samson is most clearly shown in the Harapha section where Samson does seem to give in to asserting his superior strength of combat, thus illustrating that violence is not only not rejected, but that it may be necessary for the ``warfaring'' follower of God. Now, however, it is not violence for violence's sake or to show o€ his superior strength but to evidence the power of his god, ``whose God is strongest, thine or mine?'' (1155).27 He has not been ``regenerated'' and he has not ``grown'' in the usual sense, but he has changed in attitude toward himself and in his relation to his god: he has changed his ``purpose'' (1406); he has been renovated. This has been a major debate in interpretation of Samson Agonistes: is Samson regenerated or not? In De doctrina christiana (Book I, Chapter XVII, p. 221 [Yale Prose, 453]), Milton wrote that ``It is by MAN'S RENOVATION that he is BROUGHT TO A STATE OF GRACE AFTER BEING CURSED AND SUBJECT TO GOD'S ANGER.'' Renovation takes place naturally when it a€ects the natural man, including vocation and the alteration in the natural man that follows it. ``But vocation'' ± Milton's de®nition is cited later ± ``and the consequent change which occurs in the natural man, are parts only of a natural mode of renovation. As a result, if they fall short of regeneration they do not lead to salvation'' (235±36; Yale Prose, 460).

27

Dennis Danielson discusses faithfulness and the belief in and need for spiritual combat in ``Milton, Bunyan, and the Clothing of Truth and Righteousness'' in Heirs of Fame: Milton and Writers of the English Renaissance, ed. Margo Swiss and David A. Kent (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1995), 247±69, especially 251±55.

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Samson: God's Champion, Type, or Individual? REGENERATION means that THE OLD MAN IS DESTROYED AND THAT THE INNER MAN IS REGENERATED BY GOD THROUGH THE WORD AND THE SPIRIT SO THAT HIS WHOLE MIND IS RESTORED TO THE IMAGE OF GOD, AS IF HE WERE A NEW CREATURE. MOREOVER THE WHOLE MAN, BOTH SOUL AND BODY, IS SANCTIFIED TO GOD'S SERVICE AND TO GOOD WORKS (236; Yale Prose, 461).

Under these de®nitions (and it does not matter really whether Milton was or was not the author of the treatise) Samson has become renovated through the course of the dramatic poem. The question, or rather the uncertainty, is, does he, through the ``rouzing motions'' and his act of destruction of the Temple, become regenerated, a ``new creature,'' ``restored to the image of God''? Regeneration has not been in evidence in the course of the poem; rather movement to vocation (the knowledge of the way to placate and worship the godhead) has been demonstrated and with Samson's ®nal action has been completed. Does it fall short of regeneration in that act or not? Is Samson saved? has he been ``ingrafted in Christ,'' through supernatural renovation, which is implied in its process along with regeneration? The contrast that the perfect man Jesus creates in the ®rst poem of the 1671 volume is emphasized when we understand this Samson in the dramatic poem, not as a personage in a narrative drawn from the Bible only, not as an allegoric ®gure for us to imitate as best we can in his ®nal decision, ``illumined'' with inward eyes, not as the warfaring ®gure of the ``mighty eagle'' that Di Salvo has shown was operative in the 1640s and 1650s for Milton and other antimonarchists, and not as the misguided and dissolute sensualist. The title of this chapter poses the question that has frequently emerged with uncertain answer: does Samson die as one who achieves God's work, that is who ful®lls the prophecy of his being Great Deliverer, or as a type of the Christ, or as one who represents only himself? While I conclude that he is not a true ®gure of Christ, he does appear to rearm faith and to exhibit obedience, thus suggesting that ``type'' is, in one sense, not unfounded ± but it is not the type that the Christian concept of typology has set forth, a Gideon or the preacher of Ecclesiastes. As a Great Deliverer of his people out of bondage, he fails since they are continued in their lack of ``freedom'' (although their inaction is not Samson's fault), and only annihilation of some of the Philistines, albeit the ``Lords, Ladies, Captain, Councellors, or Priests,/ Thir choice nobility and ¯ower'' (1653±54), occurs. And as the individual person Samson, he and his act, interpretable by some as suicide, o€er less than the truly momentous for biblical or secular remembrance. Rather, it has taken on symbolic meaning. Critical appraisals have varied widely as to the question, as we have already seen in the matter of the Christ ®gure. Of ``God's champion'' Ashraf Rushdy writes, ``Samson is the vessel of God's will ± implying thereby that Samson has lost his agential liberty and is indeed working within God's 61

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes sanction.''28 Opposed to that position is Jane Melbourne's: ``The `rouzing motions' (line 1382) to which Milton's Samson now responds are motions of his own will, motions that the violent of many ages have called the will of God.''29 Christopher Grose would seem to agree: ``The knowing reference to `rouzing motions' involves not something new or just now beginning (as Samson says) but an accommodation to the Danites' kind of thinking, perhaps even their expectations.''30 Hugh MacCallum views only partial resolution, for though Samson is judge or interpreter and also deliverer, judgment and thus deliverance are incomplete.31 Such divergent readings de®ne a most uncertain world delineated by Samson Agonistes. Does Grose's lack of belief ``that Samson meant what he said in his reference to that special instinctual talent'' (209), which Grose considers ``an inexplicable return to his `riddling days' '' (208), resolve the question of this chapter into the answer ``Individual,'' still boastful, still acting, still grandstanding? Counter to that reading, James Driscoll sees Samson moving toward archetypal identity with Job, and thus the statement that ``To struggle in darkness is Samson's tragic fate'' (175). John Ulreich has examined these questions of type, and has inferred that If we regard Samson as archetype [both in Scripture and in the poem], his death and potential rebirth become a spiritual paradox rather than a mere typological irony. By signifying his kinship with the Son, Samson's ``®ery virtue'' (1690) manifests his mythic identi®cation with the Son of God, who is also the ``day star,'' ``shining in a dark place'' (2 Peter 1.19).32

Samson's actions, with the ``dramatis personñ function[ing] as the required `opponents' '' to gain power, authority, autonomy, and distribution of guilt in order to develop the self and overcome oedipal matters, are oedipal against God, according to Judith Moses, through ``con¯icting feelings about being separate and independent.''33 Reason resolves doubt and con¯icting moral judgments; and Samson, argues Camille Slights, thus learns how to judge his own actions and to repent his past. He can ®nally act with a clear conscience. ``He claims the freedom to interpret divine law itself solely on the basis of his 28

29

30

31

32

33

Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, ``According to Samson's Command: Some Contexts of Milton's Tragedy,'' Milton Quarterly 26 (1992): 69±80; see p. 72. Jane Melbourne, ``Biblical Intertextuality in Samson Agonistes,'' Studies in English Literature 36 (1996): 111±27; see p. 121. Christopher Grose, Milton and the Sense of Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 207. Hugh MacCallum, ``Samson Agonistes: The Deliverer as Judge,'' Milton Studies 23 (1987): 259±90. John C. Ulreich, Jr., ``Samson's `Fiery Virtue': The Typological Problem in Samson Agonistes,'' Cithara 30 (1991): 26±33; see p. 26. Judith A. Moses, ``Samson Agonistes: Love, Authority, and Guilt,'' American Imago 44 (1987): 331±45; see esp. pp. 333±36.

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Samson: God's Champion, Type, or Individual? own judgment.''34 In agreement Stanley Fish observes that Samson, empowered through repenting and thus restored to God's favor, knows what he is going to do and does it at God's direction. Hence ``The truly noble thing about Samson's death is that it quiets the doubts and anxieties so many have expressed so often, for it allows a summing up to be written without fear that it will be contradicted by any new movements on the part of an unpredictable hero.''35 Still there are opposing voices. Daniel Lochman, for example, declares that ``At the conclusion Samson seems neither clearly elect nor reprobate''; he has emerged ``from the catastrophe as a hero tainted and nearly ± not completely ± corrupted by a world confused by disturbingly proximate good and evil.''36 Helen Damico's reading casts an extenuation over that view and raises uncertainties about the godhead. Repeatedly she views Samson's ``ostensibly heroic act[s] as the ful®llment of Samson's will rather than God's''; of his ®nal speech she writes, ``God is absent; and it is Samson who opposes the Philistian lords.''37 The overturning of Samson's wishes, assumptions, and expectations questions the nature of God's power and justice, demanding of Samson a ``rational choice to follow the will of the true God'' (Lochman, 278). The ambiguity of the hero equates Milton's sense of ambivalence, Gregory Goekjian concludes, and ``the right ordering of the world,'' again with some reproval of the godhead, ``may even risk calling into doubt the divine hierarchy on which it is predicated.''38 If, then, Samson is God's champion and is not; if the godhead is less than totally admirable; if Samson is a type, in certain ways, of the antitype though not a Christ ®gure; if he is an individual who nonetheless is also symbolic, can we acknowledge that Milton's Samson is in some sense all these personages and that the ``meaning'' of the dramatic poem resides in human understanding of how to be and the need to be all these things? That is, Samson is not an allegory or a metaphor but a metonym: we should maintain our individuality and our individuated thought, yet we should always exhibit such Christ-like qualities as faith in God and obedience to him. Only then may we see God's justice in his ways to men, not impugning him as humankind so usually does. Do we in the sense of doing God's bidding, having the grace to 34

35

36

37

38

Camille W. Slights, ``A Hero of Conscience: Samson Agonistes and Casuistry,'' PMLA 90 (1975): 395±413; see p. 411. Stanley E. Fish, ``Spectacle and Evidence in Samson Agonistes,'' Critical Inquiry 15 (1989): 556±86; see p. 562. Daniel T. Lochman, `` `Seeking Just Occasion': Law, Reason, and Justice at Samson's Peripety,'' Milton Studies 26 (1990): 271±88; see p. 273. Helen Damico, ``Duality in Dramatic Vision: A Structural Analysis of Samson Agonistes,'' Milton Studies 12 (1978): 91±116; see pp. 107, 110±11. The article surveys various in¯uences and possible debts to Greek drama, and argues a bipartite structure for the poem that revolves around the encounter between Samson and Dalila as the pivotal point (95). Gregory F. Goekjian, ``Suicide and Revenge: Samson Agonistes and the Law of the Father,'' Milton Studies 26 (1990): 253±70; see p. 266.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes pursue whatever is in the Great Task-Master's eye, become tantamount to being one of God's champions? And if this is so, is not the ``delivery'' from human bondage that all seek, not the localized physical controls of the Philistines over the Danites (translated to any modern person or group of persons under the thumb of others), that which Samson in his function ®nally as that kind of Great Deliverer veri®es: ``®rm obedience fully tri'd/ Through all temptations'' which will bring ``deeds/ Above Heroic'' (PR I, 4±5, 14±15)? Jesus in words resembling Samson's begins his soliloquy in the wilderness, ``O What a multitude of thoughts at once/ Awak'n'd in me swarm'' (I, 196±97), recalls his life, and resolves to ``openly begin [to ``work Redemption for mankind''], as best becomes/ Th' Authority which I deriv'd from Heav'n'' (I, 288±89, 266). The contrast lies in the pro¯igate misunderstanding of life that Samson has led; the comparison lies in the similarity of their being galvanized into the ``one greater Man'' who is able to ``Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat'' (PL I, 4, 5). ``The only wisdom to be carried away from the play is that there is no wisdom to be carried away, and that we are alone, like Samson, and like the children of Israel'' (Fish, 586) is much too pessimistic, despite Milton's apparent agreement with the point that the individual must e€ect freedom and thence salvation for himself ± but with God's aid. The wisdom to be carried away is, I believe, the ``message'' that I have argued the dramatic poem (and other works to be discussed in Chapter 10) carries. Fish cites The Reason of Church-Government (4) to describe the ``perpetuall stumble of conjecture and disturbance in this our darke voyage.'' But Milton continues, ``without the card and compasse of Discipline,'' and it is in that discipline that faith and obedience will emerge as its constituent elements. The ``stumble,'' ``disturbance,'' and ``darke voyage'' of life's sea journey can be, will be, o€set by that discipline, Milton implies. Samson has stumbled, indeed many people stumble in their ``vocation'' (``that natural method of renovation by which GOD THE FATHER . . . INVITES FALLEN MEN TO A KNOWLEDGE OF THE WAY TO PLACATE AND WORSHIP HIS GODHEAD'' [DDC, Book I, Chapter XVII, pp. 453±54] ), but recovery, renovation, Milton believed, is available to all believers without deprivation of excuse. ``To be without a calling, without a purpose, or strapped to one's destiny by wrong choice,'' John Stachniewski discerned for the seventeenth-century Puritan, ``was the worst imaginable thing. Samson's despair is of this kind. . . . Yet active choice, to be ®lling, had to be exercised in accordance, paradoxically, with a sense of destined purpose.''39 Such is the problem of life that Milton placed before his readers in the legend of Samson ± in legend of him who had a calling but one belayed by wrong choices until destined purpose again arose through selfdelivery from self-bondage by acceptance of faith and blind obedience. 39

John Stachniewski, The Persecutory Imagination: English Puritanism and the Literature of Religious Despair (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 376.

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Chapter 5 DALILA: SEDUCTRESS OR WIFE?

B

ECAUSE of his importance in the history of literature and culture itself, Milton has been singled out as an epitome of in¯uence upon people's thinking about gender concerns. The view of Eve that some readers have seen in Paradise Lost is accepted both as valid and as re¯ective of Milton's own beliefs. Since Eve is prototypical woman, the characterization that is advanced becomes the commonplace analysis of woman by and for a male audience and, through patriarchal domination, for a female audience as well. The point of Milton's in¯uence on culture and of subordinate, inferior status for woman in patriarchal society was made by Virginia Woolf in her reference to ``Milton's bogey'' in A Room of one's Own.1 The ®rst part of that point is eminently correct, for many people have learned even their Bible from Milton's poem: what is read there is what is deemed Truth. But of course that depends on how one interprets what is read, and in the case of Eve much depends on not only careful and deep reading but on what attitudes, expectations, and beliefs the reader starts with. The gender relationships of the second part of that bogey have, from Hebraic times to the present, been observable in practice and thus in attitude over and over again, though Milton and his poem be nowhere in the background of those who so classify woman. Again it should be obvious that the second part in terms of Milton and his poem depends upon the interpretation of the poem and its characterization of Eve. If readers see Eve as inferior and take on Adam's attitude in his Book X diatribe in Paradise Lost, then many people can be said to have learned of Woman's alleged inferior and evil nature from it; but if one reads di€erently, chalking up Adam's action and reaction to Milton's scorn, one comes to see Woman as the hope for salvation. A masculinist attitude is not removed, but anything misogynistic is dispelled. ``Milton's bogey'' should 1

Virginia Woolf, A Room of one's Own (New York: Harcourt, 1929), 118. Much of the animated discussion of the last decade or so has been provoked by Sandra Gilbert's essay ``Patriarchal Poetry and Women Readers: Re¯ections on Milton's Bogey,'' PMLA 93 (1978): 368±82, reprinted in Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), Chapter 6, 187±212, 667±71. The controversy has led to signi®cant rereadings of Paradise Lost, suggesting its ambiguities, its deeper meanings, and its philosophical positions.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes be read not as what Milton believed to be a ``bogey,'' but as the ``bogey'' that one kind of reading of Paradise Lost can create for some people. The critical issue has led to a reexamination of Dalila where the age-old exemplar of the deceitful temptress Delilah is read into Milton's characterization and where recently, in counterdistinction, a truly repentant and sincere Dalila, a pawn in the hands of her national leaders, has also been discovered by a few critics. Popular knowledge and imagination has always, it seems, cast Delilah as temptress, as deceitful and venal woman, as all in woman that e€eminizes man. The word ``e€eminizes,'' of course, immediately casts the matter into its real problem and assumption: man is superior, strong, capable of anything; woman is inferior, weak, man's possible ruination. ``E€eminization'' appears to be man's ``emasculation''; its results are man's taking on all those interests and attitudes that supposedly identify woman and that supposedly are not ``manly.'' Unstated explicitly is the implication that Man by giving into his sexual urges has reduced his power and independence and strength; even his genital parts ``feminize'' by detumesence. The patriarchal worlds that have valorized these ideas are manifest. The context of tempting, seduction, and emasculation is clearly sexual and moral: males should control their sexual urges for ``legitimated'' situations or should be celibate, else they will fall into weakness and lose control of their selves. (The control of woman over man, deemed in this patriarchal way of thinking as unconscionable, may also occur in ``legitimated'' situations, whereby the male has fallen into ``uxoriousness.'') Humankind has seldom been able to handle sexuality, relegating it to some kind of division between virtuous and vicious, separating its ful®llment between the moral Other and the immoral Other: Adam also had his Lilith legend to record that immoral Other (or rather to invent along with the legends of Genesis to explain Man and his existence in the patriarchal society of dim history as well as to explain generation and the e€ects of ``love'' and ``hate''). From a male perspective the female has been either a mother ®gure or a seductress, and the history of this stereotype is well known and well documented, leading to the broader archetypes of Great Mother and Terrible Mother. Milton's Dalila has unfortunately often been cast into the role of this seductress, the Evil Woman, with little attention to who Milton's Dalila is.2 Those who do examine Dalila as not coincident with the stereotype often impugn Milton for his attitudes toward woman as evidence in their reading of the dramatic poem, or more often as evidence in their reading of the one 2

Rather typical statements are found in: Mary Weinkauf, ``Dalila: The Worst of All Possible Wives,'' Studies in English Literature 13 (1973): 135±47; Charles Mitchell, ``Dalila's Return: The Importance of Pardon,'' College English 26 (1965): 614±20; Laurie P. Morrow, ``The `Meet and Happy Conversation': Dalila's Role in Samson Agonistes,'' Milton Quarterly 17 (1983): 38±42; Catherine Belsey, John Milton: Language, Gender, Power; Ricki Heller, ``Opposites of Wifehood: Eve and Dalila,'' Milton Studies 24 (1988): 187±202.

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Dalila: Seductress or Wife? episode separated from the rest of the poem. More recently the rereading of the work has led to di€ering understandings of Dalila as ``real'' person in her own right through consideration that what she says in that episode is sincere from her point of view. For a few critics she has been recognized as the dramatic character that she is: a whole personality that is not a stereotype. The indiscrimination of Delilah and Dalila is clear in Morrow's belief that Samson ``recognizes her blindness to the Truth and her unwillingness to accept God's mercy'' (38). Dalila is concerned with self-justi®cation, not penitance; she is ``a sensual Machiavel,'' who ``neither seeks nor deserves any real forgiveness'' (39, 40). For Morrow, Dalila's return is her need for approval from her world, and thus she struggles to avoid the truth (40±41). For Heller, building upon concepts of marriage and divorce in the divorce tracts, Samson and Dalila o€er arguments for divorce, which is true enough, but unacceptably these are pro€ered only through Dalila's failings, not as a result of Samson's culpability. Barbara Lewalski summarizes this diculty of prejudgment in reading the poem: ``Dalila [has been identi®ed] as a site of all the stereotypes of the female in a patriarchal society, a woman who has so entirely internalized those cultural norms that she can only voice and enact them.''3 ``And she bases her excuses on feminine stereotypes: curiosity to know and tell secrets, woman's frailty, and domestic love which sought to keep her husband safe at home'' (240). Understanding this, we, modern readers in an age of recognition of the female as herself rather than as adjunct to the male, in our interpretation of Milton's Dalila, ought to follow Lewalski in seeing that man and woman should each develop ``a personal conscience and an integrated self '' (240): such development will come through learning by stages (as in the series of episodes revolving around Samson) and by inward experience, illumination, prophecy (as in the decision ending episode ®ve and leading to the catastrophe). While the dramatic poem focuses upon Samson, Dalila, looked at as forthright in the episode in which she appears, has proceeded to at least another stage from that of her past and proceeds within the episode to yet another stage. Here she ®rst experiences inward awareness after the deed and before her entrance on this scene, and then, second, awareness within the episode of disbelief and rebu€ countered psychologically by the need to have self-esteem and a future being. The diculty facing readers of Milton's dramatic poem in regard to Dalila, therefore, can be seen in an early discussion of woman by William Walsh,4 who strongly seems to have been in¯uenced by a reading of Milton's work. He writes, in A Defence of the Fair Sex, Written to Eugenia:

3 4

Lewalski, ``Milton's Samson and the `New Acquist of True [Political] Experience,'' 240. A Dialogue Concerning Women, Being a Defence of the Sex, Written to Eugenia (London: Printed for R. Bentley and J. Tonson, 1691), 78±81; reprinted in The Works of William Walsh, Esq; In Prose and Verse. Ex Pede Herculem (London: Printed for E. Curll, 1736), 179±80.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes For Dalilah I shall say say [sic] nothing, out of Respect to the Scripture, that represents her as an ill Woman; it is possible, were she alive she might tell you in her own Defence, that what Account you have of her, is from her professed Enemies: That however taking the Thing as they tell it; if she did commit a Piece of Treachery, it was against an Enemy of her Country; and that it was very hard she should be so much run down for the same Thing they have so much admired in Jael and Judith, as well as every body else did in Marcus Brutus; she would perhaps push her Defence further, and tell you, that though she deliver'd Samson to the Phillistines to be kept Prisoner, yet she neither drove a Nail through his Head, nor cut it o€.

(Interestingly, some recent criticism has made comparisons of Jael and Judith to Dalila, as if this were new, at times to look upon Dalila positively, at times to impugn Milton.) Perhaps the question to be asked about Delilah/Dalila is, What admixture of the kinds of characterization possible is valid and what then does this admixture allow us to read as the presentation of Dalila in the dramatic poem? One characterization possible is seductress, leading to fraudulent seductress in the venal employ of her nation's governors; another is woman, here leading to wife; and yet another still is sincere repentant. Which of these impose a reading of the idea of woman, a topic that moves beyond the con®nes of the dramatic poem? Does the reading of Dalila as woman tend toward the metaphoric? does it tend further toward the metonymic? And if she is metaphor or metonym, does this de®ne her in the poem or in Milton's mind, or does it de®ne her in the poem because it de®nes her in Milton's mind? Delilah is a seductress in the action prior to the beginning of the poem, and there are those who read Dalila as still seductress in the poem. This latter reading sets a fraudulence on her part in what words she speaks in the dramatic work. Delilah has been in the venal employ of her nation's governors, and there are those who read Dalila as still in their employ. If the latter, then she is insincere in her conversation with Samson. If she is sincere in that conversation, however, then she is not acting for her governors now and her former action has been guided by political (and religious) belief (and conviction), not venality, as she says it was. Only a few critics have read Dalila as sincere in her admission of guilt in the past and of her ``wedlock treachery,'' and now in her ``conjugal a€ection'' and her desire to alleviate the plight of her husband. The ``honied words'' (1066) that the Chorus labels Dalila's talk with Samson contrast with Harapha's ``rougher tongue'' soon to be encountered. As David Gay argues, the phrase, derived from Proverbs v:3, dichotomizes the feminine, here constituting a warning against unchastity with a ``strange'' (alien, evil, unchaste) woman. In counterdistinction is wisdom as a woman of honor and integrity (Proverbs iv:5±9).5 The di€erence in our reading of 5

See David Gay, `` `Honied Words': Wisdom and Recognition in Samson Agonistes,'' Milton Studies 29 (1992), 38, 39, 43.

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Dalila: Seductress or Wife? Dalila, thus, depends, ®rst, on our understanding the contrast between metaphor and metonymn with separation of that metonym in this case between wisdom as woman and the ``strange woman'' who will ravish man and whose bosom he will embrace (v:20). Dalila as one not of the Danite nation is, of course, a ``strange woman'' and the informed reader will understand her (whether Delilah or Dalila) as the ``foolish woman'' of Proverbs ix and the ``wicked'' (contrasted with ``the upright'') woman of Proverbs x. Samson, it is implied, should have known such a state of matters looming over the male and been wary of marrying either the Woman of Timnah or the woman of the Valley of Sorek, but bravado and inordinate pride made him oblivious and superior to such counsel for ordinary men. (Incidentally, ``Sorek'' suggests a ``fruitless tree'' in Hebrew, as McDonald points out [270], doubly indicting the biblical Samson's ``marriage'' as without purpose.) The di€erence in our reading of Dalila also depends on our acceptance that she is a character in a dramatic work, not an analytic description of a real or representative woman.6 One signi®cant investigation of Dalila's sincerity (as dramatic character) has been that by Susanne Woods.7 Though less free than his men, Milton's women ``remain as responsible for their actions,'' Woods concludes. ``Dalila, a famous villain in the misogynist's (not Milton's) canon, is an intelligent and even sympathetic adversary for heroic Samson'' (30). Woods reads Dalila from Dalila's point of view and ®nds her ``sincere'' though she may use devices of language and acquiescence to try to win a point. These are strategies of many debaters (or engagers in oratorical rhetoric), Milton himself included. But some criticism of Milton's prose works indicates that some critics are ignorant of such strategies, assigning whatever is written to deep credence on Milton's part and extrapolating further belief therefrom. Quite the contrary, the object in many of the prose works is to persuade, to persuade to this or that view; it is not to express Milton's own conviction, which may or may not exactly correspond. It is not a matter of sincerity (or Truth) or insincerity (or Lies): it is a case of rhetorical argument with inclusion and coloration of that which will persuade (and omission of that which will work against the argument). To concede error, to take on blame oneself, to acquiesce may be ploys of the debater to maintain the upper hand, but they do not necessitate denial of the full argument. Dalila's concessions to Samson may or may not be utterly sincere under an oratorical situation. But Dalila's assertion of following her nation and god raises a basic question even 6

7

See Joan S. Bennett, ``Dalila, Eve, and the `Concept of Woman' in Milton's Radical Christian Humanism,'' pp. 251±60, and Stella P. Revard, ``Milton's Dalila and Eve: Filling in the Spaces of the Biblical Text,'' pp. 271±81, in Arenas of Con¯ict: Milton and the Unfettered Mind, ed. Kristin Pruitt McColgan and Charles W. Durham (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1997). Susanne Woods, ``How Free Are Milton's Women?'' in Milton and the Idea of Woman, ed. Julia Walker (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 15±31.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes if it is false reason, or mere excuse, on her part: whose nation is right, whose god is true god? A more outright challenge to the reading of Dalila as a bad woman and seductress and as Milton's idea of Woman is John Ulreich's discussion.8 Ulreich assumes that Dalila means what she says: even though various Miltonists have objected to his positing such an unconventional reading, it is clear that what needs to be comprehended is the presentation of a character in a dramatic work, whose psychological being as character is exposed.9 Ulreich rightly talks to this understanding of dramatic character. The ``assumption'' in the ®ctional, as we might call it, is that the character is a fairly fully developed personality that acts and says what that personality would verisimilarly. If Dalila is insincere, then her recounting of her reasons for her former fraud and her present concern for ``conjugal a€ection'' are only more fraudulence, and such a conclusion should emerge from the text. However, in this particular case it is dicult to understand why an author would cast an insincere Dalila saying what she says as any kind of potentially successful repeated temptation ± even though the biblical Samson did exhibit repeated stupidity. The dramatic character that some would cast for Dalila would be a deceitful person, a liar, one still the tool of Philistine leaders. Such a description of Dalila makes her gender irrelevant (in terms of Woman) though sex be used as a lure to achieve the aim of her spying: Milton would not be casting Woman in a poor light in such a reading, but casting Samson as most naively gullible, as one who has learned nothing from his experience and who is again viewing marriage as means to carnal satisfaction only. The motive for such spying and continued temptation blurs when we remember that Samson is blind and is shackled (though returned strength might break such shackles). What has an insincere Dalila and her Philistine leaders to gain by this action? A major concern of Samson in the poem, however, is marriage and its predicates: while he, like Milton of the divorce tracts, looks upon marriage as a union with expectation of compatibility of mind and being, and while Dalila seems to view it only corporally, Samson of the Bible has, in truth, taken Delilah to ``wife'' because of his own sexual desires, not because he wants to enjoy the pathways of her mind. Milton's Samson views the husband as the 8

9

John Ulreich, `` `Incident to All our Sex': The Tragedy of Dalila,'' in Milton and the Idea of Women, ed. Walker, 185±210. An example of the problem, which would be humorous if it were not so symptomatic of the state of some gender criticism, appears in the New York Times, Sunday Magazine, for 6 December 1992, with responses in the issue of 27 December. A male author, Dinty Moore, submitted a story for a collection published as Catholic Girls, one of ®fty-two by ``American women writers.'' It is clear that it would not have been published here had his sex been known (or decipherable from the text); the underlying assumption, of course, is that an author writes only out of the fact of biography and cannot engage the imagination adequately when the ``fact'' is di€erent from the text.

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Dalila: Seductress or Wife? superior of the wife, and this attitude of superiority in the poem continues in his accusations against Dalila as in these lines that paraphrase the Bible (where the concept is said of Adam): ``Being once a wife, for me thou wast to leave/ Parents and countrey'' (885±86).10 The divorce tracts indicate that Milton's views are not the unquali®ed views of Samson: though the husband in the social order will usually function as leader and spokesperson, the wife may have such function and may be stronger, more competent, wiser than her husband. Yet the stress in the poem is on union and the marriage covenant. This is not the Samson of the prepoem, and as representative of the Samson of the poem ± at least as philosophic or rationalistic stance ± it con¯icts with a potential succumbing to the sexual desires again raised when Dalila is read as a fraudulent repetition of Delilah. It is possible that Dalila is still deceitful, but to o€er her fraudulent repentence to Samson as a temptation to his ``sinning'' again asks us to believe that she has something to gain by his succumbing and that he is so taken again by her as woman, as his wife, that he would leave his ``loathsome prison-house, t' abide/ With'' her (922±23). That is really a di€erent version of the ®rst temptation where Manoa's would have Samson leave his prison to abide with him, at ease. All that Dalila has to gain, under this reading, is, as Samson imagines, to have him ``live uxorious to [her] will/ In perfet thraldom,'' to betray him, ``bearing [his] words and doings to the Lords/ To gloss upon, and censuring, frown or smile'' (945±48). This would be a Samson succumbing to carnal desire again and to ease; for Dalila there is little gain and for her nation's lords only quelling of any returned strength in this blind man. Rather, I suggest, Milton's words create an incisive analysis of Samson's psychology. He places himself in the center of political importance though nothing of political importance remains for him at this time, and now worries that a wife's will, exerted, leads to the husband's ``perfet thraldom.'' He sees it as an e€eminizing of himself, of not asserting his manhood. The ego and particularly the male ego would be bruised. The temptation that Dalila presents in this episode is not, thus, the simple repetition of fraud as in the prepoem, a reading that perhaps has been developed out of Michael Krouse's overview of the temptation motif.11 It is rather a temptation to ``debase'' Samson (on Milton's part as author, not on Dalila's part), to ``aggravate [his] folly'' (999±1000), for succumbing to it would remove him further (perhaps irreversibly) from the national position of Great Deliverer should some miracle occur in the future, as faith in God would allow. Our discussion of this episode earlier indicates the way in which the ``standard'' motif exists 10

11

See Genesis ii:23±24: ``And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and ¯esh of my ¯esh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one ¯esh.'' See Milton's Samson and the Christian Tradition.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes ironically instead of in Krouse's simple equation of Satan and Dalila as fraudulent. Krouse did not understand the reversed inconsistency of the episode and the temptation motif. The reading I suggest o€ers a continuing and a developing galvanizing of Samson into the hero he will become before the end of the poem. Samson must act not to debase himself, not to aggravate his folly. The view of Dalila as sincere sees Samson as moving toward an understanding of Self but not yet available as the Great Deliverer. Samson upbraids her for her past actions and does not entertain the possibility of change in her (though he assumes ± and indeed shows ± change in himself). He rejects his Other, overcoming, Di Salvo has argued,12 the woman within. His means is through hatred, through misogyny: ``In Samson, only a total rejection of woman can end his immobility'' (225). But Samson has been rooted in repression of anima, according to Driscoll's analysis (170), the anima being the ``contrasexual element in the male psyche'' (177). His Other has been repressed in his shallow masculinist action and thought, and must emerge as he moves toward understanding of Self in order to be overcome. The anima ``carries the eros or love function [not the sexual function] that involves us with others, with the inner, imagined life of the psyche, and with nature'' (177). So viewed, Samson in the prepoem clearly has repressed any love of others in his self-love; his anima must emerge as a function of action consciously for others. The Other, the woman within, that Di Salvo ®nds overcome in this episode, is not truly anima: it is the false male sense of anima as sexuality rather than as love. Samson's new argument employing marriage as its basis records his movement toward rejection of this false concept of Other and toward growth of charitable love, even for Dalila who has been the agent of his fall. A meaningful way of putting this is to see this episode as showing Samson overcoming ``e€eminization'' and taking on the ``feminine'' anima that Jung found necessary for all men to acknowledge. By asserting anima, for the male a principle of loving, the male is able to assert the Man within rather than the shallowness of mind or mental blindness leading to masculinism and thereby overcoming the delimited sexual concept of woman as mere vessel. This episode of the dramatic poem has not galvanized Samson into action, but it has moved him toward some Omega by his form of charity, by his admission of culpability, and by his waking up to some of the meanings of ``marriage.''13 His rejection of Dalila does aid in ending his immobility but 12

13

``Intestine Thorn: Samson's Struggle with the Woman Within,'' in Milton and the Idea of Woman, ed. Walker, 211±29. Compare James A. Driscoll's remark (164±65) that ``Samson dimly realizes that he has a blinding, emasculating anima yet never achieves tragic recognition of the problem,'' since Dalila, his repressed anima, holds him in bondage as signaled by his mental blindness. Note that his sense of marriage is not only husband(male)-dominated, but also not a joining of equals (as the hand and hand image associated with Adam and Eve connotes). He has yet to give himself over to anyone, and not until he has given himself over to God (in a fuller

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Dalila: Seductress or Wife? not because of rejection of the feminine within; rather it is through the acknowledgment of the masculine concept of Woman as seductress and then airing of misogyny toward that embodiment that Delilah has been to him in the past, while becoming aware of the meaning of marriage which should exempt a concept of Woman as seductress, even though a supremacy of the husband persists. The second temptation evokes relationship with community; Samson's fall ironically came through his obliviousness to that relationship, as we have said. Here in the Dalila episode the message for Samson is again community, charity, action with others as recipient, not for Self, but it is ironic: it forces him to contemplate what wedded community is (though the masculinist view exists in what he says) and it must reject that which is only personal, his constant focus in the past. If Dalila does represent dramatization ``of the struggle to achieve true freedom and virtue after a fall,'' as Radzinowicz argues (167), then none of this is possible if she is not sincere: it is Samson who must confront within himself the lure of emotion over mind and purpose which his past had not comprehended or achieved. His ``struggle to achieve true freedom and virtue after a fall'' is the substance of the dramatic poem itself, and this episode demonstrates that ``true freedom'' for him can be ``this Gaol . . . the house of Liberty,'' not Dalila's doors (949±50). Virtue, of course, is moral excellence and power, and denying that which is part of him and his desires, in this case, will lead to such probity and thence to power. His assigning Dalila to continued ``wedlock-treachery'' raises the issue for him, rejecting here in the present even the kind of sincerity he assigned to her in the past. As catalyst, she ``displays/ Her own transgressions, to upbraid'' Samson his, causing him to admit, ``I to my self was false e're thou to me'' (819±20, 824). His hatred of her for her abrogation of what he considers marriage vows leads him to believe that ``thou alone could hate me/ Thy Husband.'' What I ®nd lacking in some of the criticism written on Dalila is the psychology of Samson that Milton is presenting:14 here Samson kids himself into continuing to believe that ``in [his] ¯ower of youth and strength . . . all men/ Lov'd, honour'd, fear'd'' him, a remnant at least of the proud strutting Colossus. While his great exploits of the past would have made him admired of his people, ``loved'' is only perhaps correct; ``honored,'' acceptable; and ``feared,'' more truthful. But these are the things he wishes to believe, although it is probably the fear that engenders any love and honor. Against these, for Samson, must be hate; we understand the love and honor that marriage should predicate, but has he also seen it predicating a kind of ``fear''?

14

sense of a ``marriage'' with God than he had ever previously entertained) will the denouement be possible. Ulreich, `` `Incident to All our Sex' '' (194), says that this confrontation scene ``has usually been concerned with Samson's psychological development''; I would amend that to say with Samson's development, that is, with his spiritual revival, but not with the workings of his mind. The workings of his mind have not been previously attended to.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes Is not his psychology here still involved in ego, even with the reduction of id? Driscoll (170) indicates that ``vision . . . develops through ego su€ering and mediation of anima.'' Is Samson not the person who has erred (the falseness to himself that he has admitted) but who is still trying to foist o€ guilt on another? the person whose ego has not yet moved out of conceit into pride of Self? None of this is meaningful if Dalila is not sincere. Ulreich (191±92) observes that the so-called hardening of Dalila's heart depends upon choice and that occurs (allowing her sincerity) at lines 995±96: ``At this who ever envies or repines/ I leave him to his lot, and like my own.'' Yet more should be said about the dramatic character, the verisimilar human being, that Dalila represents in the speech culminated by those lines. She has been repulsed by Samson at every point; his immediately preceding speech exhibits his potential rage and makes reference to what will be her popular image among ``illustrious women, faithful wives'' ± the archetype of matrimonial treason. Dalila reacts as many people do to such situations: she rejects what she is trying to do as incapable of success, takes on a kind of sour-grapes attitude, and accepts ``The public marks of honour and reward/ Conferr'd upon [her], for the piety/ Which to [her] countrey [she] was judg'd t' have shewn'' (992±94). She encounters the pride within her by opposing the subjective view that the circumcised would have with an attitude that her countrymen would assign her,15 the famousest Of Women, sung at solemn festivals, Living and dead recorded, who to save Her countrey from a ®erce destroyer, chose Above the faith of wedlock-bands . . . (982±86)

While the lines are boastful, they represent what did occur in reverse in the Judaeo-Christian world: Delilah is viewed consistently (with one exception that casts her unbelievably as a deceived Hebrew) as deceitful seductress of ``this noble almyghty champioun,'' who ``falsly to his foomen she hym solde . . . And made his foomen al his craft espyen.''16 The speech depicts again the contest of whose god is God and delineates a frequent psychological trait of personality that tries to obviate a sense of guilt with a sense of righteousness. 15

16

Dalila's reference to the Israelite tribes as circumcised (975±76) should recall for the reader the ``great Cov'nant'' with Abraham that Milton celebrates in his poem ``Upon the Circumcision'' of Jesus: the circumcised have made a covenant to obedience to God's will, a promise that Samson must again acknowledge and subscribe to. Jesus in Paradise Regain'd III, 425, refers to the vainness of circumcision undergone by those ``distinguishable scarce/ From Gentils'' except ``by circumcision vain,'' because they have ``God with Idols in their worship joyn'd.'' Samson has not been much di€erent in the past. Connotations of a sexual nature have also been suggested in Dalila's use of the word; they seem to be irrelevant. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ``The Monk's Tale,'' 2023, 2065, 2068.

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Dalila: Seductress or Wife? At base is pride. She has rhetorically asked, ``Why do I humble thus my self, and suing/ For peace, reap nothing but repulse and hate?'' (965±66). The charity that she has been showing, when we read her as being sincere, is contrasted with Samson's external charity when he says, ``At distance I forgive thee, go with that'' (954); but he has not really achieved charity yet within himself. (See also Ulreich's discussion of ``the tragedy of Dalila [that] explores the possiblity of charity between fallen human beings, in particular as that virtue is [or is not] expressed in marriage'' [197€.].) When we recognize this contest of whose god is God within the Dalila episode, we comprehend how the triad of visitors to Samson pose di€erent aspects of that question, and accordingly place the episode in important position. Manoa is one who unwittingly (and somewhat metaphorically) raises the issue. Dalila is one who represents a person's actions on the basis of an answer to that question: she acts in the past for her god and nation. Harapha is one who outrightly champions his god against the other. That he backs down from the challenge does not answer the question although it certainly reduces his god. Milton would praise action for one's beliefs and against an opposed god and nation, we would certainly expect. He opposed others' political and church-aliated and even scriptural views in his prose. The di€erence in Dalila's past action is twofold: it is fraudulent rather than forthright in its sally against her adversary, and it is action for a false god. The truth of the god and nation and thus the nature of one's beliefs is fundamental to the dramatic poem. Choosing Samson as hero, Milton was able to capitalize upon the positive symbol he was for the adherents of republicanism against the oppression of monarchy and at the same time raise the question of right reason between those adherents and their opposition. But choosing Samson also raised the negative symbol (as Wittreich has shown), with its message being that action of the champions of the true god, or nation, must at times involve destruction and ``dust and heat.'' This can be seen as the message in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, where his audience is the adherents of republicanism who nonetheless draw back from action when it involves destruction and ``dust and heat.''17 Here is praiseworthy action against an adversary, when looked at from Dalila's point of view, which is treacherous action, looked at from Samson's point of view, because of the nature of the gods for whom the action is done. For Dalila (and one would think for Milton) such action may have to abrogate other societal laws: she, ``to save/ Her countrey from a ®erce 17

Lieb's exploration of sparagmos upon the thinking of Milton indicates that while violent action is horrori®c, as in the massacre of the Piemontese (Sonnet 18), it may be a distasteful means to a good end; see, for example, his discussion of the three ``Defenses.'' As in Paradise Lost the evil depicted in Sonnet 18 may lead to good when more ¯ee the woe of the triple tyrant, or in the dire action that Tenure considers in the condemnation and execution of the king, or in Samson Agonistes where Samson's ®erce destructiveness in the past, in the threats against Dalila and Harapha, and in the catastrophe could pave the way to the Great Delivery.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes destroyer, chose/ Above the faith of wedlock-bands.'' For the masculinist Samson the societal law of marriage nulli®es any opposition to the husband's point of view, whether it is religious faith or political adherence. His attitude is the Old Testament belief of its patriarchal society: ``Being once a wife, for me thou wast to leave/ Parents and country,'' and thus she moves under his protection, not theirs; for her country to employ her, a wife, against him, her husband, is unjust, ``Against the law of nature, law of nations,'' since it is no longer her country (882±91). In Samson's biblist view male always dominates and negates any other consideration; for him marriage is not a union or a ``covnant the very beeing whereof consists . . . in unfained love and peace'' (The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, 11 [1643] ). Rather, Samson has gone into this marriage for ``bodily conjunction'' (5) only. What of Dalila as dramatic character and repentently sincere? In the past she has been dominated by her nation's lords, and she has employed her ``feminine'' wiles to their purposes. May there be praiseworthy action here, however, if we stress her acts as reasonably considered to achieve the goods that she believes in: her nation and her god? Just because these are not Samson's nation and god does not make them wrong. She has not given evidence of falling into the specious and repugnant attitude one hears too often, ``My country right or wrong.'' It may be that she has acted in her good faith. In the dramatic poem she has become ostensibly repentent and takes on an abject feminine stereotype, self-accusatory, humble, submissive to her husband, and then, rebu€ed rather cruelly, she speaks pride and frustration. Psychologically she has been forced away from the feminine stereotypes she has displayed to a ``masculine'' position of challenge and rejection of submission. Milton's Dalila seems to have little in common with Delilah aside from external lures of appearance and speech, if it is insincere. Does Milton's Dalila portray a Dalila in a prepoem story that Milton credits? that is, one who does think, does consider and act on her beliefs, does put ± as Samson should have ± nation and god before Self?18 This is her defense of her action, and making her wife to Samson, as Milton does, gives it more credence than were she simply a concubine, seducing Samson, wresting his secret from him, and going her separate way. In a masculinist world, in Samson's world, a wife is expected not to betray her husband, but the ethical question of religious and political belief and dedication can exert a pressure overriding familial relationships. The ethical question would not be raised with Dalila as prostitute. Why, we may ask, did she marry Samson, thus contrasting the biblical prostitute who entices him when told, ``we will give thee every one of us eleven hundred pieces of silver'' (Judges xvi:5)? The marriage erects the ethical question which is not pertinent when no marriage has occurred (when it is only a sexual liaison) or when the marriage is only an 18

A reader, remembering Revard's examination of ``Dalila as Euripidean Heroine,'' ®nds in the Dalila re¯ected in her ®nal speech in the poem one who challenges male-dominated society.

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Dalila: Seductress or Wife? ``intercourse of body.'' Milton has them married because it is the ethical question that has such great importance. The dramatic poem also raises the questions of what is wedlock, what are its expectations from each partner, what is gained by its taking place? Samson in the prepoem that Milton o€ers in the reported narrative has proceeded to marriage for carnal purposes only and in de®ance of ethical matters for one of his tribe through rationalization of his special position in his god's order of things ± a lure of overweening pride. In the poem he espouses a rather standard view of the husband as controller and unquestioned head, and yet claims for marriage a companionship of minds, although the male position seems to dominate that to mean not a meeting of minds but a ``conversation'' controlled by the husband. The words he speaks have an ideal meaning but they are still within the context of the husband as head. Dalila in the prepoem that Milton o€ers depends upon our reading of her speeches in the poem: she is seductress, who takes a hollow step to become wife in order to pursue full enticement, or she is wife, who has discharged her duty to her nation and god despite her wedding vows. The problem with the ®rst possibility is that it seems most unnecessary for her to have proceeded to wed in order to entice Samson; the problem with the second is that loyalty to one's marriage partner is expected to take precedence over other circumstances and that any ``selling out'' of one's marriage partner reduces the sincerity of any love. The uncertainties of the text and the characters and their actions sustained by these contrastive readings are numerous. Looked at from authorial position, the text seems to be raising the ethical questions of weighing personal against ideational matters both for Samson and for Dalila. The story that Judges presents, confused as it is, with its numerous recensions, must have caused Milton diculties in viewing Samson as the Great Deliverer for the Danites and as a ®gure of ``a noble and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks'' (Areopagitica, 34). The negative references to Samson that Wittreich ®nds, particularly in sermons of the period, in his destructiveness and his self-centered world, make him a questionable hero or symbol for emulation. What they do do in joining the rather super®cial positive reputation of Samson as Great Deliverer for God's people and victim of womanly wiles is present a truer example of humankind, particularly the male and his male-centered world. He becomes a human being who will succumb to Self (whether aided by others' deceit or not) until such time (if it does come) that he can reject the Self, giving himself up entirely to the wisdom and guidance of his god: until faith ¯oods him and obedience as may be demonstrable is carried out. Samson has not been given an ethical question to resolve, although we might have thought his being a riddler might have caused him to understand the question and recognize an answer. Instead, the ethical question, like the motif of the kingdoms temptation (involving wealth and glory and power), is ironically turned 77

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes about to involve Dalila only.19 She is the one who succumbs to wealth and glory and power in the prepoem, but she is also the one who faced the ethical question of honoring her duty to her nation and god rather than its refutation in order to honor her husband and the personal commitment that marriage should exact. Her decision to deny the husband and discharge her national duty should, for Milton's readers, lead to consideration of that ethical question in one's own life and an awareness that a simple answer of rejecting duty or of discharging duty cannot be made. Much criticism has seen Dalila succumbing to the second temptation of fraud only; but did the ethical question enter as she says it did, as well? A further circumstance arises, however, and often it has been cause to condemn Dalila from the outset. She appears in excessive ®nery with odors wafting before her, a colorful and ornate ``ship'' of Tarsus, immediately signaling a loose woman, a prostitute, one false and seductive, one ready to be ``boarded.'' To many readers Dalila's falseness is inescapable, her continuance as Delilah certain.20 Will she succeed in a ®fth seduction as she did in the fourth, or will Samson have learned his lesson? What will she ask, the previous times being concerned with the source of his strength and how to subdue him? Will she ask whether his strength is returning? If so, she already knows how to emasculate him, that is, if a blind man even with renewed strength

19

20

A note by Ernest Sirluck in his edition of Areopagitica in the Yale Prose is apt. Milton's remark, ``Yet these [Pyrrhus and the Epirots] are the men cry'd out against for schismaticks and sectaries; as if, while the Temple of the Lord was building, some cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there should be a sort of irrationall men who could not consider there must be many schisms and many dissections made in the quarry and in the timber, ere the house of God can be built,'' elicits this comment: ``This is a remarkable example of Milton's technique of reversing a damaging received inference from a scriptural text by enlarging the scope of the reference. In building the Temple, Solomon had the stones cut to size before being brought to the construction site, so that the quiet of the holy place would be undisturbed. This became one of the arguments for religious conformity'' (II, 555 n244). What I argue here is that Milton is taking both positive and negative ideas and situations and reversing them for their larger meaning as in this example from Areopagitica. Much of that larger meaning emerges when ordinary expectation is ironically opposed: the great exemplar and symbol Samson does not even consider duty to nation and god while the biblically corrupt Delilah/Dalila does. My point is in accord with Wittreich's statement, ``it is a poem that, instead of recapitulating, recreates the Samson story by wresting it away from a conformism threatening to overpower it; it is a poem that exhibits rather than conceals the contradictions of Milton's society'' (Interpreting Samson Agonistes, 227). Laura Lunger Knoppers ®nds the source of Milton's Dalila in Proverbs vii (``The Wiles of a Harlot''), stressing her clothing, speech, and behavior. Although Dalila remains a harlot in her reading, Knoppers concludes most cogently that ``By placing proverbial discourse on the harlot in the mouths of limited, self-interested characters, Milton exposes such `wisdom' as a displacement of blame and responsibility. Samson has been undone, not by Dalila, but by his own folly'' (247)±`` `Sung and Proverb'd for a Fool': Samson Agonistes and Solomon's Harlot,'' Milton Studies 26 (1990): 239±51. Dalila has also been associated with the Whore of Babylon (Revelation xvii).

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Dalila: Seductress or Wife? could pose a threat. Why does Milton ± not the Bible ± bring her back to confront Samson? But the ornate ship of Tarsus may suggest other things as well. While Samson would inhale the aroma of the ambergris, he could not see the picture Dalila presents. There might be something sensuous in her garb should he touch her, but then if he touched her either he would tear her limb from limb or he would do so because he has succumbed. Her appearance may shoot signals to the reader but not to Samson. The Chorus, male, is attracted to what they see and they may envision ``a fair ¯ower surcharg'd with dew'' when she weeps, but they have not seen her as ``a manifest Serpent'' until the end after she has let forth her ``sting'' that she will be renowned as one ``who to save/ Her countrey from a ®erce destroyer, chose/ Above the faith of wedlock-bands.'' Rather for the Chorus she seems ``Some rich Philistian Matron,'' that is, one not of the Danite tribe but one typically garbed as a Philistine woman might be, and yet ``Matron'' is certainly not very seductive.21 Perhaps all the ®nery is simply what the well-dressed older Philistine woman might wear on a special occasion? Perhaps Milton is setting up cultural contrasts between the Danites (or maybe the Puritans) and the Philistines (or maybe the Frenchi®ed English Court)? The prior discussion implies that Dalila should not be read metaphorically; that is, should not be read as one presenting the characteristics of Woman (and thus does not depict Milton's idea of woman). Rather Dalila may be read metonymically as a certain kind of woman, one who is deceitful, one who pursues her own ends without regard for her husband, and especially one who has not altered the externalities, at least (like dress and perfumes), of her prostitutional past. She may be Milton's idea of a morally corrupt (evil, perhaps) woman, but not of all women. More signi®cantly still, Dalila should be read as a character in a dramatic poem who has her own personality and being quite aside from any similarity she may have to any other woman. She is not an allegoric Vice. And if we read her as sincere, then she is a person who

21

``Matron'' implies an older married woman but not one who is particularly sexually attractive to males; to the Chorus she is ``Femal of sex it seems'' (711), a far from seductive description. There is a ``damsel train behind.'' What Dalila's age is in the poem is not clear. The Bible o€ers no evidence though she is a ``woman'' (rather than a ``girl''). There is no indication of the time lapse between their ``marriage'' and the cutting of Samson's hair, or between that and the destruction of the Philistine ``house,'' or the length of time in the grist mill although ``the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaven.'' (These latter events would seem to occur in swift time.) None of this suggests more than a year at most since the ``marriage,'' and we might assume she was fairly young then, perhaps around twenty as suggested before. In addition to this word ``Matron'' in the poem, Samson remarks ``this Consecrated gift/ Of strength, again returning with my hair'' (1354±55) and Manoa persuades himself that ``God had not permitted/ His strength again to grow up with his hair/ Garrison'd round about him like a Camp/ Of faithful Souldiery'' (1495±98). A noticeable head of hair would probably not have taken more than a month to grow.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes can admit her errors and recognize her failure in the social relationship of marriage. Louis L. Martz's conclusion about the basic question I have been looking at is apposite: The jarring impact of the endings here [in lines 1025±60] should help to indicate that this is hardly John Milton's ®nal word of wisdom about women. We are warned against this by the weakness of the verse, by the one-sided quality of the view, and by the exaggeration of man's proper power over women. Authority man has ± or should have ± according to Milton, but never quite a power of this grim variety. . . . True, Samson blames Dalila furiously, for showing the ``arts of every woman false like thee,'' but that is far from saying that nearly every woman is false.22

The problem with the dramatic poem for many critics is the assigning of Samson as Milton: Samson's statements are read as Milton's statements, Dalila's ``fraudulent'' character as Milton's idea of woman. But this is a dramatic piece, generically presenting characters who supposedly speak and act as those characters would verisimilarly; the author envisions those characters as people, not as personal spokespeople though any and every one might re¯ect the author's ideas and attitudes or their opposites. Samson is such a dramatic character: he is not Milton. And indeed if such critics would only read Samson's speeches carefully and compare Milton's ideas in various works, notably the divorce tracts, they would ®nd discrepancies. Dalila, in turn, is a verisimilar character to be understood as herself, not as Woman but as one eliciting for the reader's consideration the uncertainties of religio-political action because of the multiple and right/wrong answers to the question, Whose god is God?

22

Poet of Exile, 285. The full Chapter 16: ``Samson Agonistes: The Breath of Heaven,'' 273±91, should be read for its interfacings with the present book.

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Chapter 6 POLITICS IN THE DESTABILIZED TEXT

E

VE is not a seductress, of course, although Adam is seduced by her female charms; she is not fraudulent, not even after the Fall when she believes that she has taken on Wisdom and Godliness, and though she is acting as Satan is hopeful she will, she is not consciously his agent. She is woman and she is wife; and she becomes an exemplar of sincere repentance. Eve and Dalila seem not to have certain qualities in common, and certainly do not have others in common. They cannot be put together in a generality without clear speci®cations of person and circumstance, neither as woman nor as wife. (Compare Bennett's and Revard's articles noted before on concepts of Woman and on linking of Eve and Dalila.) Eve as wife works with her husband, has her own activities and responsibilities, is companion and helpmate, exercises her own mind, argues its reasoning, and makes her own choices. Adam as masculine being takes on certain activities and responsibilities better demanding strength, and Eve as feminine being takes on certain activities and responsibilities not requiring so much strength. This can be seen in their di€ering gardening activities, for example. A similar division of activity is seen in Adam's naming the animals and Eve's naming the ¯owers (naming ability being assigned to humankind in Milton, not simply to the male as in the Bible). Beneath this is an implication of the activity of animals and the passivity and beauty of ¯owers, with engendering overtones. Milton separates man and woman through various gendering descriptions and associations, even though today many people minimize (and even try to eliminate) such separations. The di€erence in the physicality of sexual parts is too obvious and inadequate as an explanation of gender®cation in culture. Milton, though we do not like the stereotyping, o€ers some explanation. On the other hand, we see no wifely qualities in Dalila other than sexual partner and, if we accept her as being sincere, concern now for her husband's plight. Her repentance and what might have been its results had Samson credited it are quite di€erent from Eve's. The concept of Eve and Dalila as Woman in Milton's poems must be placed in relation to Adam and Samson. Both are overcome by female charms, but Samson, in his deliberate abrogation of marrying outside his tribe, shows strong sexual appetite led on by Delilah's purposeful enticement in the part of the story that precedes Milton's poem, whereas Adam is enamored of Eve's 81

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes beauty and being (actually his Other, that female quality, or anima, in him, which, however, broaches the narcissistic, for as he keeps repeating she is bone of his bone and ¯esh of his ¯esh). Eve does not contribute any act, only being, to his enamorment. Samson falls through his self-aggrandizement and arrogance, and then by his, but not Delilah's, concept of matrimony (though only expressed in the poem, not in the Bible account): Samson does not seem to entertain the idea that his wife would be deceitful to her husband. Yet we should remember that three times he did not view her as wife in these terms since he lies to her about his strength, succumbing only on her fourth try. This cannot be a Samson who believed that husband and wife were as one, with complete and implicit faith in his marriage partner and their vows as he now presumes. The space between the biblical text and Milton's poem does exist: how we ®ll it in is how we read Samson, Dalila, and the episode of confrontation. In contrast, Adam falls ``not deceav'd,'' ``overcome by Femal charm''; his act, in other words, is willful. Any seeming parallels between Eve and Dalila hold up only in the same way that parallels between Adam and Samson hold up, and most of the alleged parallels are without substance. Adam and Samson are paralleled in their giving in to their physical desires, both through will. But they are very di€erent by virtue of Adam's ultimately narcissistic attitude and nonassertion of what he knows to be right reason, and Samson's succumbing to deceitfulness through what should have been right reason, trust in one's wife. Yet the dramatic poem does not deal with Samson's fall: this has occurred prior to its opening and results from an assertion of Samson's id as he convinces himself that he is so gifted by God that he can abjure God's law and marry outside his nation when he ®rst takes the Woman of Timnah and then a second time, when he takes Delilah as concubine/wife. This assertion of id is his Fall, not the telling of his secret strength, though scholarship has missed the point. Thus, relooking at Dalila's lines and considering them sincere statements of the dramatic character being presented, the reader should realize that, as Woods corrects Radzinowicz's reading, ``In argument with men a woman ever/ Goes by the worse, whatever be her cause'' is a truthfully continuing genderization in patriarchal society; that the ``weakness'' of curiosity and the publishing of its results as ``common female faults'' are genderized commonplaces apparently believed by both men and women; that the female for the male is sexual object whose touch and whose appearance (``bedeckt, ornate, and gay,'' with ``odorous perfume/ Her harbinger'') rouse his desires and make him seek her as companion. We know these thoughts are foundationless or super®cial but that does not make them less cogent as common thoughts held by men and women in biblical times, in the seventeenth century, and now. Critical error lies in the assignment of these thoughts to Milton's deepest agreement and in extrapolation from that faulty reading. The Dalila episode is momentous in the dramatic poem as part of the sweep toward the developing of the recharged Great Deliverer; it is necessary to 82

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Politics in the Destabilized Text reverse his inability to withstand her lure as woman in the past ± really suppression of his libido ± it is pivotal in that development, and this provides one reason for its centrality in the total poem. As remarked before he must overcome his carnal desires, his id, for it is that which has led to his fall with the Woman of Timnah and with the woman from the valley of Sorek. But the episode is not the hinge of the poem, which lies, rather, within the development of Samson to become again the potential Great Deliverer. It does not provide philosophic male/female concepts, though it does provide some of the results of gender®cation which continues to persist in time. And manifestly it does not give us the super®cial attitudes concerning male±female relationship that have too frequently been assigned to the author. The two important female characters in Milton's major poems are very di€erent, their presentations are di€erent: the interpretations of them as people, and particularly as exemplars of woman, depend on how one reads the poems and what prejudgments one starts with. If Eve represents woman, then she represents a susceptibility to deceit (but all humans, including Uriel and Samson, exhibit the same susceptibility to hypocrisy) and yet a great strength of character, a morally desirable humility, and ability to internalize problems and their solutions, and an alleged ``womanliness'' in love and charity and hope ± desirable traits for all humans, male and female. If Dalila represents woman (which she does not, being a woman but not representative woman), then she represents that which man can be seduced by (an aspect of the Terrible Mother archetype1), but also, when read as sincere, one who can repent, admit wrong and change (as we ®nd Eve doing), one who also is human and will defend herself against calumny. She is a person. Some who 1

It may seem strange to confound the seductive woman with the Terrible Mother archetype. Yet a male view of sexual woman has included, ®rst, the Circean ®gure who turns man into sensual beast; second, basically a vagina lined with teeth to emasculate a man literally; third, a dominating force turning man from strong individual into weak child. The male's alleged ``contemplation'' and ``valour'' have been allayed by the female's alleged ``sweet Attractive Grace'' and ``softness'' (PL IV, 297±98; the terms create a chiasmus, as here indicated by linking ``contemplation'' with ``softness'' and ``valour'' with ``sweet Attractive Grace,'' and implying that Adam and Eve, male and female, together can create a Christ-like ®gura). Compare the discussion and evidence in Erich Neumann's The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), especially pp. 148±73. This does not say that woman is these things; rather it has been a male view to excuse a male's inadequacies and, with little comprehension, his sexual needs. The Terrible Mother (the folkloric step-mother) is posited opposite the male's view of the mother ®gure as nurturer, a natural and usual concept for the child. In Samson's case the mother ®gure for woman is not articulated but is existent, with, however, ``woman'' being condemned through the metonymy that Delilah becomes for most people (and that is maintained by Samson for Dalila of the poem, though not, I argue, by Milton). (Samson's mother is included from the biblical account in reference to his parents only in lines 25 and 220.) Antithetical visions of good/bad, honest/false, nurturing/destructive are commonplace and ®nd establishment in most people's thinking about any issue, as here the ``good'' and the ``bad'' woman.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes have negatively thought of Milton the male writing these two poems have stressed the portraits of Eve and Dalila, but they should have been examining ®rst the portraits of Adam and Samson. Adam's most telling masculinist position is revealed in his diatribe against Eve in Book X, after the Fall, after the lustful action at the end of Book IX in which he has learned the ``sorrowing dullness'' that Donne spoke of and the sexual meaning of ``die'' and loss of willpower over sexual exhibition. Here we have blame-placing, not only on Eve but on God, a version of the horrendous reply of the child to the parent, ``Did I ask to be born?'' ± illogical obliterations of personal involvement in anything that has happened. Here we have a strongly misogynist Adam, a venting of commonplace male attitudes toward females, like Donne's lines again, when he says, ``Must I, who came to travaile thorow you,/ Grow your ®xt subject, because you are true?'' This is Adam, not Milton. And it is Samson who deludes himself that he has been true to his God in the past and that his marriages were not simply a result of his own sexual appetite. Samson's misogyny is, like Adam's, a result of his own failures, unadmitted in full. If we must give Milton a label, he is somewhat misanthropic, and that because of his desired faith in human beings, who, however, constantly fail to be what God's creatures should be. He is the idealist who is constantly being dashed back into reality. The politics that have been splayed into the text in recent years have frequently involved such sexual politics as the foregoing cites. It has been based most often, however, on reading part of the poem out of context, on imparting to the author the statements of a character and the Chorus, on inadequate reading of the words of the poem and its being a dramatic work, and on a paralleling of the main characters of the work with those of Paradise Lost though such paralleling is untenable (but see Chapter 7). The sexual politics that the dramatic poem has provided for some commentators could have been provided by any piece of literature privileging a male, for the argument is not one concerning this literary work but one recognizing the unconscionable patriarchal society that has long held sway and out of which so much literature has come. The text provides, in its uncertainties and ambiguities, an arena for sexual politics depending on the interpretation of Samson and of Dalila evoked; but further, it engages gender studies where both a masculinist and a feminist reading will ®nd gender®cations of roleplaying, expectations, psychology of emotions, and stereotyping as to dress, activities, and the like. These gender®cations were and are commonplace and continuative, a part of humankind's developed, though invalid, thinking. The dramatic poem can provide a meaningful examination of gender-thinking and gender®cation,2 ranging from biblical times through the seventeenth 2

See James Grantham Turner's examination of Samson Agonistes and the divorce tracts in One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 224±25, 227±28.

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Politics in the Destabilized Text century and into today's world. But the dramatic poem, as focus for such discussion, should be imparted a complete reading which does not blameseek. However, as Woolf pointed out, Milton, being read so assiduously and believingly, becomes for people the source of the ``bogey.'' The ``political'' world of Samson Agonistes does involve humankind's problems with gender and with sex, just as the divorce tracts do, but its matrix is sociological, less given to thesis than to analysis, not decidely absolute but instead provocative. Neither Samson in his history nor Dalila in her past actions is admirable and worthy of emulation: their encounter in the dramatic poem provides an arena for humankind to ponder gendered equivocations and sexual salubrity. The truly political world of Samson Agonistes lies elsewhere ± in governmental matters, national concerns, and the concomitant factions, policies, actions determined by those involved directly in government and its politics. Blair Worden has presented numerous cogent parallels of Milton's poem with various writers and events of the Restoration.3 ``To write a poem about Samson was unavoidably to invite comparisons with contemporary events,'' including Dagon with the restored monarchy (116). Milton's political purpose in the dramatic poem is not simply to give hope to the Good Old Cause as the means of delivery from the evils of monarchy4 but to point out the errors of some of the republican thinkers and the means to nullifying such errors by exposing the falsity and pride of alleged reasons for wrong acting and for lack of acting: ease and custom and self-interest. This was stated earlier in Chapter 4. Milton's political message in Samson Agonistes is that forti®ed against temptation, humankind can band together to maintain the law of liberty, which depends upon a proper regard for Self in every person and the proper regard of each person for every other person. The point of that statement is in agreement with Caroline McAlister's argument that ``Samson Agonistes is a play not about noncommunication, but about the mysterious communication of grace; and it is not about the failure of community, but about the formation of a new community.''5 Dalila's function in the dramatic poem is to force Samson to confront the Other in himself and to assert mind over the pull of bodily Self. But her function is also to engage the reader (or viewer) in contemplating Whose god is God? and Whose nation is the true 3

4

5

Blair Worden, ``Milton, Samson Agonistes, and the Restoration,'' 111±36, in Gerald MacLean, ed., Culture and Society in the Stuart Restoration: Literature, Drama, History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). See this article also for others' disagreements on the existence or nonexistence of political allegories in the poem. See Thomas N. Corns, Uncloistered Virtue: English Political Literature, 1640±1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), Chapter 8, and Corns, ``Milton and the Good Old Cause,'' pp. 269± 93, for the view that Milton in The Ready & Easy Way (1660) recognized the defeat of the Good Old Cause to occur in Parliament but also the expectation that it would rise again. Caroline McAlister, ``Sentience as Evidence: The Reciprocity of Grace in Samson Agonistes,'' Renaissance Papers 1992 (1993), 57±67; see p. 58. Sentience is communicated through the destruction in the poem to the distanced audience of Israelites and to the reader, according to the author.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes nation under the true God? Those monarchists in the history of the 1640s or the 1660s have, like the sincere Dalila, fought for the wrong God and the wrong ``nation.'' But even those parliamentarians who fought for the ``right'' God and the ``right'' government have fallen victim, like Samson, to a Self fashioned by ease and by custom and by self-interest. As Achsah Guibbory states, ``In Samson Agonistes . . . only the individual actually ful®lls the ideal of progress Milton had entertained for England. The true hero is the one who successfully breaks with the past.''6 In his letter of 10 September 1638 to Benedetto Buonmattei, Milton had remarked that ``worthy of all honor'' ``is the one who tries to ®x by precepts and rules the order and pattern of writing and speaking received from a good age of the nation, and in a sense to enclose it within a wall; indeed, in order that no one may overstep it, it ought to be secured by a law all but Romulean'' (Yale Prose, I, 329). As A. M. Cinquemani writes, ``the ®xing of language seeming to depend upon fratricide and to result in grief, but (as Milton already seems to understand) ®xing by precepts and rules, as well as ruling with excellent precepts, sometimes requires Machiavellian steel.''7 While Samson Agonistes argues for an individuality for being and purpose, it also recognizes that Machiavellian steel is needed to break with the past, with those bed-fellows who have not attended to their alleged ``precepts,'' and will countenance ± however unfortunate and regrettable it might be ± ``fratricide'' and its resulting grief. The metonymic provides the clearest avenue into Milton's political subtext (see Chapter 4). We are not presented with characters or plot that nicely ®gure monarchists and parliamentarians, champions of both, or diversion by guile of one by the other;8 we are not in the world of allegoric vice and virtue, either, although most commentators have seen Dalila as a kind of ``vice'' and Samson, amazingly, as some kind of ``virtue.'' Indeed, one must wonder, in terms of the poem only, why the Philistines are such bad people and the Danites so good. The action of the poem ± what little there is ± does not create a metaphor, the imitation of which will lead humankind to achieve freedom and liberty. This destabilized text cannot be saying ``destroy'' in violence as Samson ®nally does, despite Milton's awareness that armed hostility may be necessary at times and that a Machiavellian steel may be necessary against one's supposed confreres. Does Samson believe he is destroying the Philistines and setting the Danites free? does he have feelings of revenge? is he 6

7

8

The Map of Time: Seventeenth-Century English Literature and Ideas of Pattern in History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 203. Skepticism of providential historiography is explored by Robert Welcher in ``Samson Agonistes and the Problem of History,'' Renaissance and Modern Studies 26 (1982): 108±33. Glad to Go for a Feast: Milton, Buonamattei, and the Florentine Accademici (New York: Peter Lang, 1998), 33±34. As Nigel Smith remarks, ``The language of tyranny was, however, precisely that area which was most problematic for both sides. Who was the tyrant, King or Parliament?''±Literature and Revolution in England, 1640±1660 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 76.

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Politics in the Destabilized Text ironically performing the most amazing ``vaunting'' of his strength, the ``public proof '' of his ``surpassing human rate,'' by committing suicide? is he more simply ``content to go'' because his ``masters commands [that is, turning the meaning around, God's] come with a power resistless''? Kezar remarks that ``the increased scrutiny, even satire, to which the ars moriendi conventions were subjected in the late English Renaissance can help to explain the ambiguity with which these conventions appear in Milton's text'' (298), and he continues signi®cantly for our understanding of Samson's ``suicide,'' With Milton's iconoclastic critique of this ars moriendi in mind, it is tempting to treat his dramatization of Samson's death as a transposition of certain discredited aspects of Charles's literary dying; to correlate the Israelite judge's carefully calculated death by Theater with that of the English king; to read the Hebrew messenger and removed Chorus as representatives of the Royalist propaganda machine that converted slim eyewitness accounts of Charles's execution into reliquarian hagiography. Indeed, this last temptation grows even stronger when we realize how closely the emblematic conclusion of Samson Agonistes approximates the iconographic frontispiece of the King's Book. (321)

The irony of in¯uence from Charles's execution and its symbolizations in Eikon Basilike in the reports of and reactions to Samson's demise criticizes, nay, satirizes, Manoa, the Chorus, the Messenger and their opaque remarks, but too the 1660 political actors ± the royalists who ``idolize'' Charles I and their revenge through the Restoration and its spectacles, and the ``republicans'' who ``idolize'' Cromwell and who wait for their revenge. Surely closer to the mark than some critical statements that have really only looked at Samson as ``actual'' being or as metaphor is Radzinowicz's perspective on the full dramatic poem and its import for a reading audience: Milton wanted to show how his own nation had erred and betrayed the light of God within them; he wanted to show the responsibility of the English people for their tragic enslavement; and in giving them an instance of God's renewal of freedom, he wanted to dramatize the possibility of recovering liberty, of remaking their national life when they saw occasion. (169)

The delimited reading of the text, which its uncertainties do not obviate, is the view that it explores ``a union of minds in the exclusive bond of true love, the guarantee of mutual support and harmony, a source of virtue defying and de¯ating the harsh competitiveness of the world of work and politics'' (Belsey 55). But that view emerges from pulling out the Dalila episode to represent the whole, which it does not. At issue, rather, is Samson as a metonomy of those who claim superior ability but who in arrogance misuse the position in life into which they have been placed: they ignore covenant with those they may aid with their superior ability, they aggrandize 87

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes themselves into unmitigated power, they have forgotten God and the need for God's grace upon them.9 The error of England that Radzinowicz cites would include the choice of monarchy over republicanism, a ``false'' government of ``enslavement'' for a ``true'' government of ``equals.'' And choice demands individual conscience, allowing contrastive reactions to the ambiguity of the ending and raising the issue of purpose, Samson's ``destined purpose,'' discussed before, as well as the Danites' (and the readers') choice of what De doctrina christiana calls vocation.10 The Philistine hegemony over the Israelite nation has not been challenged because of inaction by the Israelites and because of hope in a Great Deliverer. Not only has Samson fallen into that way of thinking, ignoring the need for God's grace upon him, but so have the Danites by putting all their hopes on Delivery by one person, passively abdicating any action on their part. Alongside the message of Areopagitica, Paradise Lost, and its companion Paradise Regain'd, Samson Agonistes delineates the trial, external and internal, that each person much undergo to join Messiah to overthrow the satanic forces in this world. Humankind should not just imitate but should incorporate within itself the elements that will allow them to separate Psyche's seeds, to turn their depravity (since they came not innocent into this world) 9

10

While this last statement moves into a religious level of signi®cance, such as Milton believed and demonstrated in his works over and over ± Sonnet 7 the most obvious and frequently referenced instance ± it should be understood on a nonreligious level to mean that the individual, even of superior ability, cannot achieve solely by him- or herself. ``God'' here becomes a force that may consist of few persons or many, helpmates, ``advisers,'' or the ``people.'' It opposes the ``one'' and champions conjoined thought and action, a true republicanism, a socialistic principle modi®ed only by awareness of some people's mental and emotional insuciencies (``the rabble''). Samson is oblivious to the marriage covenant in the prepoem, employing it from a strong masculinist point of view only in argument against Dalila in the poem. While Milton, citing Paul, maintains in the divorce tracts the status of husband over wife, he also is armed that the reverse may obtain and is particularly concerned that there be mutuality, ``conversation,'' in marriage. The argument for divorce we today would call incompatibility, which fundamentally assumes that there should be an equipoise between the marriage partners, is his contribution to the issue: opprobrium labelling him a fornicator arose from those who rejected status for woman, even in wedded situations. Covenant is prime for Milton in religion, in politics, and in marriage. ``VOCATION is that natural method of renovation by which GOD THE FATHER, ACCORDING TO HIS PRECONCEIVED PURPOSE IN CHRIST, INVITES FALLEN MEN TO A KNOWLEDGE OF THE WAY TO PLACATE AND WORSHIP HIS GODHEAD AND, OUT OF GRATUITOUS KINDNESS, INVITES BELIEVERS TO SALVATION SO THAT THOSE WHO DO NOT BELIEVE ARE DEPRIVED OF ALL EXCUSE'' (Book I, Chapter XVII; pp. 452±53). ``Vocation, then, is either general or special. It is by general vocation that God invites all men to a knowledge of his true godhead. . . . Special vocation means that God, whenever he chooses, invites certain selected individuals, either from the socalled elect or from the reprobate, more clearly and more insistently than is normal'' (455); Samson would thus be seen as experiencing special vocation and the Danites invited to general vocation.

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Politics in the Destabilized Text into good, to act in obedience because of faith. Much of the message of the two epics is that experience can lead to faith, although prior, complete faith would have obviated the need for that kind of experience. In Adam's case had he maintained faith in the Omnipotent God to solve the problem of Eve's fall through deceit, he would not have eaten of the fruit and thus sinned, bringing death into this world and all its woe. In Jesus's case he does maintain faith, even when remaining on the spire at Jerusalem means certain fall, presumably to death. In the late 1640s resistance to republicanism was frequent, by many of the ``people'' through inaction; in the 1660s resistance ostensibly existed because the ``republican'' experiment had not succeeded. Part of the reason for that lack of success was custom and a€ections, the same causes perpetuating monarchy as the Restoration came into existence. With Samson's analysis of his inadequacy to function as the Great Deliverer in the past, with the gradual transcending of those elements of Self that had deterred former success, with a ®nal action in faith of outcome and in obliviousness to Self, the poem o€ers Milton's compatriots ``the possibility of recovering liberty, of remaking their national life when they saw occasion.'' The political substance of this text lies in acknowledgment of the preceding and in the action (if any) it will provoke. Perspective on the government scene in both the late 1640s and in the 1660s evidences Milton's iconoclastic beliefs if one is driven to such action as iconoclasm predicates ± removal of the ruling group and its head. That iconoclasm, according to David Loewenstein,11 intersects with the historical process, and the ®nal metaphors of the poem yield ``a poetics of regenerative iconoclasm.'' The metaphor of blindness and sight emerging throughout the poem yields ``light'' as ``historical illumination,'' and thus Samson's being ``with inward eyes illuminated'' and his ``eyes fast ®xt'' contrasting with those ``with blindness internal struck'' is a basic uncertainty of the poem: who will be like the emergent Samson and who will be like the continuing Danites? As Loewenstein comments (149), there is ``no easy resolution of [the poem's] tensions or the extreme responses it evokes.'' In the 1660s there was ®rst a strong Royalist fervor, peaking it would seem in the years of 1663±65, but by the autumn of 1667 there was a change, a change perhaps giving hope of dissent to those opposed to the controlling faction of political life in the ®rst half of the decade ± not just what remnants of the Good Old Cause might have been waiting for change. The publication of Paradise Lost occurs then, ``as Milton joins the voices testing what seemed to be new freedoms,'' according to von Maltzahn.12 With such testing of new 11

12

See Milton and the Drama of History: Historical Vision, Iconoclasm, and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), especially Chapter 4 (`` `Great Acts and Great Eloquence': The Historical Imagination in the Later Revolutionary Prose''), especially pp. 88±90, and Chapter 6 (``Spectacle of Power: Samson Agonistes and the Drama of History''), 126±51. ``The First Reception of Paradise Lost'' (1667), 481.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes freedoms and the composite political group opposing Clarendon's hegemony arose the old trouble against e€ecting a real reformation: custom and ease and letting George/Samson/God do it.13 Milton's warning in Tenure when hopes of a new government were possible with the trial and eventual execution of the king and now in Samson Agonistes when hopes of a new coalition, a republican coalition though under a monarch, could emerge like a noble and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep,14 and shaking her invincible locks: . . . an Eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazl'd eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain it self of heav'nly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and ¯ocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, ¯utter about, amaz'd at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticat a year of sects and schisms (Areopagitica 34; emphasis added).

The dream remained in 1667, but experience also showed its uncertainty of realization, and so Samson Agonistes, refashioned from the hopeful days of 1644 into a more cautious analysis, as in 1649, in the 1667±70 period. Samson may be seen as representing the Good Old Cause, but in his past in many negative terms that even beset its adherents, in the present of the poem in many positive terms, which have overcome those negativities. Yet other adherents of republicanism, not associated with the past cause and actions, had to be wooed from nonaction. The poem makes the plea that will dominate Of True Religion: we must amend our lives. The destabilized text that the poem has shown itself to be points to the Danites as those who would follow Samson, but who would do nothing to enhance his action or capitalize upon it. It is a depressing overview that emerges for the reader, but it is a realistic one, not only for England in midseventeenth century but for all nations always. The contrast between the Philistines who support spying, fraud, licentiousness, and the Danites who show inaction, changeability, inconsistency (as well as obtuseness), and who 13

14

Sir Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, Charles II's chancellor, faced impeachment in 1667, forcing him to go into exile to France on 29 November for the rest of his life. The issues from 1661 through 1667 facing the mixture of old and new Royalists and some who had ties to the Cromwellian government or were otherwise ``republicans'' in Parliament included the licentiousness of the Court and its crypto-Catholic bias, the crypto-Catholicism of such antagonists as George Digby, Earl of Bristol, the war with the Dutch and particularly the movement of the Dutch ¯eet into the Thames, the Conventicles Act of 17 May 1664, and the Five Mile Act of 31 October 1665. These were the years as well that saw passage of bills against the regicides and the Act of Uniformity. How far can we push this trope? Is Milton suggesting in this image in 1644, amidst the Civil War, that England has engaged in a kind of sexual intercourse (or fornication, since the reference is to Samson and thus the concubine Delilah) with the political and religious forces of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, followed by a deep sleep, as is customary for the male, in the years under Charles I, to the current arousal that the armed hostilities would connote? The trope, if applied to the 1660s, suggests uncertainty about whether current a€airs can be construed as ``rousing . . . like a strong man after sleep.''

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Politics in the Destabilized Text condone violence (though at times violence is necessitated) is made in broad strokes which can be seen directed toward monarchists and would-be republicans, but which more incisively pinion ever-present political entities. As McAlister observes, Samson's act ``has rami®cations that extend beyond the immediate locale and the immediate time period'' (66). The contrast of the false god and the true, like the contrast of the false father and the true, plays upon Dagon as a supporter of spying, fraud, licentiousness, and pomp as well (whether such application is valid or not, and there is a hint of antiCatholic sentiment against the crypto-Catholic court), and God of the Israelites as other than what the Danites seem to construe. Here may be reason for Milton and his fellow protesants of the 1660s to equate Dagon with the Roman Catholic god and the Danites, for Milton at least, with the not truly reformed protestants whose inaction and acquiescence suggest a ``god'' who still re¯ects some aspects of the ``false'' god. While some of the Chorus's sententiousness sounds good in application to Milton's God and His teachings, the words of the Chorus are hollow for they little evidence real understanding: the Word has not become their Flesh.

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Chapter 7 BIOGRAPHICAL INTRUSIONS

A

major question that is usually not directly made part of gender discussions of the dramatic poem, but that does direct many people's thinking, is the alleged biographical nature of the work. Because Milton was blind and Samson was blind, they become equated, thus also aligning the monarchy, which Milton argued against, with the Philistines; such identi®cation calls for a real-life Dalila, and Mary Powell, Milton's ®rst wife, becomes the dubious recipient of that role. But then it is supposed there would be a real Harapha, and nominated has been Salmasius, that is, Claude Saumaise,1 whose Defensio Regia, Pro Charles I elicited Milton's governmentally assigned Pro populo Anglicano defensio and who was for a while thought the author of Regii sanguinis clamor ad cúlum adversus parricidas Anglicanos, a rebuttal of Milton's tract. (That is, Salmasius wrote a defense of Charles I immediately after Charles' execution by the Parliamentarians, of whom Oliver Cromwell was a major leader, and Milton, having become the Secretary for Foreign Languages to the newly formed Council of State, was ordered to write a rebuttal, justifying the new government and the actions which brought it to power. In turn a tract impugning the ``Parricide,'' the shedding of the blood of the patriarchal king, was published attacking Milton. This was written by Peter Du Moulin, but was early assigned to Salmasius.) Even Milton's father has been talked of in connection with the role of Manoa, as farfetched as that would seem to be! Manoa represents, for Howard ErskineHill,2 the image of those who acted to save Milton in 1660 from punishment for his work with the Cromwellian government. The insubstantiality of this kind of biographical reading of the dramatic poem, as well as the silliness it has brought in tow, has been repeatedly shown, but it is the foundation on which such important studies as Hill's Milton and the English Revolution and Radzinowicz's Toward Samson Agonistes have been built. Any biographical reading of the poem is deeperset and should involve the political substruct of the poem. Hill and Radzinowicz do examine the political underpinnings of 1

2

Lieb has revived this biographical substruct in Culture of Violence. But see remarks later and in Chapters 4 and 6. Howard Erskine-Hill, Poetry and the Realm of Politics: Shakespeare to Dryden. Interestingly, and I think most correctly, Christopher Hill in Milton and the English Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1977) does not see Manoa in any speci®c biographical capacity.

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Biographical Intrusions the work but in literal terms of Milton's experience rather than as political perception. That an author may have the creative ability to invent a text (and its characterizations) which asks the reader to read it, not him, has most frequently been disregarded in criticism of this dramatic poem. The biographical substruct instead involves the reader's understanding that a text o€ers a writer's conscious action and subconscious being, and here these may be seen in terms of Milton's reactions to his political world and his argument to achieve political liberty, as well as potential psychological manifestations of a blind man writing about blindness. The questions concerning marriage and divorce that the text raises also may involve conscious and subconscious sources, but to delimit those questions to the biographical only instead of also acknowledging the act of writing is to falsify the text. Milton himself had discussed the basic problem: the author must be distinguished from the character. In Pro populo Anglicano defensio (1651), confuting Salmasius, he wrote: You should know, since with each twist and turn you make I see better your rashness and lack of judgment, that we should consider not so much what the poet says, as who in the poem says it. Various ®gures appear, some good, some bad, some wise, some foolish, each speaking not the poet's opinions but what is appropriate for each person.3

This is, of course, the point I have tried to make in previous chapters and particularly about the ideas expressed by the character Samson and the reading of the character Dalila within the dramatic poem. What that point demands is that we not read Milton as Samson and assign Samson's attitudes to Milton, even if some of those attitudes are Milton's, and that we not make easy assignments of characters and events in the poem to real characters and events in Milton's life. Earlier Milton had lampooned the author of A Modest Confutation of . . . the Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defense against Smectymnuus (1642), who had labelled Milton a ``scurrilous Mime,'' with the like comment, ``the author is ever distinguisht from the person he introduces'';4 he accuses the author, believed to be Bishop Joseph Hall, as ``unwittingly'' writing ``foole upon his own friend, for he who was there personated, was only the Remonstrant,'' that is, Bishop Hall, and thus the author is calling himself a fool.5 [T]he text [of Samson Agonistes] . . . [is] itself a historical event, in the sense that Milton's choice of the Samson story is a determinate choice, not the 3 4 5

Yale Prose, IV, i, 439, translation by Donald C. MacKenzie. An Apology Against a Pamphlet (1642), Yale Prose, I, 880. He rubs it in by further reference to Hall: ``Let him ask the Author of those toothlesse Satyrs who was the maker, or rather the anticreator of that universall foolery'' (ibid.).

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes neutral vehicle of meaning but an advent whose signi®cance is enabled and conditioned by a particular con®guration of the total social formation.6

While he is attentive to the political, autobiographical, and theological contexts that criticism has marked in the poem, John Guillory rightly pursues ``mediation,'' ``relating a ®eld of cultural production and the whole of social life'' (149) to conclude a basically biographical reading (o€ering concepts of ``commercialism'' for Milton and for the text that seem to smack of agenda rather than substance). But it is a reading that does not simply equate person and character or event and situation: it poses, in reality, the psychological and intellectual being of Milton as he would have viewed the historical moment (or moments, I would say). Samson, for Guillory, ``is a type not of Christ but of Milton, who, in Marx's famous phrase, `produced Paradise Lost as the silkworm produces silk,' the inverted image of the ®gure who destroys the Philistines `as an Eagle' '' (172). The historical moments that may emerge within the poem would seem to be the Gunpowder Plot and the destruction of the Temple (as Knoppers suggests, Historicizing, 60); the removal (or ``correction'') of monarchy through the Civil Wars of the 1640s,7 and the disheartenment he felt with even so-called ``antimonarchists''; the dissension for Charles as well as that against Charles's antagonists; the failures of the Interregnum; and the earlier Restoration period with its return to a frivolous life and its treatment of antimonarchists. The latter period especially may relate to production of the dramatic poem at that time as republicans were persecuted and even ghoulish exhumations occurred (see Knoppers, Historicizing, 57±58). The poem has been viewed as a Jeremiad,8 implying Milton's lament for the monarchist and nonrepublican world that England had returned to in the 1660s. Yet part of the uncertainty of Samson Agonistes suggests that doom-saying does not represent the complete vision that it o€ers, as I have argued in Chapter 6. Certainly the ironies that will be looked at in Chapter 8 question the Chorus's optimism as the work ends, yet there is an optimism expressed. In Of True Religion (1673) Milton does not eliminate the hope for change that would prevent the growth of Roman Catholicism and cancel the government's 6

7

8

John Guillory, ``The Father's House: Samson Agonistes in its Historical Moment,'' 148±76, in Re-membering Milton: Essays on the Texts and Traditions, ed. Mary Nyquist and Margaret W. Ferguson (New York and London: Methuen, 1987); see p. 148. Milton during this period, in Tenure, in The Ready and Easy Way, in A Treatise of Civil Power, is not really opposed to monarchy as such: he is opposed to the nature of Charles I's and Charles II's kind of monarchy, and the results of the Whig ascendency in the 1660s and after, retaining but restricting monarchy, are consonant with his republican ± not egalitarian ± views. That he has been read as committed to ``democratic'' beliefs ± like assignment of his arguments in Areopagitica to total abandonment of censorship and to approval of what could be construed as license ± does not change what he actually wrote. Knoppers, Historicizing, 151±59. The term recounts ``divine punishment of an elect leader and of a chosen nation,'' with a pattern of sin, punishment, repentence, and deliverance.

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Biographical Intrusions alleged association with it. The change, however, must ®rst begin to emerge from correction of certain ``protestant'' positions against other ``protestant'' dissenters, not unlike the refutation of opponents to Charles I who nonetheless legislate by custom and for their own ``ease'' and self-interest that he exposes in Tenure. Can the Danites reform themselves individually and then as a group not only to be liberated from the Philistines but from the oppression of passivity and from the secure, if unliberated, world they experience under the Philistines, in this case not unlike the Israelites in Egypt? Nicholas von Maltzahn advances the cogent reading that Milton's position in Tenure and again in Samson Agonistes is ``to rebuke latter-day Presbyterians for betraying their earlier opposition to Charles.''9 He calls this ``radical resistance.'' Although Milton resists ``Warrs'' that ``endless warr still breed'' (Sonnet 15), he also resists paci®sm.10 Commands may be forced or they may be carried out through obedience. The command of wisdom, or we might say of mind over body, may counter forced commands ± and should, Milton would assert ± but may accede to obedience when God or his surrogate has stood for such accession. Samson has been a failed heroic ideal as Wittreich designates him, and Jesus, the successful heroic ideal, but (perhaps depending upon how we read the ``uncertain'' ending from the ®fth episode on) Samson comes to be an example of a successful heroic ideal for Milton, for the command that he now follows ± even though it is not explicitly stated as ``do this'' ± comes from his God. The ``war'' against the false ``god'' Charles I (or Dagon) and the ``war without hostilities'' against Charles II and the government under him (or the Philistines) is to be waged, not paci®stically rejected: it should be a ``radical resistance'' not only to the type but to real oppression of humankind. This does not insinuate that Milton intended in Samson Agonistes a veiled attack on Charles I or Charles II or monarchy or Restoration politics.11 It does 9

10

11

``The Whig Milton, 1667±1700,'' in Milton and Republicanism, ed. David Armitage, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 232±33. As noted before, see Fallon, Captain or Colonel, and contrast this with James A. Freeman, Milton and the Martial Muse: Paradise Lost and European Traditions of War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). Biographical import is, of course, connected with political issues during Milton's life. Wittreich reminds us of the attention the eighteenth-century critics paid to Samson Agonistes in this regard (see `` `Under the Seal of Silence': Repressions, Receptions, and the Politics of Paradise Lost,'' Soundings of Things Done, 293±323; especially 315, here quoted). Line 695 of the drama is thought by Francis Peck ``to register Milton's fears of being tried for his life by Charles II and his judges or of `being torn in pieces by the mob, just as ORPHEUS was.' '' And John Jortin annotates line 241, ``Milton certainly intended to reproach his countrymen indirectly, and as plainly as he dared, with the Restoration of Charles II, which he accounted the restoration of slavery, and with the execution of the Regicides. He pursues the same subject again 678±700.'' As Wittreich points out, Newton, along with biographical parallelings, shifts the political reading of Paradise Lost to Samson Agonistes, and adds of line 268 that Milton ``very probably intended . . . a secret satire upon the English nation, which according

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes allege that Milton's attitudes toward oppression of a people and toward the means of liberation ± multiple though they may be, and setting up uncertainties as they may ± accrued from the historical moments of his life that he experienced, directly and at a distance. It argues that the role of self, Milton's self, is extremely important in the development of his political thought. The episode engaging Samson confronting Harapha may have derived its existence and substance from Salmasius's defense of the false ``god'' Charles (generally equated with David the King by his adherents), as well as from the pusillanimity and scurrilousness of Peter Du Moulin's attack on Milton's Pro populo Anglicano defensio in Regii Sanguinis Clamor. The episode may, indeed, have had its origin after the ®rst compositional attempts; and perhaps this addition of Harapha as one of the ``other persons'' came not very long after the publication of Ad Ioannem Miltonum responsio, opus posthumum, Claudii Salmasii (Dijon, 1660).12 Still Harapha is not Salmasius, as in some kind of pieÁce aÁ clef. As Worden remarks, ``Samson Agonistes is not a pieÁce aÁ clef, even if . . . it projects some carefully drawn parallels between then and now'' (112). He does suggest with good reason, however, such biographical echoes in the second episode as Milton's hiding and imprisonment in 1660 and the clemency for him sought by William Morice, Arthur Annesley, and Lady Ranelagh. It is ironic (and irony always sets up some uncertainties) that Harapha as a metonym of the soldier (a braggadocio reprising Samson's boastfulness of the past), as an adherent of Dagon's ``warfare'' against the nonbelievers, as the banner-bearer and champion of his theocratic/monarchical forces should appear sycophantic. He would be the in¯ictor of violence, but withdraws from any act because of trivial and despicable ``reasons.'' He is, as Erskine-Hill labels him, a miles gloriosus, a ``representative of arrogant conquest'' (235). None of this seems to me to represent Salmasius, who after all was a welleducated and able thinker (or Du Moulin, for that matter). Harapha easily represents, however, a nonthinking, merely physical type, rallied to action by a kind of demigod and the lure of glory. It is not too far removed from what could have been a description of the early Samson, the negative Samson of some of the sermonists of the day. Milton's irony should be showing. Samson, renowned for aggressive and violent acts, challenges Harapha's potential victimization of him with further violence, though cast as defending of self, rather than aggression, and of his God. Perhaps one can entertain the thought of Milton as Samson as an in¯ictor of violence within the poem, since

12

to his republican politics had by restoring the King chosen bondage with ease rather than strenuous liberty.'' References to Francis Peck, New Memoirs of the Life and Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton (London: 1740) and Thomas Newton, ed., Paradise Regain'd. A Poem, in Four Books. To which is added Samson Agonistes. And Poems upon Several Occasions (London: 1752), which includes Jortin's note. The second edition, also 1660, was entitled, Claudii Salmasii ad Johannem Miltonem responsio, opus posthumous from London.

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Biographical Intrusions Milton does attack his antimonarchic opponents, his name-calling antagonists in the matter of divorce, and the Parliamentarians' adversary Salmasius. But equations with an earlier Samson do not exist, and Milton's verbal violence (even despite his wearing a sword) doesn't square with Samson's potential action in episode four. In seeking neat correspondences critics have not paid attention to the general application to events and characters: here, episode four, we see the way that resistance can often de¯ate the airy ``eloquence'' of a pipsqueak and toady.13 The same may be said for Mary Powell Milton as Dalila.14 Frequently it has been pointed out that Mary returned, bore four children, and apparently was a loving wife, whom Milton loved. Her earlier return to her father's house shortly after marriage can be understood in various ways (psychologically most signi®cantly, I think, when one considers a sixteen-year-old girl married to a thirty-three-year-old man, becoming a kind of step-mother to two charges eleven and ten). We are on shaky ground when we speculate about Milton's attitudes toward her in 1642±45, until her return. Yet Adam's diatribe as fallen being in Book X and Samson's attitude toward Dalila have been read as the result of Milton's ``misogyny,'' intensi®ed by his ``troubles'' with Mary. (That there is confusion between ``misogyny'' and a Pauline ``masculinist'' position when the word is applied to Milton should be clear.) Lee Jacobus has examined the standard association of the Samson/Delilah story and its misogyny in terms of the ``De Casibus'' tradition, and concludes that Milton, while aware of such works as Giovanni Boccaccio's De casibus virorum illustrium, Chaucer's ``Monk's Tale,'' John Lydgate's The Fall of Princes, and Joseph Swetnam's The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women (1615), distinguished ``himself from the attitudes of these misogynistic authors.''15 ``Milton treats Dalila as responsible for her own fate,'' he writes, ``as one who wills her own actions independent of the misogynist's claims against her, even as his images align themselves with tradition'' (268). His essay, though not concerned with the alleged autobiographical substruct, emboldens rejection of Milton as misogynist and 13

14

15

One is reminded of Milton's sonnet on Tetrachordon, which refers to the martial exploits of Alexander MacDonnell (James Graham, Marquis of Montrose's major-general), whom he calls an ``Asp,'' and the vacillating ¯unky James Gordon, Lord Aboyne, whom he calls a ``toad.'' ``Did Milton feel, however irrationally, that Mary Powell, the wife in charge of feeding him during the years of rapidly deteriorating sight, was guilty of a culinary lapse comparable to that of Eve in Book 9?'' William Kerrigan asks, considering a relationship between diet and invulnerable virtue. ``It is probable that Mary Powell, like Dalila, rehearsed an ancient pattern, inasmuch as Milton's ®rst nourisher (psychologically, if not actually), Sarah Milton, su€ered from weak eyesight,'' which leads him to couple blindness and diet, with both Milton's mother and his ®rst wife. See The Sacred Complex: On the Psychogenesis of Paradise Lost (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 204±205. ``Dalila, Misogyny, and the De Casibus Tradition,'' 271±81, in Arenas of Con¯ict, ed. McColgan and Durham.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes particularly because of Mary Powell, as some popular antagonisms (derivative toward Milton as ``regicide'' and as nonorthodox of religion) have cast him; I think of Robert Graves's Wife to Mr. Milton: The Story of Marie Powell (1943), of course, as one obvious example. Commentators on Samson Agonistes and Milton's ``biographical'' relationship to it and its events have been fairly numerous. For M. J. Doherty, ``Milton sees his involvement with the English Revolution and his compromising of his poetic gift in politics and in marriage, divorce, and remarriage in the 1640s as Samson-like trials of virtue in which he ®nds himself wanting.''16 In agreement with my understanding of the biographical import, David Gay, in his current work called ``The Endless Kingdom,'' is exploring the ``paradise within'' as Milton's reestablishment of the revolutionary vitality of scripture, not through scripture's apparent contradictions but through its disciplined critical equilibrium as modelled in wisdom literature and elsewhere. His important discussion of Samson, a dicult and an extreme case, will show the way the traumatic interruptions of Stuart monarchy are nonetheless o€set by the ``endless'' kingdom delineated in the dramatic poem by its poetic and critical vitality. For Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, ``Milton comes to know himself in 1671 through his representation of both Samson and Jesus.'' They discern ``that the individual must, in an act of selfknowledge, in a moment of extended soliloquy examining his early and recent life, become a subject of God.''17 Samson's physical blindness as metaphor for the misguidedness of the English people, as Erskine-Hill refers to it ± a metaphor that recalls ``the dark world, and wide'' of Sonnet 19 ± is appealing and cogent, but we should recognize that that metaphor removes the simplistic biographical equation of Samson's blindness as being Milton's physical blindness. Psychologically Samson's blindness would have had signi®cant e€ect on Milton's thinking as he wrote. The added dimension of metaphor in ``light'' as wisdom and ``dark'' as ignorance was likewise explored so meaningfully in his sonnet, employing the image as background out of which an incisive truism, even if it has rationalistic overtones, emerged. In the 1640s when references to Samson exist in his prose, Milton's eyesight was failing, particularly noticeably in autumn 1644, with loss of sight in his left eye in 1650; and of course before the 1660s with total blindness. Samson's history can be looked upon as showing one who acted and acted and achieved nothing in the realm of ``light'' and ``wisdom'' when he had sight, but who had to wait for bidding from God to serve as God wished after he lost his sight. ``They also serve who only stand and wait'' can apply to Samson in 16

17

M. J. Doherty, ``Beyond Androgyny: Sidney, Milton, and the Phoenix,'' 34±65, in Heirs of Fame, ed. Swiss and Kent; see p. 48. Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, The Empty Garden: The Subject of Late Milton (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), 397.

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Biographical Intrusions one way of viewing his history, and Milton, who had not reached that truism, perhaps, during the 1640s, can make such observation after he has learned of governmental actions in which he had no part around October 1655.18 Contemplation of the events in the Restoration period may have reminded him of his own line in the sonnet, and led to its echoing in the histories of Jesus, who underwent trial and a ``waiting period'' prior to his great ministry, and of Samson. His physically dark world must have contributed to Samson's lament in the prologue, but any equivalency with an act to serve God in the late 1660s, other than his counsel to people ± the English, yes, but all people now ± through his writing (his one talent that is death to hide) does not exist. The biographical in the dramatic poem ± and in the ®gure of Abdiel or the ®gure of Jesus, both of whom have been alleged as conscious versions of himself ± exists in such psychological depth, not in simplistic personal equivalencies. Marriage and divorce are major issues for the dramatic poem, in how one views Dalila's former act and her present admission of guilt and plea for renewal of their marriage, and in how one parallels Samson's argument now with what had been his attitude and action in the prepoem. Milton does not give an explicit accounting of that attitude and action even in the outlining of the events leading to the current debacle. It is clear from his divorce tracts that he rejects such early attitude and action of Samson, even though the ``husband'' be the head (for Paul ends the controversy, he writes in Tetrachordon, debilitating the tenor of his prior argument); he would not have, in all conscience, been able to credit such attitude and action even to dismantle it. But the reader understands the sharp contrast in Samson's former actions and his current Miltonic apperception. If indeed the dramatic poem was begun in the 1640s, we see the ideas about marriage and the nullities of marriage that Milton was elaborating in 1643±45 as concurrent, joining references in 1643 and 1644 to Samson. While this also is concurrent with Mary's absence from his home, the upshot should be seen as the psychological in¯uence on his concerns and conclusions from his own situation, not simply a narrating of his situation. Looking at Samson and the Samson legend, we cannot really credit the dramatic Samson's reasoning as the legendary Samson's; it is Milton's Samson's. Looking at Milton's experiences and dilemma, we can grasp the kind of reasoning that would assuage ego but also lead to perceptions that are disjoined from the personal. In Samson Agonistes we have Miltonic perception in the mouth of Samson, yet to call Milton Samson or Samson Milton de¯ates the signi®cance of that perception (masculinist though it is) for a domestic world. Events of the Restoration period have also been paralleled with the poem as in¯uences from reality: Erskine-Hill remarks that the terror and power of the 18

See my discussion in ``Milton's Sonnet 19: Its Date of Authorship and its Interpretation,'' Notes & Queries, N.S. 4 (1957): 442±46.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes last images, the capacity of ®re to rise and destroy, provides allusion to the Great Fire of 1666 (223), and Knoppers posits that ``The relationship of Samson Agonistes to the execution and exhuming of the regicides has not been explored in any sustained way'' (Historicizing, 56), although this triumph of authorities over the regicides is undercut through being given over to idolatry and delusion. What arises is a statement of apocalyptic judgment through their experience and Samson's. In this way one can accept that the poem's publication ``seems an unmistakable threat'' (Erskine-Hill, 251), and the Chorus's last words, a message of hate and warning. The poem is a ``critique of England as a chosen nation that has failed to respond to divine chastisement ± or favor'' (Knoppers, Historicizing, 143). I have stressed the signi®cance of the Civil Wars of the 1640s and the early Restoration of the 1660s for Milton's poem. The hopes for the antimonarchical forces in that earlier period declaim a likening of the Israelites with some of the Parliamentarians and the Philistines with the royal court, idle, arrogant, sensuous. The realities of the Wars become contributing factors in Milton's view of the biblical struggle of Truth against forces of its suppression, and against the Violence those forces exert. As he wrote in the Fairfax sonnet, there can be only endless war ``Till Truth, and Right from Violence be freed.'' The example that the Samson of episode ®ve etches is free from one kind of violence, such as episode four has looked at, but it has employed another kind. Does Milton thus mean that the Philistine ``War'' will continue (as it does) even if Truth and Right have been asserted? He knew that sometimes war became the path to achieve peace, as the Cromwell sonnet asserts: ``Not of warr onely, but detractions rude,/ Guided by faith and matchless Fortitude/ To peace and truth thy glorious way hast plough'd.'' The points are iterated in the Vane sonnet: Vane knows ``how warr may best, upheld,/ Move by her two main nerves, Iron and Gold . . . [and] Both spirituall power and civill, what each means,/ What severs each . . . . The bounds of either sword to thee we ow./ Therefore on thy ®rm hand religion leans/ In peace.'' The return of that earlier court after 1660 (or at least one still engaged in idleness, arrogance, and licentiousness) is a stark reminder for Milton that the seeming destruction of the Stuart temple and its hangers-on in 1649 was not a lasting victory, despite the decade of ``theocratic'' rule. And the years after 1652, when the Vane sonnet was written, would have given pause to assigning the Interregnum government to a victory of God's servants when the Instrument of Protection was created in 1653 and when the ine€ectual Richard became ``Protector'' after his father's death in 1658. The government has returned to a di€erent kind of ``monarchic'' program, and the ``wars'' in Ireland and at sea have obliterated any Truth and Right and Peace hard-won before. The signi®cance of these historical moments is not delimited to ``us'' against ``them,'' but resides in Milton's sharp awareness that many of ``us'' have not been di€erent from and actually have been assimilated to ``them.'' 100

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Biographical Intrusions The Good Old Cause may still be an ideal for Milton, yet it is not advanced by Samson Agonistes, for he has recognized that the executors of the Cause are few or do not exist anymore or at least do not act. His idealism may still exist, but he knows that only the individual can assert the Cause for him- or herself. The biographical is certainly there in the dramatic poem, but it is not a ``Samson is Milton,'' ``Dalila is Mary,'' ``Harapha is Salmasius'' kind of simplicity. In an important way the ®nal Samson represents the Milton of the disillusioning 1660s. An earlier Samson represents only the symbol of what might have occurred if Samson were truly the mighty eagle Milton hoped for in Areopagitica. But that earlier Samson is not Milton: he is only symbol.

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Chapter 8 THE UNCERTAINTIES OF IRONY

T

HE concepts of tragedy that we have looked at in Chapter 3 and the questions of Samson's development taken up in Chapter 4 do not really account for the reader's reaction at the end of the dramatic poem. This reaction is due in large part, I argue, to a vague identi®cation with the hero and becomes the key to what is the tragedy that the drama exposes. The substance of tragedy has been molded in various ways. At the base is the e€ect which the readers (or audience) feel when the ®nal lines are voiced, an e€ect rather dicult of de®nition or description. As I read the ®nal lines of Samson Agonistes I am crushed by a sense of waste, a sense of What is the Good? a sense of frustration. Samson seems to have triumphed and his faith in God seems to have been shown, and the ``evil'' Philistines have been punished for their treatment of the Danites and Samson particularly. But have the Philistines been punished indeed? has the audience achieved new acquist? are we certain God's face will appear when least expected? It is this sense of frustration which dominates. We are calmed by having experienced a serious imitation of our own sense of pity and our own fears of life, but we recognize that Samson's story is constantly played through time and that we are part of another recurrence. The pity we feel is both self-pity and compassion for others caught in the trials of life. We are too often Samson the proud, the selfdefeated one relying on ``prophecy'' and on hope. The fears we experience concern both our personal conquering of temptations and the pernicious motives that surround us everywhere. We are constantly like Samson making bad choices and succumbing to self-deceit. We constantly look to the future to be di€erent and to solve the ills and problems of the past ± a kind of ``Happy New Year'' syndrome. What sets Samson Agonistes apart from much Elizabethan tragedy is that we do not feel simply a contest between virtue and vice with everything neatly colored white or black. We are not, in this drama, shown the road to ruin: the road already has been walked. We are not shown the way of all ¯esh: the ¯esh has previously succumbed. And we are not even shown the waste of sin: for through past sin has come the present means to achieve salvation. The tragic hero is not simply Samson: he is all of us. Samson's action is not simply his revenge on the Philistines or even only a metaphor for the Danites to follow to free themselves from bondage: it is a metonymy of the uselessness of such 102

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The Uncertainties of Irony action if to be ``useful'' an action must have immediate, widespread, and lasting e€ect. What such action evokes from the Chorus is only hope, for suddenly they remember that ``if Vertue feeble were,/ Heav'n it self would stoop to her'' (A Mask, 1022±23). What such action screams out to the reader who takes full perspective of the narrative is that only Samson achieves (or seems to achieve) salvation under Christian postulates. If we as fallen humans, regardless of the reasons for our fall, can renovate through regained faith in God ± faith implying love and obedience ± we too can hope for salvation. Yet constantly it is an individual experience, lived over and over again. Samson's story may bring catharsis for us, but it is quite di€erent from the e€ect we feel, say, in Oedipus Rex or the Eumenides. Oedipus or Orestes is only through an abstracted analogy ourselves: the man who pursues disastrous truth, the person who atones for an evil in this world. Samson, on the other hand, could be all of us: human tempted, human fallen, human renovated, human saved. Samson agonistes is a player on the stage of the world in the endless drama of life, which goes on and on in successive acts. The evidence for Samson's renovation lies in the ``rouzing motions'' (1382) which he feels and his illumination with ``inward eyes'' (1689), both of which occur after he has rejected the temptations of necessity, fraud, and violence represented by Manoa, Dalila, and Harapha.1 He has been forged into a champion (but individual champion) of God, and this is made clear by his rejection of the vainglorious and yet servile aspects of the Ocer's message from the Philistines. He places himself in God's hands, manifesting his returned faith, and as God's ``champion'' he will exalt God's name by bringing defeat upon the false god Dagon through some act against the Philistines. As agonistes he is one engaged in a struggle ± to be interpreted both as a struggle against external forces (the temptation motif) and against internal forces (his despair, his pleas for ease and rest, and the potential return of pride). As agonistes he is also one engaged in a drama, an actor playing a part. The act toward which the ``narrative'' moves is symbolic: it is a kind of miracle, for who otherwise by his brute strength could bring down such a portico, or metaphorically, so destroy a nation? The act implies God's miraculous presence; it employs the great gift of strength allotted to Samson; and it culminates with Samson's overcoming of tristitia, with his development of patience, and with his returned faith in God. (We have glanced at these matters in Chapters 3 and 4 especially.) The renovation of Samson seems certain, so viewed, as does God's part in 1

There have been steps in his renovation, of course, such as his protest that ``Nothing of all these evils hath befall'n me/ But justly; I my self have brought them on,/ Sole Author I, sole cause'' (374±76), but the in¯ectional point (the peripeteia) occurs with lines 1381±83 (``Be of good courage, I begin to feel/ Some rouzing motions in me which dispose /To something extraordinary my thoughts''). It should also be noted that the gloss in the Geneva Bible for Judges xvi:22 says, ``Yet had he not his strength againe, til he had called vpon God, and reconcild him selfe.''

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes the resulting act of that renovation. And to be ®rmly noted is that it is a joining of person and God. This renovation for some critics is a good in itself, and so renovation (or regeneration, an erroneous term I believe) becomes the theme of the poem for them.2 Samson Agonistes is thus construed as a drama whose aim is to teach all men by example the need for repentance and faith. The contrast with the ®gure of Jesus in Paradise Regain'd is stark: Jesus may stand as ideal exemplar to some, but Milton's message is that humankind must internalize the heroism of the Son, not simply imitate him; Samson stands as a representative of humankind (though one of superior strength and greater opportunities) who falls through human desires and misconceptions but who is renovated to become a metonymy of that potentiality. It is clear why Jesus will become the Christ in his later career; it is, by the same token, clear why Samson is not a Christ, only a ®gure who might have stood comparison. His di€erence from Gideon or Ezekiel or Job is exactly the point. The negative Samson that Wittreich ®nds in the sermonic literature of the age re¯ects the Samson who stands as a representative of humankind that falls through human desires and misconceptions, one not to be emulated. The positive Samson that emerges in Milton's drama is one who is renovated, as all may be, but it involves the individual, not the community as the super®cial symbol of Samson as mighty eagle in Areopagitica implied; and it involves the grace of that individual as ever in the great task-master's eye. Renovation takes e€ect not by God and hope in Him only, nor by the action of the sinner only, but by a fusion of God and individual acting together. The ironies of the drama play with the interpretations of that dilemma and that unity. Only with like renovation of each person separately will communal (or governmental group) action have meaningful e€ect. That is clearly discouraging and disheartening: it seems to represent Milton's attitude in the later 1640s after the reaction (or lack of reaction) to his anti-prelatical tracts, his civic tracts, and especially his divorce tracts; it is even more disillusioning after the failure of the Commonwealth and the return to monarchy in the 1660s. Samson Agonistes has two levels of tragedy: it may be viewed through the emphasis on the tragic hero undergoing an imitation of a serious action of life, a€ecting its readers with a catharsis of pity and fear; it may be viewed further as a tragedy of hope which repeatedly dogs humankind, blinding them to realities, to full recogniton of Self, and to lasting achievement. The 2

The major argument for Samson's regeneration will be found in Parker's Milton's Debt to Greek Tragedy in Samson Agonistes. Parker concluded: ``The theme of Samson Agonistes, then, is the hero's recovery and its result. In other words, it is regeneration and reward'' (237). However, he also argued that the drama is tragic, and it is his views that have primarily caused the controversy over Samson's regeneration. A review of some of the controversy will be found in French Fogle's ``The Action of Samson Agonistes,'' in Essays in American and English Literature Presented to Bruce Robert McElderry, Jr., ed. Max F. Schultz (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1967), 177±96. Fogle examines regeneration in terms of statements on the subject in De doctrina christiana.

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The Uncertainties of Irony outcome of the ®rst assumes expectation that things will be righted in the future, for evil will be exposed and defeated. Hamlet provides such a tragedy as the world of Denmark is altered with the death of Claudius, the exposure of the murder of the elder Hamlet, and the ascent of Fortinbras to a united kingdom of Norway and Denmark. No hope beyond that expectation comes into play. But Milton's dramatic poem does not o€er a similar outcome. There is no exposure of evil, only an opposition of beliefs and life styles, with revenge by one on the other. There is no uni®cation of those opposed to the dominant rulers. There is only death for some of the opposed, and continuance as before for the Danites. But the dramatic poem does have hope (a false hope, really) built into it from the beginning: the Danites hope that they will be delivered by Samson from Philistine yoke, and Manoa, in answer to Samson's ``all the contest is now/ 'Twixt God and Dagon'' (461±62), replies, ``With cause this hope relieves thee'' (472). There are six appearances of the word ``hope'' in the exodos, and these pound in the tragedy that hope creates. Manoa hopes for success in bribery (1452±54) and deceives himself that Samson will be released. He, no more than Samson before the drama began, has put no faith in God to save or help his champion; everything he says about their God has a hollow ring to it because he at no point shows faith in God. This hope for Samson's release is dashed by the messenger's entry, telling of Samson's death. The Chorus's acceptance of Manoa's hope (1455, 1504±505) is expressed in such a way that we are prepared for its ironic reversal: ``Thy hopes are not ill founded'' (1504), they say, with all the weight of the opposite in its expression. Samson's ``triumph'' over the Philistines educes hopefulness from the Chorus: O dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious! Living or dying thou hast ful®ll'd The work for which thou wast foretold To Israel (1660±63)

and from Manoa: Samson hath quit himself Like Samson, and heroicly hath ®nish'd A life Heroic, on his Enemies Fully reveng'd, hath left them years of mourning, And lamentation to the Sons of Caphtor Through all Philistian bounds. To Israel Honour hath left, and freedom (1709±15)

but the work of release is not done and freedom has not been achieved, unless they ``Find courage to lay hold on this occasion'' (1716). Now Manoa and the 105

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes Chorus have faith, where Manoa, at least, had none before: now they rationalize that God appears when least expected, that God will save his true servants. Manoa is particularly shown to be a bad counsel when just before the messenger enters he denies the Chorus' thought that ``by miracle'' Samson's eye-sight might be restored: ``That were a joy presumptuous to be thought.'' The Chorus, though, knows that ``God hath wrought things as incredible/ For his people of old''; ``what hinders now?'' they argue. But the false father, though real parent, can only conclude, ``He can I know, but doubt to think he will;/ Yet Hope would fain subscribe, and tempts Belief '' (1527± 35). The Chorus does not understand what the Great Delivery ``foretold/ To Israel'' should have been, and Manoa sees only vengeance on the Philistines and a sentimental recouping of ``Honour.'' Hope should be underpinned by a faith in God, but the hope just reviewed is built on a lack of faith, on reinforcement by miracles and belief in miracles, on mere wishing that something occur. There is no action on the part of those who hope: it is left up to others, in this case to God, but without acknowledgment that action should be an interaction between God and his servant and that it is not simply God's allowing things to happen that will bring the desired end. The monument to Samson that Manoa proposes to in¯ame the valiant youth to emulate Samson is particularly ironic. For Manoa imitation will bring success and will bring God's light to shine upon those youths; for Manoa all one needs is a symbol. With hindsight we can see an analogy with what is occurring contemporaneously in the seventeenth century. The nondeistic concepts of the times suggest that God does look out for his creatures and shows a real presence by revelation, such as that which Samson's act and the Chorus's response depict: a ``miracle.'' In contrast the deistic concepts emerging suggest God's nonaction and the movement of history by humankind's actions unaided by a divine intervention. The existence of God is only manifested within the things, people, and actions of this world. Samson Agonistes allows its readers (particularly those of the 1640±70 period) to maintain God's revelation in the hopes expressed by Manoa and the Chorus as the drama ends, and politically and religiously to observe such revelation in the defeat of the antichrist Charles I and the ascendance of God's ministers, the leaders of the theocratic government. But it also allows its readers to recognize that more than reliance on revelation is necessary to achieve a millenarian world. The hopes in the Millennium's coming to pass around 1657 or so (as some seemed to believe) surely must have dashed this kind of belief in God's revelatory presence. Milton's early examination of the basic issue in ``Naturam non pati senium'' (that ``nature does not decay,'' a nondeistic belief) may have given way to a more deistic attitude around 1642, according to Zera S. Fink.3 That the fall of 3

See The Classical Republicans (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1945; rptd., 1962), 91±122. Not everyone has agreed; see, for instance, Joseph A. Bryant, Jr., ``Milton's

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The Uncertainties of Irony Rome did not occur in the late 1650s (compare Sonnet 18 written in May 1655), that the theocratic government faltered and failed especially in the late 1650s, that rather than Millennium the 1660s resurrected the monarchic past ± all these events and nonevents must have had a crushing e€ect on the believing and idealistic Milton. While everything was still in his great taskmaster's eye, it is more than grace that is needed: it is the use, through grace, of that ``inward ripenes'' that is paramount. Samson has not used his grace pro®tably for his people in the past; the Chorus circumvents use by relying on what God's revelation (``th' unsearchable dispose'') ``brings about'' ``unexpectedly.'' The dramatic poem ironically casts o€ revelation and concentrates on human achievement once we as readers recognize the irony controlling the work. God's presence must be manifested by people and acts. The tragedy of hope that underlies the dramatic poem is Milton's recognition that hope replaces truth and action in most people's lives. They hope for the improbable and do nothing to try to approach its achievement, like the Danites who remained long under Philistine yoke. Samson's action seems to have no meaning in history, not because of him and his action, but because of humankind.4 Only the individual person, ironically, can achieve and give meaning to history. Unfortunately, denying one's failings gives rise to the solace of hope, and this Milton's text demonstrates is the human condition. The drama is a re¯ection of the evil which hope becomes in man, and a realization that it is the individual who must succeed in his own little world, in his own little way. Here is the political implication of The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, the message of Paradise Regain'd, and another way of valorizing the need for a Paradise within. The rather standard view that ``Samson Agonistes can be read either as a closed armation of Christian providence, or as an interrogative text which calls in question the benevolence of `highest wisdom',''5 has not plumbed suciently the problems that the text raises, although I think that view does represent a major uncertainty of the text. The text can be read, that statement is saying, as a positive thesis of God's presence and omnipotence or as a questioning uncertainty that God's omniscience is ultimately wise or at least ultimately successful. The most signi®cant uncertainty for the text would seem rather to be viewing it as either/or rather than ``this and that.'' It certainly arms Christian providence but does not necessitate it as human-

4

5

Views on Universal and Civil Decay,'' SAMLA Studies in Milton, Essays on John Milton and his Works, ed. J. Max Patrick (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1953), 1±19. An important point made by Barbara K. Lewalski in ``Samson Agonistes and the Apocalypse,'' PMLA 85 (1970): 1050±62, is that those who are delivered from bondage constantly betray the deliverer by corruption and sinfulness. In this regard Achsah Guibbory indicates how Samson's relationship with the Israelites comes to parallel Milton's sense of relationship with his English compeers, a reading we have looked at in Chapter 6. See The Map of Time, 199±206. Belsey, John Milton: Language, Gender, Power, 56.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes kind would like to interpret it. It demands more than only belief in God's providence; it demands the ``grace'' that Milton talked of in Sonnet 7, which must be employed under the great task-master's overview. The text does not question the benevolence of ``highest wisdom''; it questions human understanding of that wisdom and of the demands put upon humankind to uphold its covenant with its god. The text does not put into question Milton's belief in God; it renders negative the thinking of humankind exploiting its own desires, its custom, its pleasure principle and ease, its misplaced allegiances, and its obsequious inaction. It represents Milton's dejection with humankind who are too much the rabble, too little the ®t few. The answers to the questions that impinge upon the text are not simple ones of believe this or do that, and are repeatedly limited by the contexts of the people involved, by the context of each reader of the text. Perhaps a positive way of looking at hope is the concept of prophecy, a rather frequent approach nowadays to literature of the Renaissance and Romantic periods. Here the author is seen to foreview the possibilities of achievement of those things of worth, of the promised land as such prophets as Moses and Hosea saw it, even with accompanying hardship and disaster. Is that prophetic world available to the reader, if not the survivors, of Milton's text, as that lying beyond the ®fth act? This is the reading that John Ulreich o€ers where ``The meaning of the play remains largely implicit in its dramatic form rather than being made explicit in its logical argument: both the shape of Samson's action and its ®nal meaning remain mysterious, even at the close.''6 Such tragic prophecy relates to the book of Amos and to Revelation,7 and is ``the dialectical process by which tragic form is subsumed in the more comprehensive form of prophecy'' (296). The irony of hope, so viewed, is that it can galvanize one into becoming a ``true hero'' as I have de®ned that term earlier and achieve the prophetic thereby as all those involved become, individually, true heroes, but it can also become a mere solace to inaction, a crutch for excusing oneself or rationalizing one's servitude. The ironies of Samson Agonistes have been discussed at length by William Parker (Debt to Greek Tragedy, 157±67) and by Anthony Low (62±89), who has added: ``This irony is characterized by a hypothetical choice, posited by one of the characters: either this is true or that, or more usually, either this will happen or that; but in the working out, both choices eventuate, even though they had been thought to be mutually exclusive'' (77). I have called some of these ironies ``uncertainties'' because critics have frequently seen only one choice while others have seen only its opposite. The text certainly seems to support various choices at least much of the time, as we have seen in the discussions of Samson (Chapter 4) and of Dalila (Chapter 5). That monument that Manoa says he will erect provides an example: do we read it as 6 7

Ulreich, `` `Beyond the Fifth Act,' '' 281. Compare Lewalski's analysis in ``Samson Agonistes and the Apocalypse.''

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The Uncertainties of Irony signi®cant symbol that will inspire or as meaningless consolation to Manoa's imperceptive concept of loss, or both in its potential and its reality?8 I have mentioned ``the valiant youth'' (male, of course) who will be in¯amed to matchless valor and high adventure. But there are also ``The Virgins'' (apparently only female) who on feastful days Visit his Tomb with ¯owers, only bewailing His lot unfortunate in nuptial choice, From whence captivity and loss of eyes. (1741±44)

Of course this provides an analysis of Manoa, whom we can dismiss as a not very perceptive male and a father overlooking almost everything that Samson did wrong: his ¯aunting of his Nazarite vow, his de®ance of his tribe's marriage restrictions, his violence, his inability to learn from experience. We note Manoa's belief in fate (``lot,'' ``unfortunate'') as if it were destined that Samson marry Dalila; yet as Guibbory points out, episode one ironically suggests that he (that any human being) can control events. Such ``control,'' of course, is super®cial and is possible through such nefarious means as bribery. Manoa also shows his sentimental penchant for popular and public remembrance in death. (One is reminded of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman in which Willy Loman is always envisioning a large group of mourners when he dies, who bemoan his passing. As Linda hauntingly asks, uncomprehendingly and ironically, ``Why didn't anybody come?'') What we also should note here is the placement of Manoa with Dalila in his expectation of a public show of remembrance: I shall be nam'd among the famousest Of Women, sung at solemn festivals, Living and dead recorded, who to save Her countrey from a ®erce destroyer, chose Above the faith of wedlock-bands, my tomb With odours visited and annual ¯owers . . . Nor shall I count it hainous to enjoy The public marks of honour and reward Conferr'd upon me, for the piety Which to my countrey I was judg'd t' have shewn. (982±94; emphasis added)

Samson is not remembered in the way Manoa supposes, and certainly Dalila does not present a picture of her remembrance by non-Philistines. (We just 8

A literalist reading of the exodos and kommos is given by Burton J. Weber in ``The Worldly End of Samson,'' Milton Studies 26 (1990): 289±309. His reading fathoms neither the meanings and literary achievement beneath the surface of the words nor the statements (used in the poem) and nonstatements (created by Milton) of the biblical account.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes don't know how or if the Philistines remembered her.) But it is not only the ironies of remembrance or nonremembrance that rear up here; it is also the ironic exultation of tombs and commemorative ¯owers and death rather than life. Perhaps one of the most tragic e€ects of this dramatic poem arises from the constant harping on death, even from Samson's metaphoric ®rst lines: A little onward lend thy guiding hand To these dark steps, a little further on; . . . here leave me to respire. (1±2, 11)

The similes denoting Samson's ®nal moving from the dungeon of himself, his buried self without bene®t of death and burial, speak of ashes turned into sudden ¯ame and the phoenix revived from its ashes, with Samson likened to ``an Eagle [with] His cloudless thunder bolted on thir heads.'' It is almost a wishing for death so that rebirth can proceed. But the lines also recall the Son's triumph over Satan and his cohorts in Paradise Lost VI, 762±64 (``Hee . . . Ascended, at his right hand Victorie/ Sate Eagle-wing'd, beside him hung his Bow/ And Quiver with three-bolted Thunder stor'd''), which is attended by ``smoak and bickering ¯ame, and sparkles dire.'' But has this happened in the dramatic poem? Does not the not very bright Manoa dampen its e€ect by calling it ``lamentation'' and saying that ``Samson hath quit himself/ Like Samson''? The equation has been reduced to the predatoriness of the eagle, reemphasizing the ``ev'ning Dragon,''9 and Samson's violence, reemphasizing ``heroic'' death and destruction, valor and adventure. 9

The simile in lines 1690±95 has caused much discussion, particularly a little while ago on the internet: His ®erie vertue rouz'd From under ashes into sudden ¯ame, And as an ev'ning Dragon came, Assailant on the perched roosts, And nests in order rang'd Of tame villatic Fowl. The Chorus, I interpret these lines to say, is remarking the appearance that Samson's action in pushing down the pillars of the Philistine ``house'' created for those observing it: it seemed as if he were ``an ev'ning Dragon'' who was attacking the unaware, calm, and oblivious fowl that were just sitting on their roosts or in their nests. His action is swift, unexpected, disastrous. This should not mean that Milton, the person, would describe Samson in that way. However, the Chorus continues: ``but as an Eagle/ His cloudless thunder bolted on thir heads'' (my emphasis). He did not come as a dragon; instead he came as an eagle (a symbol of the Christ) with thunderbolts (the attribute of God) even though there were no clouds in the sky to anticipate any storm. Again, the action is swift and unexpected, and the bolts upon the heads of the Philistines seated in the temple caused their destruction. Milton in the Chorus's words has not set up the horrori®c account of killing ``sitting ducks'' as a view of Samson's action for the reader to credit: that is the Chorus's concept of how the story that the messenger tells might appear to some (those on the side of the Philistines). Rather, Milton has the reader

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The Uncertainties of Irony The semichorus does depict Samson's lack of action suddenly turned into action in the catastrophe. They see it as ``His ®erie vertue rouz'd,'' and in contrast to the Philistine lords whom the prior semichorus has described as being struck with ``blindness internal'' in their demand for sport and play from Samson, they talk of Samson's ``inward eyes illuminated.'' The passage serves to remind the reader that, as said a few lines later, God ``Oft . . . seems to hide his face,/ But unexpectedly returns.'' But do ashes rekindle? do the ``most unactive deem'd'' revive, re¯ourish? And if they do, by what means or agency do they do so? ± a question the Chorus answers by the hope in God's miraculous action only. But does Samson's action have anything in common with the Son's? Is he an eagle or only ``an ev'ning Dragon . . . Assailant on . . . tame villatic Fowl''? Has he ridden forth in the Chariot of Paternal Deity? Rather, the catastrophe has e€ected only the last days for Samson and some of the Philistines, not The Last Day. Certainly nothing changes for the Danites. Certainly no others thereafter burst out of their lethargies or out of what have become secure existences for them (and the parallel and di€erence with the Israelites in bondage to Pharaoh is signi®cant: Samson is no Moses). The Bible, having ®nished the interpolated tale of Samson, who is said to have judged Israel for twenty years, turns to the land of Ephraim and to Micah in a disuni®ed addition to the biblical book. The ``hope'' that the Chorus expresses as the dramatic poem ends and its reliance on God's acting rather than people's taking up the ®ght against oppression, bondage, supposedly unwanted controls, is only rationalization to do nothing.10 Not only is the life of Samson ironically meaningless in the end, but tragically humankind is pinioned as succumbing to mere hope, to a philosophy of ``let Samson or George or someone else do it.'' The political implications are clear when we place the dramatic poem into a contemporaneous context, whether the late 1640s before the Interregnum or the late 1660s when the licentious Court had returned.

10

understand through the Chorus's alternate image that Samson has acted as an agent of God, doing that which God had done to mete out punishment and warning: we can compare Exodus ix:23±26 as well as Psalm xviii (particularly vv. 13±14), ``Thanksgiving for Deliverance.'' Wood (`` `Exil'd from Light' '') similarly ®nds the Chorus's ®nal words unreliable although critics have interpreted them as the ``truth'' of Milton's message. Hugh MacCallum, though analyzing a di€erent aspect of Samson, also comes to consonant conclusions when arguing that Milton presents Mosaic Law as temporal (prescriptive) and eternal life only through faith (inner freedom). See ``Milton and Figurative Interpretation of the Bible,'' University of Toronto Quarterly 31 (1962): 397±415.

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Chapter 9 A HERMENEUTICS OF THE TEXT

S

AMSON is led on to the scene out of his prison in Gaza by someone (``Thy guiding hand''), apparently a young Danite, who, one would imagine, stays in close position to aid the blind man, although no further reference is made to him. Someone also leads Samson o€ alone after line 1426, and this according to the argument could be the Ocer. Samson is brought to the ``spacious Theatre'' (1615, 1605) ``as a public servant,'' perhaps by this same ocer who conducts him to center stage. Perhaps it is more likely that the young Danite served both to lead Samson to the theater and to the pillars; the Bible speci®cally refers to ``the lad that held him by the hand.'' ``Where they led him'' and later ``for intermission sake they led him/ Between the pillars'' (1623, 1629±30, my italics) sets up some possible confusions. Samson requests that ``his guide'' let him lean against the Pillars'' and ``He unsuspitious led him'' (1630±35). The messenger's word ``they'' may thus mean only that the Philistines allowed such movement to occur, there being but one Philistine guide or the young Danite. But the ®rst-line reference to ``Thy guiding hand'' also sets up the ambiguity that intended is God's hand that is operative from the very beginning of the dramatic poem straight through to the denouement when ``his guide'' enables him to e€ect the catastrophe. God is invoked by the Chorus when Samson leaves their presence: Go, and the Holy One Of Israel be thy guide To what may serve his glory best. (1427±29)

The text thus supports an interpretation of the full poem as guided by God who oversees Samson's renovation and triumph of person over the Philistines. Such a reading calls into question the reading of Samson's death as selfmurder and the whole as a narrative of a still boastful, violent, and negative exemplar. Samson's ``here leave me to respire'' (11) suggests further meanings than simply ``breathe'' or ``breathe again'' the wholesome air outside the ``common Prison.'' The word implies the ``spiritus'' of God and is seconded by the air's being ``The breath of Heav'n fresh-blowing, pure and sweet'' (10). Knowing 112

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A Hermeneutics of the Text the ending, as we do, and remembering that even in the biblical account it is assigned to God's presence, we recognize that Milton's text is structurally ordered to involve prolepsis (and dramatic irony) and to round o€ for Samson what occurs in the dramatic poem. The occasion of Dagon's feast is recounted and Samson's respite from toil is assigned to the Philistines' ``Superstition,'' an early contrast in the poem with the faith of Samson. Next, the biblical account of his birth and his expected great exploits leads Samson to wonder why they were foretold if he ``must dye/ Betray'd, Captiv'd, and both [his] Eyes put out'' (33±34). The following lines bemoan his fate, allude to his breaking of ``the Seal of silence'' to a woman whereby his current condition has arisen, and attempt not to call into doubt Divine Prediction. The prophecy prescribed his breeding ``As of a person separate to God'' (31), a reference to his being a Nazarite, although that word and its predicated three vows are only mentioned a few times in the poem. Subtle Milton may have expected his reader to understand these duties of a Nazarite but did not wish to emphasize the breaking of each by Samson in his arrogance and inattention in order to emphasize the cutting of his hair by Delilah (Dalila). The angel in Judges xiii admonished Samson's mother not to drink wine or strong drink or to eat any unclean thing, but for Samson all that is said is, ``no razor shall come on his head.'' And it is his hair that Samson next talks of in Milton's poem. The soliloquy o€ers a Samson most concerned with himself and his loss of sight, his being the scorn and gaze of his enemies, and his work at the mill, but it also introduces the ®rst acknowledgment that his present life is his own fault: ``what if all foretold/ Had been ful®ll'd but through mine own default'' (44±45). These acknowledgments of fault will increase through the poem and in parallel will be the acceptance of God's ``unsearchable dispose/ Of highest wisdom'' (1746±47) until such point that Samson can say, ``Happ'n what may, of me expect to hear/ Nothing dishonourable, impure, unworthy/ Our God, our Law, my Nation, or my self '' (1423±25). The symbol of hair, obvious for a Nazarite and obvious in the received story of Delilah's cutting of it, is nonetheless more signi®cant as Milton employs it. The gift of strength from God is seen as having been hung in his hair; that gift becomes ``slight'' because it is only hung in his hair. Of course, Milton is again giving us a key to Samson here at the beginning of the poem, a reprise of the Samson of the prepoem: he does not comprehend that it is not the hair that creates the strength but the following of God's prohibition against cutting it. (The prohibition of not eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that Eve and Adam abrogate presents a similar point: the apple does not bring the Fall, the lack of faith in God that allows the prohibition to be broken, by deceit and then by willfulness, is its cause.) Milton ®lls Samson's words with clues to another meaning for the reader to decode: ``But peace, I must not quarrel with the will/ Of highest dispensation, which herein/ Happ'ly had ends above my reach to know'' (60±62). That is, ``dispensation'' puns etymologically on 113

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes his strength's being ``hung'' ``apart'' (pende, pependi, pensum to hang, and dis apart), its being ``weighed out'' (dispensed), and its expected management or administration (dispensation). The ``ends'' and the ``reach'' become ironic puns, for Samson certainly can reach the ends of his hair, though he does not understand that as a statement of what the hair/strength should have demanded of him in its correct ``management.'' The punning suggests the triviality of strength's being in the hair, but the obliviousness of Samson to God's command and mysterious ways as well. As the poem proceeds Samson will learn that he does not have to know the ``ends'' of God's dispensation, but should simply allow ``wisdom'' to function. The apostrophe to sight vacillates between recognition of the importance of this gift of God to humankind and self-pity. The latter is emphasized in the societal strati®cations that Samson not only accepts but seems to believe in: ``the vilest here excel me''; earlier, ``debas't/ Lower then bondslave.'' That aspect of a continued vaunting of self never really disappears from Samson, any more than the antifeminine attitude that one can hear in ``But weakly to a woman must reveal it'' (50). The poem thus does not accord nicely with what a contemporary reader today might want Milton to say through his poem and its protagonist. It may, of course, be interpreted as Milton's attitude by those who see Samson as an aspect of Milton. The prologos ends and the Chorus enters to speak its parados: Samson likens them to a ship (Dalila and Harapha will also be introduced through ship images, perhaps because of the common metaphor of the human body with a ship that on the sea of life may be broached or capsized by a‚icting weather conditions or by the poor seamanship of the pilot-brain). His ®rst thought is that they are his enemies, Philistines, a psychological hint of Samson's state of mind and self-absorption in the ``contempt, abuse and wrong'' he encounters. The parados o€ers a picture of Samson lying at random, ``carelesly di€us'd,'' and contrasts that with what he was in the past. The Chorus stresses his strength and its uses of the past, as in his slaying of the lion with the jawbone of an ass in Ramath-Lehi and in his bearing o€ the gates of Azza. Their words ``Heroic . . . Renown'd, Irresistible'' imply these same feats, casting ``heroic'' into the kind of heroism Milton rejects for his epic poem in the proem to Book IX of Paradise Lost. The dramatic poem becomes an excursus into rejecting such heroism in Samson's mind but also in popular views, and the development of the kind of heroism Milton praises in both the long and the brief epics. The Chorus meditates on the bondage and the lost sight which Samson experiences, ®rst unwittingly referring to the ``inward eyes'' with which they will later say Samson was illuminated: thy Soul . . . Imprison'd now indeed, In real darkness of the body swells,

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A Hermeneutics of the Text Shut up from outward light T'incorporate with gloomy night; For inward light alas Puts forth no visual beam. (156±63)

This image engages in dramatic irony and speci®cally, for the astute reader, will contribute to the point that reversals of ``fate'' in God's world can happen. It becomes a part of the play of contrast between ``fate'' and ``providence'' of which Hanford wrote so meaningfully. The Chorus, emphasizing this point once we recognize it, next speaks of the ``®ckle state'' and the ``sphear of fortune''; the implication we should read is that the ``lowest pitch of abject fortune'' to which Samson has fallen may alter. But the Chorus, thinking that the only means to glory is through strength and ``vertue'' as its mate, do not understand this; for them, as for most people perhaps Milton is suggesting, ``highest praises'' will come only with a subduing of the Earth. They introduce themselves as friends and neighbors (Danites) as the ®rst episode begins, and Samson contrasts true and false friends who disappear when adversity strikes. His words reveal his self-interest and unhappiness that he has shown himself a fool; his wisdom is but ``mean.'' In this passage he ignores the consequence of his foolishness for his nation to stress his personal situation. The image of the human as pilot (head) of his ship (body) allows the pun on his strength and wisdom's being in his hair: ``My Vessel trusted to me from above,/ Gloriously rigg'd'' (199±200). He labels himself ``fool'' because he has divulged his secret to ``a deceitful Woman,'' a phrase that in context takes on misogynistic tones, and this he has done ``for a word, a tear.'' This latter phrase suggests a genderization of woman's strategy to achieve what she wants and man's ease in succumbing to such ``feminine'' wiles. ``A word,'' however, also suggests ``conversation,'' a word that Milton knew etymologically to mean ``to talk face to face'' and thence to be used to mean ``sexual intercourse.'' (He employs these meanings in Latin in a letter to Charles Diodati in November 1637, with salacious pun, and in the divorce tracts with intent of compatibility.) ``A word,'' thus, can be read to mean (for the poem and Milton's treatment of the subject matter, as well as the biblical account) that he revealed his secret for only sexual intercourse. He had, quite clearly in the Bible, taken the Woman of Timnah and Delilah to wife for carnal purposes although he rationalized his desires by claiming special dispensation from God to marry out of his nation. The Chorus, male, talks of ``bad Women'' and asks why Samson wed out of his tribe, which includes women ``fairer, or as fair, . . . and as noble.'' Samson thus has opportunity to ®ll in the background to the dramatic poem being read with a recitation of the Woman of Timnah and of the woman of the Vale of Sorec, though he still sought ``to oppress/ Israel's oppressours.'' ``Yet Israel still serves,'' the Chorus laments, ``with all his Sons'' (240). In response 115

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes Samson hits on the continuing problem, a problem that will persist after his act of catastrophe as the poem ends and a problem that the Chorus in the exodos ironically does not recognize as potential and does not pro€er any action to alter: That fault I take not on me, but transfer On Israel's Governours, and Heads of Tribes, Who seeing those great acts which God had done Singly by me against their Conquerours Acknowledg'd not, or not at all consider'd Deliverance o€erd. (241±46)

While there is still conceit here, Samson's words make clear to the reader the thought that should iterate in the reader's mind as the poem ends: there must be concerted e€ort by many (or all) to e€ect the desired end, not a reliance upon waiting for someone else single-handedly to achieve the desired goal. The political nature of the poem emerges from almost its very beginning, and its applicability to the 1640s, the 1660s, and all times is not hidden. While reprising his achievements over the Philistines, though he is still abashed by his countrymen's deserting of him and their ingratitude heaped on his worthy deeds, he expands the political underpinnings of the poem: But what more oft in Nations grown corrupt, And by thir vices brought to servitude, Then to love Bondage more then Liberty, Bondage with ease then strenuous liberty; And to despise, or envy, or suspect Whom God hath of his special favour rais'd As thir Deliverer. (268±74)

The thought is very similar to that put forth in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and understandable as Milton's assessment of those who turned their backs on the Interregnum. It has a very personal ring to it, and we are struck by the employment of words given to Mammon in Paradise Lost II, 255±57: ``preferring/ Hard liberty before the easie yoke/ Of servile Pomp.'' In turn, if we haven't made the comparison before, we should remember Samson's words in lines 193±96 (``Yee see, O friends, How many evils have enclos'd me round; Yet that which was the worst now least a‚icts me,/ Blindness'') and the epic's VII, 25±28 (``though fall'n on evil dayes,/ On evil dayes though fall'n, and evil tongues;/ In darkness, and with dangers compast round,/ And solitude''). Neglected by his countrymen, Samson nonetheless argues his inclusion with others in Judges noted by the Chorus. The second episode brings on Manoa, who at ®rst does not see his son and then laments the changed ®gure lying near from what Samson had been as an 116

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A Hermeneutics of the Text invincible single combatant, seeming more an army. His view of strength (and Samson's and others' for that matter) has been dashed: O ever failing trust In mortal strength! and oh what not in man Deceivable and vain! (348±50)

as has his hope in his son's achievement: his answered prayer proves woeful and his bane. Projecting the Harapha episode, Manoa's false prolepsis, ``now unequal match/ To save himself against a coward arm'd/ At one spears length'' (346±48), underscores his lack of faith in his God, and this is then doubly underscored by his remembering Samson's birth after his prayer for children and the alleged reproach of barrenness in wedlock but with no show of trust that some kind of similar turn in events might again happen. Manoa represents so many people in their observation of altered adversity, the desired resulting from the unlikely, and yet in their continued blindness to the possibility of further alteration of some new adversity. His words impugn God's granting of his prayer with ``a Scorpions tail behind'' and questions God's allowing thralldom and foul indignities because of erring frailty despite former honorable deeds. Manoa is hardly the God-fearing and God-loving person one might expect of a good Israelite, and Milton has thus set the reader up to recognize Manoa as a tempter to ease through the nefarious bribing of Philistine ocials. The ``father's house'' is far from being the ``Father's house''! In movement toward acceptance of God's action unquestioningly, Samson disclaims ``heav'nly disposition'' for his plight and admits that ``Nothing of all these evils hath befall'n me/ But justly; I my self have brought them on,/ Sole Author I, sole cause'' (374±76). But he has not yet achieved that end of unquestioned faith. His retelling of the attempts to learn his secret by both the Woman of Timnah and by Delilah, three times, cites his reactions as sport in deluding them, yet he then, and it would seem still, does not fathom what should have been done prior to the fourth enticement by Dalila. His excuse is that ``in her highth/Of Nuptial Love'' she mustered ``all her wiles,'' ``blandisht parlies, feminine assaults, Tongue-batteries'' without stop day and night, and he ``wearied out'' ``yielded, and unlock'd her all [his] heart'' (402±408). The association of sexual intercourse with his story hints at, ®rst, a negative attitude toward sexual intercourse as potential evil because emotions have overridden the mind and, second, leads to contempt for what is gendered as ``feminine'' assaults, ``Tongue-batteries,'' and thus the lack of ``a grain of manhood'' and yoking by ``foul e€eminacy.'' Samson shows an attitude of misogyny, seeing Dalila as all that is Woman ± deceitful, weak, shrewish of tongue. We should observe that Samson does not in this account call up the idealistic ideas of marriage that he will level at Dalila 117

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes later.1 Giving in to a woman makes man a ``bond-slave'' (the word here takes on scorn and disgrace) and becomes, in his words, even worse in servitude and ignobleness than his current slave condition. His blindness to that slavery is worse than his physical blindness. This contrast ± blindness of mind and wisdom, blindness of physical impairment ± pervades the dramatic poem, culminating in the Chorus's reference to Samson's being illuminated with inward eyes though outwardly he can see not. If there is one major image for the ``meaning'' and political content of the poem, it is this: many see with their eyes but not with their minds; they err in thought and belief because they see only through the tangible, the immediate, the outward existence of things. They follow custom and ease, not Truth. Samson has begun his move toward renovation by not impugning God and by accepting blame. He has a long way to go, however, in his distaste for the feminine and his lack of charity to the point of misogyny. If indeed his succumbing to Dalila is nonmanly and e€eminate, what Samson records in his words is a self-hate of that part of himself that represents the ``feminine within'' that Di Salvo talks of, the ``anima'' that Driscoll examines. He does not accept himself as he is: he is only the ®gure of the proud, conquering ``hero'' of strength that made him ``far reknown'd.'' Manoa announces the feast to Dagon, referred to previously in lines 12±15 by Samson, and laments its occasion for further degradation of Samson, magnifying the status of the Philistine god, and disglori®cation, blasphemy, and scorn for God. The underlying question of Whose god is God? emerges ironically in Manoa's crediting Dagon with power, ``thir God who hath deliver'd/ Thee Samson, bound and blind into thir hands'' (437±38), although he also talks of ``God,/ Besides whom is no God, compar'd with Idols.'' That the Philistine triumph has ``come to pass by means of '' Samson and the ``reproach'' and ``the shame'' are the worst that ``Could have befall'n thee and thy Father's house'' shifts the ethical concern to the personal. He is not really concerned with the theological and political issue; he and his son have lost face among his compatriots. While he means the shame to his house (Samson's next word is ``Father''), we recognize the double meaning of 1

Perhaps this is a sign that the full episode with Dalila was written later, after the full examination of divorce and marriage in Tetrachordon. In this passage in episode two introducing Dalila, she, though Samson's wife, is portrayed as sex partner only and indeed as one who seems more prostitute than wife. The pun on ``capital'' secret, that is, his ``important'' secret, his ``fatal'' secret, and especially the secret connected with his head (``caput, capitis''), suggests that there may also be a paronomastic meaning in ``part'': ``amorous reproaches to win from me/ My capital secret, in what part my strength/ Lay stor'd, in what part summ'd'' (393±95). Like the ``mysterious parts'' of Adam and Eve that were not concealed (PL IV, 312), both uses of ``part'' here in this sexual context suggest the penis and its symbolization of male strength and thus the ``store'' it might discharge. Samson concludes the passage by referring to ``how degeneratly I serv'd,'' that is, served as slave to this woman, but if ``degenerately,'' in this sexual context it reads, ``how I did love service without generation and perhaps deviantly.'' If so, the husband/ wife argument to be advanced later seems even more remote.

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A Hermeneutics of the Text ``God's house.'' In this Milton indicates Manoa's lack of true belief in God omnipotent. Samson corrects the signi®cance of his fall to his people to the praise for Dagon and the ``didence'' (distrust) of God, which implies a superstitious attitude of humans toward their god rather than a belief in human action under the ``great task-maisters eye,'' the concept toward which the dramatic poem moves at the end of episode ®ve with the Ocer. (Manoa will contrast the double meaning after the catastrophe, ``To himself and Fathers house eternal fame'' [1717], realizing that ``God not parted from him, as was feard'' [1719].) Samson states a theme of the poem succinctly, ``all the contest is NOW/ 'Twixt God and Dagon'' (461±62; emphasis added), but what he must learn is to be the agent of God's part in the contest, working under God's leadership, not under his own desires and interpretations of circumstances and self-aggrandizements. In lines 465±71 Samson states the denouement of the poem and its results, a proleptic technique that Milton's uses throughout his text although not all readers have observed these compositional clues. He, be sure, Will not connive, or linger, thus provok'd, But will arise and his great name assert: Dagon must stoop, and shall e're long receive Such a discom®t, as shall quite despoil him Of all these boasted Trophies won on me, And with confusion blank his Worshippers.

Samson does not say that he will be the deliverer of the Israelites from Philistine hands; he does not say that all the Philistines will be disbanded; he does not say anything about the Israelites. Rather we have a good assessment of what does occur: Dagon as a god will be ``discom®ted'' and the assertion of God's name (through Samson's action) will overwhelm and obliterate former Philistine victories over Samson, yielding confusion for Dagon's worshipers by his disastrous act and loss of community leaders. Samson assigns this action to the God of Abraham, who will not ``connive,'' meaning ``shut the eyes'' to the situation. He will act ± through the agency of Samson we supply, knowing the outcome of Samson's life and reading more deeply the psychological point of ``these boasted Trophies won on me'' ± and such action will be thus interpreted as God's ``unexpected'' return although he has seemed to have hidden his face. The Chorus's ``unexpectedly returns'' (1749) clearly depicts their lack of constant belief and faith in their god; His ``return'' should not be so construed, for He should always be understood as a presence though usually a silent and unassertive one, and He should never be ``unexpected,'' for He should always be expected to aid ``his faithful Champion'' (my emphasis) and His chosen people as Milton's paraphrase on the Passover Psalm cxiv arms. That God will not ``shut his eyes'' carries through a motif of seeing, contrasting not seeing and blindness ± these are di€erent. The 119

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes di€erence is iterated with Samson's ``inward eyes illuminated'' and the Philistines' ``blindness internal'' and with Samson's ``eyes fast ®xt'' and the Israelites' relating ``sight bereav'd'' and Patience as its only outcome (1287± 96). Manoa's lack of religious belief and understanding can be seen in his assignment to God of human anxieties and peccadillos: ``God . . . / will not long defer/ To vindicate the glory of his name/ Against all competition, nor will long/ Endure it, doubtful whether God be Lord,/ Or Dagon'' (473±78). The thought of bribery of some Philistine lords, which Manoa has already prepared for, underlines his opprobrious view of the ethical issue: since, according to him, the Philistines have satis®ed their revenge on Samson for his past acts against them through ``worse then death in¯icted,'' they may be receptive. His ironic epitome of Samson ``who now no more canst do them harm'' becomes a comment on ``whether God be Lord'' at all. In his next speech Manoa will remember God and His Providence, but now as possibility that the circumstance of hoped-for bribery and freedom for Samson might be in the task-master's eye. And ``perhaps God will relent'' and the prayers and vows that can then be renewed may ``avert His futher ire,'' neither concept depicting a very admirable god. Although Samson rejects such a thought as bribery and the ease it may bring and accepts his position as expiation for his crime, he chalks up that crime at this point in the poem as ``Shameful garrulity.'' It has been, as he says, not keeping God's secret counsel, but that crime accounts for only the ®nal action preceding his defeat and maiming. His crime has been much more from the start: his breaking of covenant, his self-grati®cation, and his pride. ``Fearless of danger, like a petty God'' and then ``swoll'n with pride into the snare I fell'' is his abstract of his actions; it is a big stride toward rejection of an excessive pride of Self. The ensuing dialogue with the Chorus discusses the ®rst prohibition of being a Nazarite, the avoidance of alcoholic drinks, but this temperance should have been extended to other tempting things. Samson, ``E€eminatly vanquish't,'' can see himself only a ``burdenous drone,'' a ``pitied object,'' and indeed we hear self-pity in his ``let me drudge and earn by bread,/ Till vermin or the dra€ of servil food/ Consume me'' (573±75). We note, however, that he talks of ``these redundant locks/ Robustious to no purpose clustring down,/ Vain monument of strength,'' a reference now to another prohibition which has been allowed to have e€ect. It ought to be clear that it is not just the hair that gives strength but the keeping of the covenant and God's union with a ``faithful'' champion. The word ``vain'' here primarily means ``useless, empty,'' but it also recalls the vanity which his hair has elicited in the past and which must not be allowed to reassert itself, which it is ¯irting with in his self-pity. Manoa, in contrast with former remarks, reminds Samson that God may ``Cause light again within thy eies to spring'' and that ``his strength/ Miraculous yet remaining in those locks'' must have 120

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A Hermeneutics of the Text some purpose. Samson, however, rejects the possibility and instead longs for death. In an ode Samson laments that maladies are not con®ned to the body but a€ect ``th'inmost mind.'' This is the beginning of the movement out of his former misconception of the bodily only as achieving God's championship: he will come to accept that his ``apprehensive tenderest parts'' (though they have been mangled with the deadly stings of his tormentors), given over to God's direction, will ®nally achieve his destined role. The ``inmost mind'' like the ``inward eyes'' must be asserted, but in the persistent thought of Areopagitica as well as the descent into Hell prior to the rise to Heaven in order to bring good out of evil in Paradise Lost, there must be ``trial'': ``that which puri®es us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary'' (12). The ``trial'' that the ``Tormentors'' create for Samson causes him again to review his life and to iterate a longing for death, ``the close of all his miseries.'' He has not yet accepted ``trial'' (and seems not to allow that his situation is in God's knowledge) and he continues a boastfulness and near-accusation of God who ``Left [him] all helpless with th'irreparable loss/ Of sight'' (644±45). He experiences a ``sense of Heav'ns desertion'' (632). The ``deadly stings'' with which the Tormentors are ``arm'd'' repeats the imagery of the lack of ease to the mind in Samson's prologue that the ``deadly swarm/ Of Hornets arm'd'' bring with remembrance of ``Times past, what once I was, and what am now'' (19±20, 22). The Chorus, somewhat sententiously and with some seemingly intrusive rhyme, extol patience and talk of the need for a source of consolation from above. Psalm viii underlies their apostrophe, ``God of our Fathers, what is man!'' Milton's version of the psalm (dated 14 August 1653) reads: ``. . . then saith my heart,/ O what is man that thou remembrest yet,/ And think'st upon him; or of man begot/ That him thou visit'st and of him art found.'' The Chorus's words survey various stations in life and God's often change of countenance toward men ``Amidst thir highth of noon,'' throwing them lower than they had been exalted. The depths to which men may be thrown are expressed in particularly pathetic images (reminding the reader, perhaps, of the Lazar house that Adam sees in XI, 479); the uncertainty of ``justice'' rears up as we read the Chorus's implication that those ``solemnly elected'' (by God and the people), those of ``the common rout'' as well, and those who are or are not subject to the ``hostile sword'' all may come to evil end. The Chorus's negative view of God's treatment of some men, ``Just or unjust, alike seem miserable'' (703), elicits their plea that God ``So deal not with this once thy glorious Champion,/ The Image of thy strength, and mighty minister.'' Rather they ask that God ``turn/ His labours, for thou canst, to peaceful end.'' The irony of the end in violence to which Samson's labors are turned is to be noted, for only thus may peace ensue ± at least true peace for Samson and any who follow his example. It is important to note that the Chorus, like Manoa shortly before, suddenly remembers God's 121

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes omnipotence even though they have been calling ``divine'' conduct into doubt. In Samson's and the Chorus's odes Milton has drawn those who question what God allows or does and, because of despair or seeming injustice, who take recourse in hoped-for death (through a prayer) or in a miraculous turning (through a plea). These characters do not take it upon themselves to alter the situation as they might attempt to, perhaps, Milton seems to believe, with God's aid procured by the individual's simple attempt, though ine€ective, as it may be. The characters and their words suggest a kind of allegoric statement being made by the author: God works with those who themselves act to prosper God's works for God, not for themselves. The rhyme in the Chorus's stasimon may be purposeful (not a remnant from early composition, or a ¯agging of Milton's ear or attention as he completed his text with an amanuensis): it may be there to undercut what they say about the ``God of our Fathers'' and his unjust ways toward men. The hammering rhyme strikes a note that this Chorus between episodes two and three is not very wise and not here at least espousing the author's opinion, as the Chorus in Greek drama frequently seems to. Compositionally surprising is the last strophe of the Chorus's stasimon which moves from odic form into dramatic blank verse, for it moves abruptly from the hope of ``peaceful end'' to words that bring Dalila on the scene, though derogatively (``what thing,'' ``it''), a kind of amphibian (``of Sea or Land,'' because she is on land but is bedecked like a ``stately Ship/ of Tarsus''), almost uncertain of gender (``Femal of sex it seems''), a ``rich Philistian Matron'' wafting odorous perfume and followed by a ``damsel train,'' but ``no other certain/ Then Dalila thy wife.'' The prosody, the language, the images set up the reader to be uncertain about the person Dalila. Is she indeed a kind of ship of Tarsus, suggesting a prostitute to be boarded, as it were, which would continue her reputation of the past, or is she really a ``wife''? is she a matron as compared with the damsels who number her train? is she a matron because she is a ``wife''? does her being like ``Some rich Philistian matron'' imply that she shows adequate money to spend on herself, the ``eleven hundred pieces of silver'' that each Philistine lord gave her for her treachery according to the Bible (Judges xvi:5) but ignored by Milton except for Samson's accusation of her weakness not ``to resist/ Philistian gold'' (830± 31) and the ``gold/ Of Matrimonial treason'' (958±59)? This not very wise Chorus, as the ode had suggested, seems not very astute in recognizing her or very smitten with her as sexual enticement. But the reader fathoms the uncertainties that she presents: supposedly seductive, but not; supposedly ``wife,'' but more harlot-seeming. This ®rst view of Dalila o€ers the reader a false Dalila, an unchanged Dalila, perhaps even a gloating Dalila. Samson's ``let her not come near me'' comes to have double meaning: do not let her come near me for I may again be seduced (he cannot see her although the Chorus's description doesn't make her very engaging); or, as 122

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A Hermeneutics of the Text presently his rebu€ of her ``Let me approach at least, and touch thy hand'' (951) with the threat of violence against her (again raising his violent streak of the past and for personal vengeance), do not let her come near me for I may ``tear [her] joint by joint.'' In contrast with the former description they recount that Dalila holds back, is sad and weeping, ``Like a fair ¯ower surcharg'd with dew,'' with ``bravery'' now becoming a ``silk'n veil'' (a somewhat incongruous picture when she has just had ``tackle trim,'' ``Sails ®ll'd,'' ``streamers waving''). The author, Milton, has purposefully set up the opposed ways of reading Dalila: as ship of Tarsus or a fair ¯ower; as deceitful still or sincere; the ornate, gay, bedecked may hide the real Dalila beneath, or the ``head declin'd'' and the words dissolved into tears may all just be an act. Episode three has already been extensively discussed, largely in Chapters 4 and 5. For the reader Dalila's ®rst speech depends upon whether she is accepted as being sincere or again using false rhetoric. Is ``conjugal a€ection'' real or will again there be an ``unfortunate misdeed''? Samson's retort of ``Hyñna'' indicates that he does not consider her protestations to be sincere, for the hyena was thought to entice one by imitating a man's voice in order to devour him. He sees her presenting ``wonted arts,'' that is, her ``usual arts'' of falsity for a nefarious purpose, which ensuing lines detail. Those lines discover a misogyny against ``every woman [who is] false,'' ``not truly penitent,'' and who tests ``her husband'' to determine his virtue or his weakness in order to assail him to achieve her desires. While some have read that misogyny to extend to all women, that is not what Samson says; some women, it is implied, are not false. He continues with a self-excuse for his repeated error of the past that ``wisest and best men'' are ``beguil'd with goodness'' to forgive, becoming, instead, entangled ``with a poysnous bosom snake.'' When Dalila leaves, the Chorus will revise their ®rst descriptions of her and say, ``She's gone, a manifest Serpent by her sting/ Discover'd in the end, till now conceal'd.'' The reference is immediately to her rebuttal of Samson's accusations, but the lines have picked up Samson's imagery here and indicate that her earlier words have seemed to them innocent, sincere, like a quiescent serpent until it strikes. (The connection of serpent with evil goes back to Genesis and to observation of the nature of venomous snakes. The ``poysnous bosom snake'' has many analogues.2) Dalila admits her weakness and calls it ``incident to all our sex,/ Curiosity, inquisitive, importune/ Of secrets, then with like in®rmity/ To publish them, both common female faults'' (774±77). Her continuance of Samson's genderization may or may not involve sincerity, but it is a frequent approach by a debater to agree with the opposition in order then to disagree or to place blame elsewhere. And that she does:

2

See Jackson Campbell Boswell, ``Samson's Bosom Snake,'' Milton Quarterly 8 (1974): 77±80, and Edward Le Comte, ``Samson's Bosom Snake Again,'' Milton Quarterly 9 (1975): 114±15.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes Was it not weakness also to make known For importunity, that is for naught, Wherein consisted all thy strength and safety? To what I did thou shewdst me ®rst the way. (778±81)

The next two lines vacillate between these poles: ``But I to enemies reveal'd, and should not,'' and again with onus on Samson and genderization, ``Nor shouldst thou have trusted that to womans frailty.'' Further similar remarks lead to another approach: ``what if Love . . . Caus'd what I did?'' Not unlike the fallen Eve projecting the unfallen Adam's life with some other woman, Dalila says she saw him ``mutable of fancy'' and ``feard lest one day thou wouldst leave me,'' and thus imagined that knowing the source of his strength gave her power over him. Like the good debater again, she raises what could oppose that argument: ``Why then reveal'd?'' Because, she answers herself, she was told that ``nothing was design'd against thee'' and because she wished to ``enjoy'' him day and night, her and Love's prisoner, ``not the Philistines.'' ``These reasons in Loves law have past for good,'' and so she asks for pity or pardon, not like that which others would evoke, ``uncompassionate anger.'' These techniques of the oratorical exercise in arguing one position against another (with perhaps the orator taking the reverse side the next time) put a di€erent spin on the problem of sincerity. Dalila may be insincere because she uses these polemics with an aim only to winning; or she may be sincere in the outcome she desires but uses what means she can to persuade. Samson recognizes the ploy: ``How cunningly the sorceress displays/ Her own transgressions, to upbraid me mine!'' (819±20). He admits his guilt (``I to my self was false e're thou to me'') and extends whatever pardon he gives himself to her ± which cannot be much. His has been ``folly''; hers has been a ``wicked deed.'' Picking up her plea of weakness (the etymological meaning of her name), Samson assigns it to weakness for Philistian gold and ranks it with such wickedness as murder, treason, parricide, incest, and sacrilege. Her plea of love is but lust, and it is absurd because her act, as she would know, engendered ``inexpiable hate.'' The epithet ``sorceress'' suggests that her ``wonted arts'' engage ``enchantment,'' ``witchcraft,'' ``magic,'' but perhaps also says more about Samson's explanation, about his excuse to himself for his ``folly.'' Dalila recasts her argument since ``weakness for a plea/ In man or woman'' has been rejected. She relates what assaults, snares, sieges she had endured before she yielded; ``it was not gold.'' She was beleaguered with civil duty for her people against their enemy and religious merit against a dishonorer of Dagon. Only her love for Samson countered these contentions. In a way Milton has her report compare with Samson's holding o€ telling her the truth about his strength three times, until he ®nally succumbs. What Dalila says ®nally made her succumb would have been, we would certainly think, a basic 124

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A Hermeneutics of the Text principle for Milton in his own oppositions to aspects of the church and the government in the 1640s and 1660s: ``to the public good/ Private respects must yield'' (867±68). It is a ``grounded maxim/ So rife and celebrated in the mouths of wisest men'' (865±67). Even if Dalila is false in her statements here and it was gold, the argument of that ``grounded maxim'' is one that Milton would applaud. If she is false, then Samson's reaction epitomizes the insincerity that many readers have found in her words: ``I thought where all thy circling wiles would end;/ In feign'd Religion, smooth hypocrisie'' (871±72). The remark skewers many people ± in his own times and ever ± who for personal gain ± wealth, position, power ± take on demagoguery. Its counter is love, sincere love, which would have ``brought forth other [di€erent] deeds.'' The word ``circling,'' of course, continues the serpentine image, suggesting the snake coiled awaiting its chance to strike, and ``wiles'' labels all Dalila's arguments deceitful. Adam proceeds to recount, from his perspective, his marriage and his expectations of marriage. He ``unbosom'd'' all his secrets to her, recalling her being a ``poysnous bosom snake'' and intimating a sexual scene. His lines ``nor was I their [the Philistines'] subject,/ Nor under their protection but my own,/ Thou mine, not theirs'' (886±88) are strongly masculinist in that last phrase: she is his ``subject'' now and thus ``under his protection'' only. His position that her country ``sought unjustly'' to have her betray her husband is ``Against the law of nature, law of nations,'' a clear reference to John Selden's De jure naturali et gentium, juxta disciplinam Ebrñum (London, 1640), which Milton refers to in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1644, p. 78; Yale Prose, II, 350), as Roy C. Flannagan notes.3 Samson's point is that the wife is fully a ``subject'' of the husband and thus any attempt to set the wife against the husband is against the ``law'' of nature and nations. (In Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce Milton is attempting thus to refute canon law of a later time against Mosaic law in the Pentateuch.) Behind this position is the scriptural statement of Paul, which ``ends the controversie'' over male±female issues in Tetrachordon ``by explaining that the woman is not primarily and immediatly the image of God, but in reference to the man'' (3).4 Through this way of thinking Samson is able to conclude that his country and his religion should be hers, and that anything done against them is wrongful. A wife is seen as totally a husband's subject, totally of his persuasions. The underlying questions of Whose god is God? and Whose nation is the true nation? emerge with Samson's clearly prejudiced belief in his country's ``name so dear'' and the ``ungodly deeds'' of her ``gods'' (plural). Readers have generally accepted Samson's god and country as representing the ``true'' god and country, and therefore as representing Milton's god and 3 4

See Roy C. Flannagan, ed., The Riverside Milton (Boston: Houghton Mi‚in, 1998), 824, n204. Reference is to 1 Corinthians xi:7±9 as well as Colossians iii:18: ``Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is ®t in the Lord.''

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes country. What Milton's answers to the questions just posed would be are clear, but in contemporary terms there were many versions of ``God'' (even among those deriving belief from the in¯uence of Calvin) and of ``country,'' decidedly among those who were Royalist and those who were Independent (believers in the Good Old Cause included). Samson's argument from concepts of marriage and the placement of a wife as subject to the husband have been seen as Milton's own conviction, reinforcing the congruence of Samson's god and country with his. Such a reading commits Dalila to falseness and insincerity under the ``law of nature.'' Yet if she is taken as o€ering what to her were sincere reasons for her act and what are now her motives in returning to Samson, then uncertainty arises in the reading of her and her character. As remarked in Chapter 5, to have an insincere Dalila raises questions of what has she or the Philistines to gain by her new ``temptation''? Even if his hair and thus strength is returning, the Philistines can shave his head; but he is blind in any case! Samson chalks up her reappearance as ``malice'' (821), which for him implies a kind of sentimental and self-centered view: he is still the center for attention. A sincere Dalila posits some major contemporary problems: Whose god is God, and whose country is the one to be championed? as well as exemplifying the too-often ignored tenet that one should not accede to a false god or country, once shown false, even to the point of de®ance and rebellion against those one has held ``so dear'' in the past. A ``sincere'' Dalila's acts are wrong because they are carried out for a false god and a false country. A too-frequent truism is her response: ``In argument with men a woman ever/ Goes by the worse, whatever be her cause'' (903±904). She admits she has been ``a fool, too rash, and quite mistaken'' in her approach; she asks for forgiveness, and reminds Samson that life can o€er ``delights/ At home in leisure and domestic ease'' despite the loss of one sense, sight. Like Manoa she o€ers to intercede with the Lords and to bring him away from the loathsome prison to abide with her to old age. The lure is one of bodily ease, as with Manoa's lure, and perhaps psychological ease as well. He, however, has learned her ``trains,'' ``ginns,'' ``toyls,'' her ``fair enchanted cup, warbling charms,'' and their force is now null (932±35); the ``enchanted cup'' recalls Circe's which turned men into swine (and the sexual import is clear in the Odyssey) as well as her son Comus's attempt to seduce the Lady in ``A Masque'' (``Comus''). Both Homer's account and Milton's version, like the Samson story, are sexual in nature, emphasizing (for patriarchal societies and Milton's highly moral creed) a major male enticement to evil. Samson has learned ``much of Adders wisdom,'' for he can follow that wisdom, adders being proverbially deaf, ``to fence his ear against her sorceries'' (936±37). His ensuing words still hint at his proudness and aggrieved self, and the scorn at living uxorious. He sees her again bearing his words and doings to the Lords, although it is not clear why they would want to ``gloss'' upon them, or censure, or frown, or smile. The psychological picture of Samson that emerges 126

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A Hermeneutics of the Text is one who still sees himself to be so important that many would pay attention to him and his world though such concern, one would think, would be well past. He is not a threat; he is only a ``player'' who can entertain by his antics of strength and provide ridicule of what was formerly a threat. Samson is certainly not yet galvanized into the hero that one would designate a champion of God. Reprising her request for forgiveness, Dalila pleads, ``Let me approach at least, and touch thy hand'' (951), which elicits a brief but scathing rebuke. The violence that Samson has exhibited in the past may arise again to ``tear thee joint by joint.'' Forgiveness at a distance is all that is granted; she, rather, should bewail her falsehood and its results. She will be, he predicts, ``memorable/ Among illustrious women, faithful wives'' because of the ``pious works'' her actions have brought forth. Within the verse paragraph there is a sarcastic, ironic tone that ridicules Philistine ``works'' elicited as being pious and Dalila as a ``faithful wife''; or does Milton want the reader to supply opposite meaning so that the ``pious works'' are such as his divorce tracts and so that truly ``faithful wives,'' belying Dalila's corruption, are indeed ``illustrious women'' though not among the famous? Dalila's rejoinder has often been argued as showing her true self, particularly in contrast with what has preceded. But another way of looking at her speech, as commented upon in Chapter 5, is to see one so beaten down that the only recourse is to try to recoup some dignity, some semblance of honor. She advances her repute among her countrymen and her future fame, and, hurt, she claims she likes her own lot in life. Perhaps she does, particularly if she has been insincere in this encounter, but the speech has a tone of a defeated opponent trying to make himself still valorous, still commendable in others' eyes. Samson's rage is ``unappeasable,'' an ``eternal tempest.'' Why does she even try to assuage that rage, only to be insulted with infamy? She says that she does not ``too much disapprove'' her own ``concernments,'' a phrase that does not retract her former arguments and statements of cause for her actions or deny disapproval of her former actions. It does imply that her arguments, though unsuccessful, were approvable to be made, and that her former actions ± apparently because of her reasons for them ± are not totally abjured. While her name will stand defamed among the circumcised, in her own country she will be among the famousest Of Women, sung at solemn festivals, Living and dead recorded, who to save Her countrey from a ®erce destroyer, chose Above the faith of wedlock-bands. (982±86).

Those festivals and her envisioned tomb ``With odours visited and annual ¯owers'' should be remembered as the reader proceeds to the exodos and 127

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes Manoa's similar pledge of a monument for Samson. The mundane and sentimental symbol that humankind credits is in stark contrast with what should be true remembrance: continuance of what moral man should do for his country and god. For the Philistines that may bring unwanted action against the Danites, but for followers of the ``true God'' it should bring emulation of Samson's ®nal act. Dalila compares herself with Jael, who rejected what would be considered moral hospitality for a guest, by striking a nail through the temples of the Canaanite leader Sisera (Judges v:24±27; the Canaanite kings fought against the Israelites for many years). It is a curious comparison, in that Jael, the wife of a friend to the Canaanites (Heber the Kenite), acts for the Israelites and is hymned by ``the angel of the LORD,'' and she, Dalila arms, is renowned in Mount Ephraim, that is, the kingdom of Israel. If you, the Israelites, can praise Jael for her inhospitable act, Dalila is boasting, my country can confer on me ``public marks of honour and reward . . . for the piety/ Which to my countrey I was judg'd t' have shewn'' (992±94). The allusion caps a speech that has been communicated to counter Samson's arguments, his potential tribal remembrance, and the authority of his god and his country. Does it reveal a false Dalila or is it a retort to save face? The Chorus opts for the ®rst; Samson evaluates her return as God's way of debasing him (a not very admirable way of looking at his ``true'' God!) and as means to ``aggravate his folly.'' Again the alleged serpentine nature of Dalila is asserted by the Chorus and by Samson's calling her ``a viper.'' His learning ``Adders wisdom'' has thus further signi®cation, for ``adder'' and ``viper'' designate the same creature (Vipera berus): it is through evil (as all the serpentine references imply) that good (wisdom) will come. The thought, a frequent one in Milton's work, emerges most notably in Paradise Lost and in Areopagitica where he declaims that one must sally forth and face one's adversary, else one ``slinks [with its clear serpentine image] out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat'' (12). The stasimon that the Chorus speaks following Samson's observation that ``Love-quarrels'' may often end in ``pleasing concord,'' but not, as his, in ``wedlock-treachery,'' is particularly misogynistic; it also demonstrates the mercurial responses of the Chorus. Throughout they pick up what has been just said and expand upon it, or sometimes o€er a modi®cation or di€ering view to extend a comment or situation just encountered. They brie¯y review Samson's marriages with the Woman of Timnah and with Dalila, and use the results to question whether ``thir Sex'' can have ``constancy'' or love anything for long. A commonplace of genderization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, generally male-dominated, was that man is constant and woman, inconstant; that woman (``under virgin veil'') is ``soft, modest, meek, demure'' until married when she ``proves a thorn intestin.'' The pilot/sea metaphor of human/life is reprised: ``What Pilot so expert but needs must wreck/ Embarqu'd with such a Stears-mate at the Helm?'' (1044±45). They 128

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A Hermeneutics of the Text admit that one ``Favour'd of Heaven'' may ``rarely'' ®nd a ``vertuous'' wife, but because of the almost consistent failings of woman, ``Gods universal Law/ Gave to the man despotic power/ Over his female'' (1053±55). In terms of the author, Milton, how do we read this diatribe? There are those who read Milton expressing his own feelings and beliefs, but is he? Is there an uncertainty over these stereotyped male attitudes placed in the mouth of this unctuous fraternity of Danites?5 is there contradiction when we pay attention to Milton's arguments for divorce (despite the ultimate overriding acceptance of Pauline injunctions about husband and wife) or recognize that Adam's fall, undeceived, comes directly through his will rather than Eve's indiscretion? is Milton reacting to those Parliamentarians and others who rejected his arguments for divorce through their masculinist positions, such as expressed by the Chorus, subtly lampooning their unconscionable attitude when one remembers woman as a creature of God? Again repeating the image of pilot/sea, the Chorus ends their invective against woman when they see ``a storm'' (that is, Harapha) approach. The image continues with Samson's ``wind and rain'' and the Chorus's ``tempest,'' and their comparison between ``what wind hath blown him hither'' and Dalila's ``¯oating this way.'' Harapha will not deliver ``honied words'' in an ``inchanting voice,'' but rather a ``rougher tongue'' (the storm, tempest, wind, rain) will tell his ``fraught'' (the cargo, or business, that he, as ship, carries). Harapha presents himself as one as well-known for strength as Samson has been, thus, for the reader, recalling and parodying Samson's boastfulness in the past. Samson's bravado is likewise satirized by Harapha's claim of lament that he had not been present when Samson showed ``prodigious might and feats perform'd'' to challenge Samson's ``incredible'' acts. He ``should have forc'd [Samson] soon wish other arms'' than an ass's jaw; he would have wrested the honor of ``highest name for valiant Acts,'' now denied because of Samson's blindness. But Samson's challenge to single combat is rejected because Harapha disdains to ®ght with a blind man, ``And thou hast need much washing to be toucht'' (1107). This prissy line hardly suggests a macho giant, or one who would have won a ``mortal duel'' with Samson. The word ``mortal'' implies that Samson would have been killed, of course, and touching his corpse would not have been a problem for Harapha; the victory of a Philistine over one from the ``unforeskinn'd race'' insinuates a religious element into such a combat (as in the potential duel) but makes one wonder about a pun on phallic performance (such as Dalila's taunt may raise with its reference to ``posterity''). The ``humor'' that one may see in Harapha's line and that might appear in such puns does not 5

Flannagan compares ``under virgin veil'' with Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce's ``who know not that the bashfull mutenes of a virgin may oft-times hide all the unlivelines & naturall sloth which is really un®t for conversation'' (8). I read this not negatively but as a statement that many women are properly not bashful, not given to ``unlivelines & naturall sloth,'' and that such women are truly ®t for ``conversation.''

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes sort well with the prefatory statement against ``intermixing Comic stu€ with Tragic sadness and gravity.'' Samson brie¯y reviews what has brought him to this state, and then challenges the giant to arm himself with armor and arms against Samson's bearing only ``an Oak'n sta€.'' He promises Harapha death; he boasts that Harapha would wish himself in Gath ``to boast again in safety,'' which, of course, is what Harapha has been doing since his entrance. Believing no combat could ensue, Harapha can certainly boast of what he would do to Samson in assurance that nothing will ensue. Samson makes clear the vanity and insubstantiality of Harapha's braggadocio, depicted tellingly in Spenser's invented clown and in various characters on the Elizabethan stage. Harapha praises the ``glorious arms'' of ``greatest Heroes'' and opposes to them ``black enchantments, some Magicians Art,'' which have ``arm'd'' Samson in his exploits. (The reader may remember Milton's putdown of ``long and tedious havoc'' that authors have used ``to dissect . . fabl'd Knights/ In Battels feign'd'' [PL IX, 29±31].) Magic is an easy way of explaining things one doesn't comprehend or accept, and Harapha's ridicule of hair's providing strength strikes the same note. The dramatic poem, I am arguing in this study, provides evidence for Milton's view of God's omnipotence, his ability to perform miracles with such acts as revelation of God's Truth. Even within Harapha's rather skeptical and logical words lie the questions overhanging the poem: Who is God, whose god is God, how does he negotiate his Truth? Samson's confutation is ``the living God,'' who upheld his covenant with Samson until Samson had violated his vow. The contrast, Samson claims, between the omnipotence (even miraculous occurrences) of his God and of Dagon will be made explicit through the power of Israel's God in the person of Samson, against the power of Dagon in the person of Harapha: ``Then thou shalt see, or rather to thy sorrow/ Soon feel, whose God is strongest, thine or mine'' (1154±55). The treatment that Samson has been given, Harapha asserts, attests to the Israelite God's disregard,6 eliciting a speech that moves Samson almost to a point of full renovation. He admits that he deserved these evils and more, that God in¯icted them on him justly, but that God is gracious and will readmit the suppliant. Thus he can iterate his challenge: ``By combat to decide whose god is God,/ Thine or whom I with Israel's Sons adore'' (1176±77). Again the biblical history of Samson is brought in, with Harapha substantiating why he has called Samson ``A Murtherer, a Revolter, and a Robber,'' and Samson giving his side of his actions. But in the midst of that speech Samson moves further to understand how to be God's champion and projects, for the reader aware of the denouement of the poem, what will occur 6

The thought has frequently enough today called into question the nature of one's God and even the existence of a God. The Holocaust of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis and reactions of some present-day Jews is an obvious example.

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A Hermeneutics of the Text to make him ``Deliverer.'' He admits, ®rst, that he considered himself a ``private person,'' who ``presum'd/ Single Rebellion and did Hostile Acts''; but immediately expresses what he has come now to understand, ``I was no private but a person rais'd/ With strength sucient and command from Heav'n/ To free my Countrey'' (1208±13). The ®fth episode with the Public Ocer will conclude with the fuller acknowledgment that he is but an agent doing God's work, that only through using the Grace given him under his great task-master's eye will he achieve what was prophesied at his birth. His ``known o€ence'' disabled him from achieving that which had been prophesied. His words lie amidst this admission of private selfhood and establish that the o€ence was pride, not sexual liaisons and carnal desire, with his succumbing to them facilitated by his placement of himself above everything and everyone, and leading to his revoking of his vow. His confession in episode two, Fearless of danger, like a petty God I walk'd about admir'd of all and dreaded On hostile ground, none daring my a€ront. Then swoll'n with pride into the snare I fell Of fair fallacious looks, venereal trains (529±33)

echoes here, but earlier Samson had not really understood that God has no gods before him, petty or otherwise. Although they are the Chorus's words, ``the Holy One/ Of Israel'' must be his ``guide/ To what may serve his glory best'' (1427±29). Samson calls this third de®ance to Harapha for single ®ght ``a petty enterprise of small enforce''; that word ``petty'' suggests that the ``petty god'' has ®nally put his private ``heroic'' actions into the right category. The colloquy between the two sallies back and forth with Samson showing bravery and courage and Harapha backing down with oaths to pagan gods, ``Baal-zebub'' (the Philistine sun god) and ``Astaroth'' (the Philistine queen of the heavens), and cowardly predicting some future di€erent answer (than their single combat) will cause lament. The dramatic irony is obvious; indeed there will be a di€erent answer and it will cause lament, but not for Samson and his people. Harapha's and the Philistine's ``petty'' gods will not prevail. The Chorus epitomizes him well: ``His Giantship is gone.'' That he may ``with malitious counsel stir . . . up'' the Lords may be correct, but not because of the proposed ®ght. What does come from the Lords through the Public Ocer will accord with Samson's ironic foreview: ``by death to rid me hence, . . . to me the best''; ``thir end . . . may with mine/ Draw thir own ruin who attempt the deed'' (1263±67). The Chorus apostrophizes God who renders ``the mighty of the Earth'' useless through a ``deliverer'' executing ``his errand on the wicked.'' Not aware that this will occur, they have not yet allowed that ``Oft he seems to hide his face/ But unexpectedly returns.'' Instead they extol 131

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes patience and the saints who make each his own Deliverer; the ironic meanings in these last sections of the poem tumble out profusely for the astute reader. Samson will show some patience before he resolves his mind; thus he as a saint7 is his own deliverer; and the reader interprets the message of patience for himself and the need for each person, himself included, to be his own deliverer to enable all eventually to be delivered of what ``tyrannie and fortune can in¯ict.'' The Ocer bids Samson join the Feast of Dagon and give some public proof of his strength that the Lords have heard of; ®rst, however, he will be ``fresh clad'' in order to appear more ®t before such ``illustrious Lords.'' Harapha's prissiness seems to be a Philistine trait! Religion forces Samson to say, ``I cannot come,'' the ®rst of his three denials. Other entertainers should be sucient without his making sport with blind activity, without making a game of his calamities: ``I will not come,'' moving from not having religious approval to volition. The Ocer's ``Regard thy self '' (meaning ``beware of what may happen to you if you do not go'') brings forth Samson's introspection: ``my conscience and internal peace.'' Externally he may be broken and debased but his mind will not ``condescend to such absurd commands.'' ``I will not come'' resounds a third time. The Chorus worries that a more imperious message will be more than he can bear. But Samson, who informs us that the ``Consecrated gift/ Of strength'' is ``again returning with [his] hair,'' will not prostitute such a holy thing as this strength, particularly as a Nazarite, in honor of an Idol, Dagon. This is the ®rst time Samson has called himself a Nazarite (the Chorus had used the word of him in recounting his history in their ®rst stasimon), and he will again employ it a few lines later after he has reversed his decision. The Chorus reminds him that he has already served the Philistines, but he corrects their implication: ``Not in thir Idol-worship, but by labour/ Honest and lawful to deserve my food'' (1365±66). Not unlike the Lady in ``Comus'' immanacled of body but not of mind, the Chorus philosophizes that ``Where the heart joins not, outward acts de®le not,'' leading Samson to other thought, induced, it would seem, by the return of his hair, his strength, and his reemergence as Nazarite. No one constrains him to the Temple of Dagon; the Lords command, but commands 7

For Milton one did not become a ``saint'' through Roman Catholic canonization. In these lines ``fortitude'' and ``patience'' in godly matters is necessary to be one of the protestant saints, such as Catharine Thomason had become. Milton, in the ®rst draft of Sonnet 14 in the Trinity MS, wrote that she ``Strait follow'd . . . the path that Saints have trod,'' through her Works and Alms and good Endeavor. The ``slaughter'd Saints'' of Sonnet 18 can be identi®ed with those ``that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held'' (Revelation vi:9), and Revelation xiii:10, commenting upon those whose names are written in the book of life of the Lamb since they do not worship the beast, reports that ``He [the beast] that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.'' Most clearly for scriptural interpretation, 1 Corinthians i:2 reads ``them that are sancti®ed in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.''

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A Hermeneutics of the Text are not constraints. ``If I obey them,/ I do it freely.'' Displeasing God and being unrepentent will ®nd no forgiveness, but giving himself up to God, to obey him, Samson argues, God ``may dispense with me or thee/ Present in Temples at Idolatrous Rites/ For some important cause'' (1377±79). The words ``dispense with'' mean ``give a dispensation to'' and thus reprise lines 60±61: ``I must not quarrel with the will/ Of highest dispensation.'' The hair and its miraculous strength are, of course, involved in both statements, and we see the poem pulled together by this technique of echoing, and we hear ambiguities in those echoings. The earlier use of dispensation punned on his hair's hanging down; the later use implies that God may be providing a dispensation through the return of strength to his hair. The important word is ``cause'' (1379), but the ``rousing motions'' he feels (1382) assure him he will do nothing to ``dishonour/ Our Law, or stain [his] vow of Nazarite'' even though he does not know what ``great act'' he will commit or why. ``I with this Messenger will go along''; ``I am content to go.'' Samson's speech, lines 1369±89, punctuated by the Chorus's ``How thou wilt here come o€ surmounts my reach'' (1380), provides a peripeteia, that sharp reversal from ``I will not go'' to ``I am content to go,'' and sets in motion the denouement that readers have been well aware of since the beginning of the poem. It points to a completed renovation. A kind of anagnorisis accompanies this reversal: Samson again recognizes that he is a Nazarite, that he has vows to uphold, and that some great act (not a ``petty'' one) will be done with his God's help. Samson's ®nal words do not suggest there is anything like suicide in his mind; he does not know what he will do or what they will do to him ± at the festival or later: ``The last of me or no I cannot warrant.'' His irons are removed and he is apparently led o€ by someone ± the Ocer, the boy who appeared at the beginning of the poem, probably not one of the Danite Chorus. But the Chorus places the ending which will occur soon in a religious aura: Go, and the Holy One Of Israel be thy guide To what may serve his glory best, and spread his name Great among the Heathen round; Send thee the Angel of thy Birth, to stand Fast by thy side. (1427±32)

The return of Manoa, who has heard that Samson has parted ``To come and play before [the Lords] at thir Feast,'' provides a continuance of his improper hope of bribing the Philistine Lords for Samson's release that was ®rst proposed in episode two. ``I have attempted [tried to persuade] one by one the Lords/ . . . T'accept of ransom for my Son thir pris'ner.'' Manoa's lack of faith in his God to perform some ``miracle,'' some reversal for one supposed 133

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes to be a Great Deliverer, is evident, but it depicts those many of little faith like the children of Israel who o€ered opposition to Moses, saying, ``Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? for it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness'' (Exodus xiv:12). (Compare the discussion of Milton's ``Paraphrase upon Psalm 114'' in Chapter 10 here.) The Philistines, he found, were of three groups: those who wished revenge and spite since they most reverenced Dagon and his Priests; those who desired their private reward, setting aside their god and their state; and those who had enough revenge ± that is, ``If some convenient ransom were propos'd.'' Parallels with people through the ages can be discerned, including the political factions in the 1640s and the 1660s. His recital is cut short by a noise or shout that tears the sky. The Chorus supposes it is reaction to seeing Samson or some proof of his strength; but Manoa, he of very little faith, dwells on what would be his impoverished condition, which he, in martyrlike tones, will accept. Samson's eyesight lost makes him appear old, the Chorus remarks, and Manoa speaks of his locks now ``on his shoulders waving down'' and ``His strength again [growing] with his hair.'' This observation elicits, ®nally, a trust in God, unlikely though this physical miracle would be: ``And since his strength with eye-sight was not lost,/ God will restore him eye-sight to his strength'' (1502±503). The Chorus, who have not shown particular faith up to now, agree that Manoa's ``hopes'' are not ill founded. A hideous noise, unlike the former shout, interrupts what Manoa was about to say; the Chorus, quite correctly, calls it a ``universal groan'' such as one might expect ``if the whole inhabitation perish'd'' with ``Blood, death, and deathful deeds . . . , Ruin, destruction.'' To Manoa it was the slaying of Samson, ``some dismal accident''; but more than one death would create that outcry, the Chorus recognizes. They advise staying where they are (rather than running to see what has occurred) for here the Philistines will not, in avengement, ``molest'' them. Perhaps, indeed, by miracle his eyesight has been restored (since ``to Israels God/ Nothing is hard'') and he is slaughtering the Philistines, ``a joy presumptuous to be thought'' according to Manoa. The issues of the poem are encapsulated in the next lines of exchange: Chorus. Yet God hath wrought things as incredible For his people of old; what hinders now? Manoa. He can I know, but doubt to think he will; Yet Hope would fain subscribe, and tempts Belief. (1532±35)

Does one believe that God will save his True Believers, even performing miracles to that end? Does Hope reside in such miraculous action ± only? 134

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A Hermeneutics of the Text Does such Hope bring Belief? Wrong: should not, instead, Belief bring such Hope? The entrance of a Messenger, a Hebrew of the tribe of Dan, provides narration of what has happened, sounding like any other nuntius employed on the Elizabethan stage, but with such signi®cant words for the poem as ``providence,'' ``reason,'' ``guided me aright.'' The report that ``Samson is dead,'' evokes Manoa's ``O all my hope's defeated/ To free him hence!'' a comment that not only is self-centered and pointedly not lamenting the death, but signi®cantly forgetful of the hope in some ``incredible'' act of God he expressed just before. The messenger's report that Samson died ``By his own hands'' causes Manoa to assign it to ``Self-violence,'' alluding to a frequent reading of Samson's death in biblical interpretations to come. Debate over the ending of Milton's dramatic poem has also engaged alleged suicide and its undercutting of what Samson has resolved in the peripeteia. The messenger's account of what was performed before the ``choice nobility and ¯ower'' of the Philistine nation ends with Samson's statement that ``Now of my own accord such other tryal/ I mean to shew you of my strength, yet greater'' (1643±44). The word ``accord'' will be cited in the next chapter; here we might remember Philippians ii:1±4: If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love . . . ful®l ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.

The Chorus labels Samson's act ``revenge'' but denies suicide (``now ly'st victorious/ Among thy slain self-kill'd/ Not willingly, but tangl'd in the fold/ Of dire necessity''). A Semichorus stresses the debauchery of the Philistines and their ``blindness internal'' by importuning their own destruction. The other Semichorus makes the comparison unavoidable: ``But he though blind of sight,/ . . . With inward eyes illuminated/ His ®erie vertue rouz'd/ From under ashes into sudden ¯ame'' (1686, 1687±91) ± ``rouz'd'' taking us back to Samson's ``rouzing motions'' ± and continues with destructive similes that castigate the debauchery cited just before. The way in which Samson's ``virtue'' (power is included in its meaning), termed ``®erie'' by being volatile and at the same time creating destruction, is aroused out of the ashes that his former ``®eriness'' has created by dying out, recalls an ``ev'ning Dragon,'' an ``Eagle,'' and the Phoenix (``that self-begott'n bird/ In th'Arabian woods embost''). The ®rst simile presents how Samson's action could be viewed, as a dragon (a winged serpent or the ®redrake of Germanic mythology8) assailing, 8

Samuel S. Stollman cites Genesis xlix:16±18 (``Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a horned snake in the path'') and Edward Tayler argues that it refers to the ®redrake, a meteorological phenomenon. See, respectively, ``Samson as Dragon and a Scriptural Tradition,'' ELN 7 (1970): 186±89, and ``Milton's Firedrake,'' Milton Quarterly 6 (1972): 7±10.

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes without warning, a roost of tame barnyard fowl. (It is the Semichorus of ordinary Danites speaking on the basis of what the Messenger has reported.) ``But as an Eagle/ His cloudless thunder bolted on thir heads'' (the continuation of line 1695) ± ``but'' contradicts the dragon simile ± places Samson's action in a religious environment, for the eagle emblematizes Christ and the thunderbolts, God, the cloudlessness indicating both the lack of a natural occasion of storm and the directness between heaven and earth, nothing intervening.9 Samson's rousing again to assert his ``virtue'' leads the Semichorus to the Phoenix image, the unique secular bird (that is, one living for ®ve centuries) that expires in a great holocaust only to rise anew ``From out her ashie womb.'' But the simile suggests more to the knowing reader. The Phoenix was also an emblem of Christ (because of his death and resurrection), and ``though her body die, her fame survives,'' as, it is implied, will Samson's. Out of the ashes that Samson had been and what he has now become, we thus decode Milton as prophesying, in like measure others can individually become ``great deliverers'' of and for themselves.10 They can imitate the Christ. The Danites as a nation (the English as a nation) will not be delivered until all have delivered themselves up from the custom, ease, and self-serving that Milton incisively anatomized. ``We must amend our lives'' is his message in his last prose tract published two years after Samson Agonistes. Dennis Danielson (254) has quoted John Clarke's Parúmiologia AngloLatina . . . Or Proverbs English and Latine (1639) in relating a faithful friend to the Phoenix and its Christ-likeness. John Bunyan's Faithful (in Pilgrim's Progress) and Samson represent the revelation of Truth and through their deaths (like Jesus's) lead to the birth of Hope. Mary Jane Doherty writes of the Phoenix as not denying the erotic or as opposed to the erotic in true religion, yet the image yields ``a gender-transcendent Love beyond even androgyny . . . a transforming, regenerative ®re'' (38). Within the poem, that is, Samson's act is interpreted by the Semichorus in terms that a Christian would associate with Christ: Samson is NOT Christ or a type of Christ but ®nally one who as faithful friend, as one who has transcended his former sexual dependency, has demonstrated Christ-like action. 9

10

Comparison with Paradise Lost VI, 762±66, the Son's defeating of Satan and his cohorts, suggests that Milton consigned this victory to the Providence of God: ``at his right hand Victorie ate Eagle-wing'd, beside him hung his Bow/ And Quiver with three-bolted Thunder stor'd,/ And from about him ®erce E€usion rowld/ Of smoak and bickering ¯ame, and sparkles dire.'' ``The drama concludes by famously comparing the dead Samson to a Phoenix, that `selfbegott'n bird,' suggesting that in his death he has become his own mother,'' according to John P. Rumrich (Milton Unbound: Controversy and Reinterpretation [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996], 90). The suggestion is a particularly intriguing one in that, as previously noted, Milton erases the mother from the poem (except in her inclusion as a parent). Milton refers to the hermaphroditic Phoenix as feminine only in these lines, thus emphasizing generation, and perhaps corroborating some of Kerrigan views of the relationship between Milton and his mother.

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A Hermeneutics of the Text The holocaust (here apparently meaning consumed by ®re) in which the Phoenix has become ashes may owe something to the ``burnt o€ering'' of Judges xiii:23, as well as Genesis viii:20 and xxii:13 and Job i:5 and xlii:8. The idea equates with holocaust as in its de®nition, ``a kind of sacri®ce . . . as an acknowledgment that God, the creator, preserver, and lord of all, was worthy of all honour and worship, and as a token of men's giving themselves entirely up to him.''11 Further one is reminded of the prophecy of ®re for the destruction of the corrupt world, the opposite of the ¯ood of Noah, in 2 Peter iii:10: ``But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.'' The exodos presents a Manoa talking of building a monument to his son and its in¯aming the breasts of valiant youth and its being attended on feastful days by virgins bringing ¯owers, as previously discussed. ``Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail/ Or knock the breast''; for he makes the telling admonition that ``To Israel/ Honour hath left, and freedom, let but them/ Find courage to lay hold on this occasion'' (1721±22; 1714±16). But Israel will not ®nd the courage, will not take advantage of the occasion to ¯ee from Philistine yoke, will not enjoy ``freedom.'' And the Chorus, perhaps, indicates one reason why that is so, as also discussed before: ``th' unsearchable dispose'' will be ``ever best found in the close,'' and ``Oft he seems to hide his face,12/ But unexpectedly returns.''13 If in fact ``His servants'' ± the Danites on the scene as well as the readers of the text ± have ``new acquist/ Of true experience'' then they should feel peace and consolation: they should have ``calm of mind all passion spent.'' The connection with the Aristotelian reference to catharsis in the prefatory remarks has repeatedly been noted: but has catharsis occurred? has one reached ``calm of mind''? has all ``passion'' (all ``su€ering'') been spent? Critical reactions to the uncertain world of Samson Agonistes suggest that not all readers have felt catharsis, calm of mind, or all passion purged.

11

12

13

Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopñdia: or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (London, 1728), I, under ``Holocaust,'' unpaginated. See Psalm xxvii:9 (``Hide not thy face far from me'') and Psalm lxxxviii:14 (``Lord, why castest thou o€ my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me?''). Louis Martz, Poet of Exile, makes the following important observation: ``Certainly the Chorus and Manoa have been uplifted by Samson's achievement . . . and yet even at the close they seem not quite to grasp the complex meaning of Samson's victory. . . . The Chorus and Manoa have missed the deep self-discovery of the hero: that he is, by his own willing choice, a chosen son of God'' (289).

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Chapter 10 SAMSON AGONISTES AND CONSISTENCIES OF BELIEF

M

ANY years ago William Riley Parker remarked the ``legend'' that the career of John Milton as poet and prose writer exhibits an agenda of hopes for achievement that, one item after another, was completed without swerving from his determined course. While we can argue with that ``legend'' as far as his career is concerned, it does epitomize a consistency, even a pertinacious unswerving, of thought and of value in life and of belief in God. We may credit as the cause of his not following a ministerial career in 1632, when he was graduated from Cambridge University with a master of arts degree, that he did not receive a fellowship or a preferment for a parish living, or that he felt it incumbent to stay at his father's house to care for his aging parents. Yet, as his letter in the Trinity MS addressed to an unknown friend relates, he felt he would not make a good preacher, and as the sonnet ``How Soon Hath Time,'' which he enclosed with that letter, indicates, he was, shortly before his graduation, uncertain of what he wanted to do in life or where his life would lead him. He is not rejecting ministerial and religious thought, only a clerical career; ``All is . . . / As ever in [his] great task-maisters eye.'' For Milton the prime thought motivating any of his actions generates from his belief in God and God's omnipotence and omniscience and mercy. ``A Paraphrase on Psalm 114,'' the earliest poem we have by Milton (apparently written in 1624), is a Passover psalm celebrating the miraculous action of God. As reference to Exodus xiv:21 reveals, comparison is made with the Lord's separating the waters of the Red Sea so that the chosen people, the Israelites, could pass over to Canaan and escape the bondage of Pharaoh (metaphorically construed as Satan). God will act to help and save his true servants even against all seeming impossiblities, such as the waters of the Red Sea would render, normally blocking passage through it.1 Psalm civ depicts an event in the conquest of Canaan when the Israelites, bearing the Ark of the Covenant, pass over the river Jordan. According to Joshua iii:7, ``the Lord said unto Joshua, This day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel, that 1

Hovering over this concept of covenant is the psychological importance of the superego. For a discussion of Milton and superego, see Kerrigan, The Sacred Complex, 119±20 especially.

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Samson Agonistes and Consistencies of Belief they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee.'' The account continues, the waters which came down from above stood and rose upon a heap very far from the city of Adam, that is beside Zaretan; and those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed, and were cut o€: and the people passed over right against Jericho. And the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood ®rm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan, and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all the people were passed clear over Jordan (Joshua iii:16±17).

Milton's paraphrase reads: . . . the troubl'd Sea [saw . . . the strength of the Almightes hand], and shivering ¯ed, And sought to hide his froth-becurled head Low in the earth, Jordans clear streams recoil, As a faint host that hath receiv'd the foil.

His translation then asks, ``Why turned Jordan toward his Crystall Fountains?'', and the answer comes in a polite imperative: Shake earth, and at the presence be agast Of him that ever was, and ay shall last, That glassy ¯ouds from rugged rocks can crush, And make soft rills from ®ery ¯int-stones gush.

Not only are times bound together ± the freeing of the Israelites from the bondage of Pharaoh coalesced with the conveyance of the Ark of the Covenant to the Promised Land ± but the continued foreknowledge of his people's needs and the omnipotence of God are reasserted over a good timespan in the Bible. For the ®fteen-year-old Milton the ``Paraphrase on Psalm 114'' becomes a statement in belief in God, belief in God's aid in times of tribulation, belief in God's omnipotence, and belief in God's covenant with Abraham. This belief in God's omnipotence as well as his foreknowledge of what is happening to his true servants in need of help reappears at the end of the dramatic poem some forty-®ve years later: Oft he seems to hide his face, But unexpectedly returns And to his faithful Champion hath in place Bore witness gloriously. (1749±52)

Beneath that observation by the Chorus of the action of Samson after a life of 139

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes violence, which acts of violence he has misconstrued as aiding in the deliverance of the Danites from the bondage of the Philistines, is the belief in the ``presence . . . Of him that ever was, and ay shall last,'' who will bear ``witness gloriously'' to him who observes the covenant. A problem in the Samson story and Milton's treatment of it for many critics, as we have previously remarked, has been Samson's bravado and self-aggrandizing actions and what amounts to an ignoring or obscuring of the covenant, although critics have not recognized that ignoring of the convenant at the base of Samson's misguided actions. The clarion message is that a keeping of covenant, or a faithful adherence to God's teaching and law, regardless of seemingly insurmountable barriers, will lead to God's sustenance and deliverance. In Paradise Lost Abdiel represents faithful adherence to God's teaching and law, despite the fraudulence of Satan which at ®rst brings him to attend the rebellious meeting (Satan was his military commander, of course). Abdiel keeps faith and resists. The Israelites of the psalm show faith and are rewarded when they put themselves into God's hands. Samson ®nally becomes a ``Faithful Champion'' by putting himself into God's hands, after he has rejected further self-aggrandizement and self-indulgence in the three central episodes of the drama. While it is not explicit in the poem, what Samson ± like the Israelites and like Abdiel ± unwittingly experiences is an active and demonstrated acceptance of covenant.2 Somewhere in time between these two poems lies Milton's ``Upon the Circumcision.'' In this major text for an understanding of Milton and his thought is a clear statement of the ``great Cov'nant.'' The reference is to the everlasting covenant God made with Abraham (Genesis xvii:7±8), the sign of which was male circumcision:3 I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

Any covenant, of course, says that one party will do something IF the other party does something as agreed upon. What was expected of Abraham and then his son Isaac and then his son Jacob (who is renamed Israel) in order to 2

3

We should remark that Paradise Lost concludes with allusion to another Passover psalm. ``They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,/ Through Eden took thir solitarie way'' reprises Psalm cvii, dedicated to praise of the Lord for his deliverance of his children from trouble: ``They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way'' The psalm then counsels: ``He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into watersprings,'' a major image of God's omnipotence that Psalm cxiv celebrates. It should be remembered that the Bible is written by a Hebraic culture that was staunchly male-oriented, as it is even today in Orthodox groups. Arguments of divine dictation of the Bible simply show ignorance.

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Samson Agonistes and Consistencies of Belief uphold the covenant was faith in God and adherence to his Law. Samson has not adhered to the Law and, though not faithless, he has not exhibited faith in God, only in action by himself alone. As one of the circumcised ± and there is contrast in the poem between the circumcised and the uncircumcised ± Samson would be expected to adhere to the Law and to keep faith in God at all times, under all circumstances. In contrast with Samson is Jesus in Paradise Regain'd, the companion poem of the 1671 volume. Jesus consistently shows faith in God and thus counters the three temptations wrought by Satan. Jesus rejects any other god, most notably Satan; he does not take the name of the Lord in vain; he honors his father and his mother; he does not covet anything; and he bears no false witness against anyone for his plight in the wilderness. In the reprise of the temptation motif in Samson Agonistes, as we have seen, Manoa o€ers the lure of ease (necessity) and Dalila advances fraudulent arguments for his return to her, while Harapha challenges a return to self-aggrandizement through violence. In the past Samson seems to have broken just about all the Laws; now in rejecting the lures o€ered him in the drama he is abiding by the Law, including rejection of a sense of adultery that Dalila o€ers and the rejection of the false god of Harapha. Samson asserts what becomes a keeping of the Law by not bearing false witness, by not taking the name of the Lord in vain, by rejecting any other god which succumbing to Manoa in his attempt at bribery or to Dalila as Philistian matron or to Harapha as Philistian champion would entail. As Samson says, ``My trust is in the living God who gave me/ At my Nativity this strength'' (1140±41), and the combat throughout the drama is ``to decide whose god is God.'' In Milton's world of thought humankind has not been obedient to God, has not kept faith, has not observed his Law. But for those who have kept faith ± Jesus (remember the ``miracle'' of the angels who waft him from the spire of the Temple before an inevitable fall) ± and for those who are renovated ± Samson ± God will provide deliverance, for he is both omniscient and omnipotent. The covenant of faith between God and his children underpins God's ways toward humankind and sustains the hopes of the triumph of Truth and the assertion of Right. The volume of 1671 that combines the brief epic and the dramatic poem manifests the message of covenant for those of faith and for those who achieve renovation. The consistency of this belief for Milton rings out in such works as Paradise Lost, the sonnet ``Ladie, that in the prime of earliest youth,'' and A Maske (that is ``Comus'') ± 1640s through 1660s, around 1643, and 1634/1637. In Book V of the epic, the narrative voice describes the angel Abdiel, who has just resisted Satan and his arguments against God, which arguments against God's ``tyranny'' sees him demanding ``knee-tribute'' and ``yet unpaid, prostration vile.'' The narrative voice tells us that Abdiel is one among the faithless found faithful, unmoved, unshaken, unseduced, and unterri®ed; one who keeps loyalty, love, and zeal; one who is not swayed ``To swerve from truth, or 141

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes change his constant mind/ Though single'' (V, 782, 896±903). Although Samson does not exhibit the opposites of these characteristics of the true servant of God, he does swerve from truth through his exalting of Self, through his equation of violence with deliverance, through his lack of inclusion of God as his ``task-maister'' forever in his eye. His blindness is real, but it is, and has been, also metaphoric: he does not ``see'' the presence, the needed presence, of God in all his actions. That is, not until he is with ``inward eyes'' illumined, not until he is able to say, ironically since his words have seeming application to the Philistine lords, ``Masters commands come with a power resistless/ To such as owe them absolute subjection'' (1404± 405), not until he remembers ``our Law'' (1409), ``Our God, our Law'' (1425). The questions that critics have raised over the drama and over Samson speci®cally have primarily resulted from a nonacceptance that he could so drastically change and that his actions will be meaningful. But he has observed, and Milton, I suggest, fully accepted this as ``truth,'' that ``for a life who will not change his purpose?'' (1406). His ``death'' brings forth this ``life,'' for as Adam concluded, And to the faithful Death the Gate of Life; Taught this by his example whom I now Acknowledge my Redeemer ever blest. (XII, 571±73)

As to the meaningfulness of his death in terms of his countrymen or in terms of righting the injustice of bondage of one people by another, Milton is ®rst concerned with the renovation of the individual, in this case Samson, not only as example that renovation is possible for all, but as argument that reformation of the political world begins with the individual who must develop a proper regard for self.4 For Milton ``proper'' regard for self involves God. Abdiel exempli®es all of this. The Lady of the sonnet will also live ``Unshak'n, unseduc'd, unterri®ed'' IF she continue to join the biblical Mary who steadfastly sat at Jesus's feet and the biblical Ruth who gave herself over to the guidance of her mother-in-law Naomi. She ``Wisely hast shun'd the broad way and the green'' where reference is to Matthew vii:13, 14 and to Job viii:12±13, 16. The Job reference most importantly underscores Milton's belief: ``Whilst [the grass] is yet in his greenness, and not cut down, it withereth before any other herb. So are the paths of all that forget God.'' Like the hypocrite, he who forgets God ``is green before the sun.'' The image is the source of the frequent aphorism which Roger Ascham expresses in Toxophilus (1545) as ``the greene path waye to hell . . . onely ydlenes can neyther do wel, nor yet thinke wel.''5 The ``unshaken, 4 5

See also my discussion in ``The Higher Wisdom of The Tenure of Kings & Magistrates.'' Milton employed this edition of Toxophilus in his note in the Commonplace Book, Yale Prose, I, 502, entered around 1639±41; the sonnet is usually dated 1643.

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Samson Agonistes and Consistencies of Belief unseduced, unterri®ed'' Lady is not idle; she ``labour[s] up the hill of heav'nly Truth'' by ``zealously'' attending ``To ®ll [her] lamp with deeds of light'' (awaiting the Bridegroom, that is, Christ, and alluding to Matthew xxv:1±13) even though there are friends ``that overween/ And at [her] growing vertues fret thir spleen.'' Instead of being shaken by them or terri®ed ± and Abdiel's fellow angels in Satan's regiment come to mind, or Manoa's and the Chorus's attitudes ± she pities them their following the broad way and the green path. The Lady of A Maske resists the temptations o€ered by Comus in the central motif of the poem, a ®rst investigation of the subject that will be set forth at length in Paradise Regain'd. Comus pro€ers a drink to ease the Lady's thirst ± a rendering of the ®rst temptation of necessity in Luke; next he admonishes that the earth's riches and beauty must not be hoarded and the Lady should partake of them ± a rendering of the second temptation of wealth and glory by fraud in Luke; and ®nally he employs a form of the third temptation of violence in Luke by immobilizing her in a chair with overtures that would lead to sexual rape. Because Comus cannot immanacle her mind ``while Heav'n sees good'' though her body be forcibly controlled, she remains ``unshaken'' in her thinking and virtue, certainly ``unseduc'd,'' and stridently ``unterri®ed'' in her de®ance of her restrainer. She reacts with: I had not thought to have unlockt my lips In this unhallow'd air, but that this jugler Would think to charm my judgement, as mine eyes Obtruding false rules pranckt in reasons garb, (756±59)

and counters his fraudulent arguments with, as Comus acknowledges in an aside, ``words set o€ by som superior power.'' The last words in this rebuttal of his temptations ± indeed, signi®cantly, the last words the Lady speaks in the poem ± recall some of the language (particularly in Psalm 114) and ideas which have just been raised: Yet should I try [to convince Comus], the uncontrouled worth Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt spirits To such a ¯ame of sacred vehemence, That dumb things would be mov'd to sympathize, And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and shake, Till all thy magick structures rear'd so high, Were shatter'd into heaps o're thy false head. (793±99; my italics)

The ``superior power'' has kindled, en¯amed her so much that even ``dumb'' creatures would be moved and the brute Earth would ``shake'' and the world of evil that Comus represents would shatter like the boundary of Pharaoh's 143

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The Uncertain World of Samson Agonistes Red Sea con®ning the Israelites or like the Philistian temple pulled down by Samson. What overcomes Comus's glozing words is Virtue, which ``may be assail'd but never hurt.'' Since Virtue has been immanacled, the godhead works a miracle to free the Lady, and Sabrina rises from the Severn stream ``to help insnared chastity'' with ``chast palms moist and cold.'' The poem is a demonstration of Milton's belief for God's chosen people: ``if Vertue feeble were,/ Heav'n it self would stoop to her'' (1022±23). Abdiel has seemingly succumbed to join Satan's rebellion, although this has been by deceit and a result of military orders. The Lady of the sonnet is enjoined to continue in her path of life and not to succumb. The Lady of the masque has been enthralled but she has not succumbed. Eve and Adam have rejected God through deceit and self-will, but they repent and ®nd a future in which, with wandering steps and slow, they will take their solitary way. It is clear that for Milton the path to be and to remain one of God's chosen consists in constantly believing that everything is in his great task-master's eye and maintaining his faith that, in the words of the Lord presented by Isaiah, ``They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their o€spring with them. And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear'' (lxv:23±24). While Milton the author of Samson Agonistes believes in the God of Israel, he presents a poem for readers to ponder, Who is the true God? God or Dagon. And like the Lord in Isaiah, God answers before Samson calls, he hears all that Samson speaks, and he oversees a renovation that leads Samson to act, ``Happ'n what may,'' ``patient but undaunted,'' with ``eyes fast ®xt,'' ``as one who pray'd,'' and of his own ``accord.'' That word ``accord'' evokes the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost (Acts ii), the believers who lift up their voice to God with one accord, and say, Lord, thou art God (Acts iv:24), and those St. Paul addresses in Philippians ii:1±3, who having the same love of Christ, whose humiliation and exaltation are here recalled, are of ``one accord, of one mind'' without strife or vainglory. Against all these types of slippage or possible slippage from being one of God's true servants Milton has presented the Jesus of Paradise Regain'd. That poem's precedence of Samson Agonistes in the 1671 volume underscores Milton's consistent belief in faith and covenant and the keeping of the Law, particularly as contrasted in their revocation by the Samson that existed before the beginning of his poem, and their reassertion through a renovated Samson as the poem ends for God's ``servants'' who have now been o€ered ``new acquist/ Of true experience.''

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Works Cited McAlister, Caroline. ``Sentience as Evidence: The Reciprocity of Grace in Samson Agonistes, 57±67. Renaissance Papers 1992. [New York: Camden House], 1993. McDonald, Henry. ``A Long Day's Dying: Tragic Ambiguity in Samson Agonistes.'' Milton Studies 27 (1991): 263±83. Melbourne, Jane. ``Biblical Intertextuality in Samson Agonistes.'' Studies in English Literature 36 (1996): 111±27. Metzger, Bruce M., and Michael D. Coogan. Oxford Companion to the Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Milton, John. An Apology against a Pamphlet call'd A Modest Confutation. London, 1642. ÐÐÐÐ. Areopagitica. London, 1644. ÐÐÐÐ. The Complete Poetry of John Milton, ed. John T. Shawcross. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1970. ÐÐÐÐ. Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953±82. Eight volumes. ÐÐÐÐ. De doctrina christiana. London, 1835. See Yale Prose, VI. ÐÐÐÐ. The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. London, 1643. Edition 2, London, 1644. ÐÐÐÐ. The History of Britain. London, 1670. ÐÐÐÐ. John Milton's Complete Poetical Works Reproduced in Photographic Facsimile, ed. Harris F. Fletcher. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1948. Volume IV. ÐÐÐÐ. Of True Religion, Hñresie, Schism, Toleration. London, 1673. ÐÐÐÐ. Paradise Regain'd . . . Samson Agonistes: and Poems upon Several Occasions, ed. Thomas Newton. London, 1752. Two volumes. ÐÐÐÐ. Paradise Regain'd . . . To which is Added Samson Agonistes. London, 1671. Edition 2, London, 1680. ÐÐÐÐ. Pro populo Anglicano defensio. London, 1651. ÐÐÐÐ. The Readie & Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth. London, 1660. ÐÐÐÐ. The Reason of Church-Government. London, 1641. ÐÐÐÐ. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. London, 1649. ÐÐÐÐ. Tetrachordon. London, 1645. ÐÐÐÐ. A Treatise of Civil Power. London, 1659. ÐÐÐÐ. [Trinity Ms.] John Milton Poems. Menston: Scolar Press, 1970. ÐÐÐÐ. The Works of John Milton in Verse and Prose, ed. John Mitford. London, 1851. Six volumes. Mitchell, Charles. ``Dalila's Return: The Importance of Pardon.'' College English 26 (1965): 614±20. Moore, Dinty. Letter. New York Times, Sunday Magazine, 6 December 1992. See also response, 27 December 1992. Morrow, Laurie P. ``The `Meet and Happy Conversation': Dalila's Role in Samson Agonistes.'' Milton Quarterly 17 (1983): 38±42. Moses, Judith A. ``Samson Agonistes: Love, Authority, and Guilt.'' American Imago 44 (1987): 331±45. Mustazza, Leonard. ``The Verbal Plot of Samson Agonistes.'' Milton Studies 23 (1987): 241±58. Neumann, Erich: The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, trans. Ralph Manheim. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974. Oras, Ants. ``Milton's Blank Verse and the Chronology of his Major Poems,'' 128±97.

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Works Cited SAMLA, Studies in Milton, ed. J. Max Patrick. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1953. Parker, William Riley. ``The Date of Samson Agonistes.'' Philological Quarterly 28 (1949): 145±66. ÐÐÐÐ. ``The Greek Spirit in Milton's Samson Agonistes.'' Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association 20 (1934): 21±44. Parker, William Riley. Milton: A Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968. Two volumes. ÐÐÐÐ. Milton's Debt to Greek Tragedy in Samson Agonistes. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1937. ÐÐÐÐ. ``Notes on the Text of Samson Agonistes,'' 80±90. Milton Studies in Honor of Harris Francis Fletcher. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961. Radzinowicz, Mary Ann. ``The Distinctive Tragedy of Samson Agonistes,'' Milton Studies 17 (1983): 249±80. ÐÐÐÐ. Toward Samson Agonistes: The Growth of Milton's Mind. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978. Rajan, Balachandra. ``To which is Added Samson Agonistes,'' 82±110. The Prison and the Pinnacle, ed. Balachandra Rajan. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973. Revard, Stella P. ``Dalila as Euripidean Heroine.'' Papers on Literature and Language 23 (1987): 291±302. ÐÐÐÐ. ``Milton's Dalila and Eve: Filling in the Spaces of Biblical Text,'' 271±81. Arenas of Con¯ict: Milton and the Unfettered Mind, ed. Kristin Pruitt McColgan and Charles W. Durham. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1997. Rumrich, John P. Milton Unbound: Controversy and Reinterpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Rushdy, Ashraf H. A. ``According to Samson's Command: Some Contexts of Milton's Tragedy.'' Milton Quarterly 26 (1992): 69±80. ÐÐÐÐ. The Empty Garden: The Subject of Late Milton. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992. Saint-EÂvremond, Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis, Seigneur de. Of Ancient and Modern Tragedy. London, 1672. Saumaise, Claude [Salmasius]. Ad Ioannem Miltonum responsio, opus posthumum, Claudii Salmasii. Divione, 1660. ÐÐÐÐ. Defensio regia, pro Charles I . London, 1649. Sellin, Paul. ``Sources of Milton's Catharsis: A Reconsideration,'' 104±22. Milton Studies in Honor of Harris Francis Fletcher. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961. Sensabaugh, George: That Grand Whig, Milton. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1952. Shawcross, John T. ``The Chronology of Milton's Major Poems.'' PMLA 76 (1961): 345±58. ÐÐÐÐ. ``The Genres of Paradise Regain'd and Samson Agonistes,'' 225±48. Composite Orders: The Genres of Milton's Last Poems, ed. Richard S. Ide and Joseph A. Wittreich; Milton Studies 17 (1983). ÐÐÐÐ. ``The Higher Wisdom of The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,'' 142±59. Achievements of the Left Hand: Essays on the Prose of John Milton, ed. Michael Lieb and John T. Shawcross. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974. ÐÐÐÐ. Intentionality and the New Traditionalism: Some Liminal Means to Literary Revisionism. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991.

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Works Cited ÐÐÐÐ. ``Irony as Tragic E€ect: Samson Agonistes and the Tragedy of Hope,'' 289± 306. Calm of Mind, ed. Joseph A. Wittreich. Cleveland, OH: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1971. ÐÐÐÐ. John Milton: The Self and the World. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993. ÐÐÐÐ. ``Milton's Sonnet 19: Its Date of Authorship and its Interpretation.'' Notes & Queries, N.S. 4 (1957): 442±46. ÐÐÐÐ. ``Misreading Milton,'' 181±203. The Miltonic Samson, ed. Albert C. Labriola and Michael Lieb; Milton Studies 33 (1997). ÐÐÐÐ. Paradise Regain'd: ``Worthy t'Have not Remain'd so Long Unsung.'' Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1988. ÐÐÐÐ. ``The Prosody of Milton's Translation of Horace's Fifth Ode.'' Tennessee Studies in Literature 13 (1968): 81±89. ÐÐÐÐ. ``Some Literary Uses of Numerology.'' Hartford Studies in Literature 1 (1969): 25±31. ÐÐÐÐ. ``Tragicomedy as Genre, Past and Present,'' 13±32. Renaissance Tragicomedy: Explorations in Genre and Politics, ed. Nancy Klein Maguire. New York: AMS Press, 1987. ÐÐÐÐ. With Mortal Voice: The Creation of Paradise Lost. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982. Sirluck, Ernest, ed. Areopagitica. Yale Prose, II. Skulsky, Harold. Justice in the Dock: Milton's Experimental Tragedy. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995. Slights, Camille W. ``A Hero of Conscience: Samson Agonistes and Casuistry.'' PMLA 90 (1975): 395±413. Smith, Nigel. Literature and Revolution in England, 1640±1660. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994. Sprott, Samuel Ernest. Milton's Art of Prosody. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953. Stachniewski, John. The Persecutory Imagination: English Puritanism and the Literature of Religious Despair. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Stein, Arnold. Heroic Knowledge: An Interpretation of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1965. Stollman, Samuel S. ``Samson as Dragon and a Scriptural Tradition.'' ELN 7 (1970): 186±89. Strong, James. Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. New York; Nashville: Abingdon± Cokesbury Press, [1890] 1953. Tayler, Edward W. ``Milton's Firedrake.'' Milton Quarterly 6 (1972): 7±10. ÐÐÐÐ. ``Milton's Samson: The Form of Christian Tragedy.'' English Literary Renaissance 3 (1973): 306±21. Turner, James Grantham. One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Ulreich, John C., Jr. `` `Beyond the Fifth Act': Samson Agonistes as Prophecy.'' Milton Studies 17 (1983): 281±318. ÐÐÐÐ. `` `Incident to All our Sex': The Tragedy of Dalila,'' 185±210. Milton and the Idea of Woman, ed. Julia Walker. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. ÐÐÐÐ. ``Samson's `Fiery Virtue': The Typological Problem in Samson Agonistes.'' Cithara 30 (1991): 26±33.

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Works Cited Vaughan, Edward. A Plaine and Perfect Method for the Easie Understanding of the Whole Bible. London, 1617. von Maltzahn, Nicholas. ``The First Reception of Paradise Lost (1667).'' Review of English Studies 47 (1996): 479±99. ÐÐÐÐ. ``The Whig Milton, 1667±1700.'' Milton and Republicanism, ed. David Armitage, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Wallace, Meta Schon. ``The Christian Pattern of Temptation, Trial, and Grace in Four Renaissance Works: Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, The Faerie Queene, Book One, and Macbeth.'' Dissertation Abstracts 39 (1978): 3607A-08A. Walsh, William. A Dialogue Concerning Women, Being a Defence of the Sex, Written to Eugenia. London, 1691. Reprinted, The Works of William Walsh, Esq; In Prose and Verse. Ex Pede Herculem. London, 1736. Webbe, William. A Discourse of English Poetry. London, 1586. Weber, Burton J. ``The Worldly End of Samson.'' Milton Studies 26 (1990): 289±309. Weinkauf, Mary. ``Dalila: The Worst of All Possible Wives.'' Studies in English Literature 13 (1973): 135±47. Welcher, Robert. ``Samson Agonistes and the Problem of History.'' Renaissance and Modern Studies 26 (1982): 108±33. Wilding, Michael. Social Visions. Sydney: Sydney Studies, 1993. Wittreich, Joseph. Interpreting Samson Agonistes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. ÐÐÐÐ. `` `Strange Text!': Paradise Regain'd . . . To which is Added Samson Agonistes,'' 164±94. Poems in Their Place: The Intertextuality and Order of Poetic Collections, ed. Neil Fraistat. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. ÐÐÐÐ. `` `Under the Seal of Silence': Repressions, Receptions, and the Politics of Paradise Lost,'' 293±323. Soundings of Things Done: Essays in Early Modern Literature in Honor of S. K. Heninger Jr., ed. Peter E. Medine and Joseph Wittreich. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997. ÐÐÐÐ. Visionary Poetics: Milton's Tradition and his Legacy. San Marino, CA: Henry E. Huntington Library, 1979. Wood, Derek N. C. ``Catharsis and `Passion Spent': Samson Agonistes and Some Problems with Aristotle.'' Milton Quarterly 26 (1992): 1±9. ÐÐÐÐ. `` `Exil'd from Light': The Darkened Moral Consciousness of Milton's Hero of Faith.'' University of Toronto Quarterly 58 (1988±89): 244±62. Woodhouse, A. S. P. ``Samson Agonistes and Milton's Experience.'' Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Third Series, 43 (Section 2) (1949): 157±75. Woods, Susanne. ``How Free Are Milton's Women?'' 15±31. Milton and the Idea of Woman, ed. Julia Walker. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. New York: Harcourt, 1929. Worden, Blair. ``Milton, Samson Agonistes, and the Restoration,'' 111±36. Culture and Society in the Stuart Restoration: Literature, Drama, History, ed. Gerald MacLean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Yale Prose. See John Milton, Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al.

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INDEX Aaron, 56 Abdiel, 99, 140±43 Abraham, 9, 74n15, 119, 140 Act of Uniformity, 90n13 Adam, 5 and n5, 6 n6, 7, 9 n11, 32±33, 46, 59, 65±66, 71, 72n13, 81±82, 83n1, 84, 89, 97, 113, 118n1, 124, 129, 142, 144 Aeneas, 41 Aeschylus, 36±38 ``Agamemnon,'' 38 ``Eumenides,'' 103 ``Prometheus Bound,'' 36±37 age, Samson's and Dalila's, 3±4 Annesley, Arthur, 96 appearance, Dalila's, 78±79 and nn20±21 Aristotle, 43 and n10, 137 Arrowsmith, William, 5 n4 Ascham, Roger, 142 and n5 Astaroth, 131 Baal-zebub, 131 BDB (Brown, Driver, and Briggs), 8±9 n11 Becon, Thomas, 15 Belial, 10 Belsey, Catherine, 35n1, 87, 107 Bennett, Joan S., 81 Bible, vii, 7 n8, 8 n11, 9 n11, 12, 30±31, 48n1, 65, 71, 79, 81, 103n1, 111, 125, 139, 140n3 Acts, 144 Amos, 39±40, 108 1 Corinthians, 9n11, 125n4, 132n7 Ecclesiastes, 61 Ephesians, 9n11 Exodus, 111n9, 134, 138 Genesis, 66, 71 and n10, 76, 123, 137, 140 Isaiah, 144 Job, 137, 142 Joshua, 2, 138±39 Judges, 2±3, 4 and n2, 8n11, 10, 31,

47n15, 48n1, 59, 76, 103n1, 111±13, 115±16, 122, 128, 137 Luke, 4 and n3, 143 Mark, 4n3 Matthew, 4n3, 53n18, 142 Numbers, 8n11, 31, 59 1 Peter, 9n11 2 Peter, 137 Philippians, 135, 144 Proverbs, 68±69, 78n20 Psalms, 111n9, 121, 137n12, 138, 140n2 Revelation, 38, 40, 78n20, 108, 132n7 1 Samuel, 2, 10 biblical narrative, 1±4, 7n9, 10 biographical readings, 92±101, 104 Birkenhead, Sir John, 50±51 blindness, 98±99, 118±20, 135 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 39, 97 Braggadocio, 130 Bryant, Joseph A., Jr., 106±107n3 Bunyan, John, 136 Burke, Kenneth, 38±39, 41 Buonmattei, Benedetto, 86 Byron, Lord, 44 Calvin, John, 126 catharsis, 103±104, 137 Catholicism, 90n13, 91, 94±95 Charles I, 23, 87, 90n14, 92, 94 and n7, 95±96, 106 Charles II, 94n7, 95 and n11 Chaucer, Geo€rey, 74, 97 Chorus, 3, 6, 7, 14±15, 18 and n2, 21, 26± 27, 30, 35±37, 39±40, 42±43, 45, 53, 55, 56 and n21, 68, 79, 87, 91, 100, 103, 105±107, 110±11n9, 111 and n10, 112, 114±16, 118±19, 121±22, 128±29, 131±36, 137 and n13, 139, 143 Christ (and Christ ®gure), vii, 14±15, 24, 41, 48 and n1, 50, 51 and n14, 52, 56n21, 61±63, 83n1, 94, 104, 110n9, 132n7, 136, 143±44

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Index Cinquemani, A. M., 86 Circe, 83n1, 126 circumcision, 74n15, 140±41 Civil Wars, 90n14, 94, 100 Clarendon, Sir Edward Hyde, Earl of, 90n13 Clarke, John, 136 Coiro, Anne Baynes, 15, 21n6 companion poems, 23, 24 and n12, 52, 61, 141, 144 Comus, 126, 143±44 Conrad, Joseph, 47n16 Conventicles Act, 90n13 Corns, Thomas, 54n20, 85n4 covenant, 74n15, 138 and n1, 139±41, 144 Cromwell, Oliver, 87, 90n13, 92, 100 Cromwell, Richard, 100 Dagon, 3, 5, 9±10, 42, 54, 60, 85, 91, 95± 96, 113, 118±19, 124, 130, 132, 134, 144 Daiches, David, 40n5 Dalila, vii±ix, 3, 4 and n3, 8, 10, 11 and nn13±14, 12±13, 15±16, 30±32, 35, 36n1, 37, 39, 46, 47 and n16, 54, 57 and n24, 59n26, 60, 65±80, 81±86, 88n9, 92±93, 97 and n14, 99, 101, 103, 108±10, 114, 117, 118 and n1, 122±29, 141 Damico, Helen, 63 Dan (and Danites), 2±3; 38±39, 41±42, 53±54, 56n21, 59, 62, 64, 79, 86, 88 and n10, 90±91, 95, 102, 105, 107, 111, 115, 128±29, 135±37, 140 Danielson, Dennis, 60n27, 136 dating, 22±27, 31±34 David, 56, 96 death (and ``suicide''), Samson's, 62±63, 87, 109±10, 121, 133±35, 142 deism, 106±107 Delilah, 3, 4 and n2, 6, 7 n9, 8 and n11, 10, 12, 31, 33, 35, 36n1, 37, 51n14, 54, 60, 66±71, 73±74, 78n19, 81±82, 83n1, 90n14, 113, 115, 117 development, 30±31 Di Salvo, Jackie, 48 and n2, 61, 72, 118 Digby, George, Earl of Bristol, 90n13 Diodati, Charles, 115 divorce, 32±34, 70±71, 88n9, 99 Dobranski, Stephen, 18n2 Doherty, M. J., 98, 136

Donne, John, 84 dramatic characters, 35±36 dramatic relationships, 58 Driscoll, James P., 33±34, 62, 72 and n12, 74, 118 Dryden, John, 31±32 Du Moulin, Peter, 92, 96 eagle, Samson as, 110±11 and n9, 135±36 Eikon Basilike, 15, 87 Ellwood, Thomas, 5, 23±24, 38 Erskine-Hill, Howard, 50, 92, 96, 98±100 Euripides, 36 and n2, 37±38, 76n18 ``Bacchñ, The,'' 36n2 ``Herakles,'' 36 ``Hippolytus,'' 36n2 ``Medea,'' 36n2 ``Trojan Women, The,'' 36, 38, 57 and n24 Eve, 1, 5 and n5, 6 n6, 7, 9 n11, 32±34, 46, 59, 65, 72n13, 81±82, 83 and n1, 84, 97n14, 113, 118n1, 124, 144 evening dragon, 110±11 and n9, 135 and n8, 136 Ezekiel, 104 Fairfax, Thomas, 26 Fallon, Robert T., 53n18, 95n10 Fink, Zera S., 106 Fish, Stanley E., 63±64 Five Mile Act, 90n13 Flannagan, Roy C., 125, 129n5 Fletcher, Harris F., 17, 20 Fogle, French, 104n2 Foxe, John, 56n21 Freeman, James A., 95n10 French, J. Milton, 19 Frost, Robert, 44 Gay, David, 57, 68, 98 gender considerations, 65±67, 69±70, 72± 73, 81±83, 104n3, 109, 115, 117±18, 123, 125±26, 128±29 genre, 31±32, 35±47 Gideon, 2, 61, 104 Gilbert, Allan H., 22 Gilbert, Sandra, 65n1 Goekjian, Gregory, 63 Good Old Cause, 48±50, 54, 85, 89, 100± 101 Gordon, James, Lord Aboyne, 97n13 Graves, Robert, 98

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Index Grose, Christopher, 62 Guibbory, Achsah, 86, 107n4, 109 Guillory, John, 93±94 Gunpowder Plot, 94

Jung, Carl, 5

hair, 3, 8±9 and n11, 113±14, 120±21, 126, 130, 133±34 Hall, Joseph, 93 and n5 Hanford, James Holly, 115 Harapha, 5, 8, 11nn13±14, 13±14, 21, 30± 31, 35, 37±38, 42, 46±47, 53n18, 60, 68, 75 and n17, 92, 96, 101, 103, 114, 117, 129±32, 141 Haskin, Dayton, 58, 60 Hayne, Thomas, 48n1 Heber the Kenite, 128 Heinsius, Daniel, 43n10 Heller, Ricki, 67 Herakles (Hercules), 14, 51 heroism (and hero), 4, 5 and n4, 24 and n12, 52, 95, 102±105, 108, 114, 130 Hill, Christopher, 25n14, 48, 92 and n2 historical moments, 94±95, 95±96n11, 99±101 Holy Spirit, The, 144 Homer, 126 hope, 104±108, 111, 134±35 Hooker, Richard, 49±50, 55 Hosea, 108 Howard, Sir Robert, 31 Hull, Keith N., 21 Ide, Richard, 36n2 Interregnum, 54, 94, 111, 116 irony, 9±10, 94, 96, 102±11, 113, 115, 117, 121 Isaac, 140 Israelites, 14, 88, 120, 128, 138±40, 144 Jacob (Israel), 140 Jacobus, Lee, 97 Jael, 68, 128 Je€reys, George, 50 Jephthah, 2 Jesus, 4 n3, 5, 6 and n6, 7, 10±12, 47, 48, 52, 55, 64, 74n15, 89, 98±99, 104, 136, 141, 144 Job, 104 Johnson, Samuel, 37, 41 Jonathan, 10±11 Jortin, John, 95±96n11 Judith, 68

Kelley, Mark, 36n2 Kerrigan, William, 97n14, 136n10, 138n1 Kessner, Carole, 36 Kezar, Dennis, 15, 87 Kirkconnell, Watson, 51n14 Knoppers, Laura Lunger, 59, 54, 56n21, 78n20, 94 and n8, 99±100 Krouse, F. Michael, 48n1, 71±72 Lady, The (in ``A Mask''), 126, 132, 143± 44 Lady, The (in Sonnet 9), 142±44 Law, The (Mosaic), 111n10, 125, 141±42 Lewalski, Barbara K., 25n14, 67, 107n4, 108n7 Lieb, Michael, 2 n1, 11 and nn13±14, 50n8, 53n18, 75n17, 92n1 Lilith, 66 Lochman, Daniel, 63 Loewenstein, David, 89 Low, Anthony, 45±46, 108 Lydgate, John, 39, 97 MacCallum, Hugh, 62, 111n10 MacDonnell, Alexander, 97n13 Machiavelli, NiccoloÁ, 86 Macock, John, 17, 19 Mammon, 116 Manoa, 3±4, 6±7, 9±10, 11n13, 15±16, 18 and n2, 26, 30, 35, 37, 42±43, 46±47, 48n1, 55, 56 and n21, 60, 71, 75, 79n21, 87, 92 and n2, 103, 105±106, 108±10, 116±20, 126, 128, 133±35, 137 and n13, 141, 143 marriage, 11±12, 32±34, 70±72, 72±73n13, 73±74, 76±78, 82, 88n9, 99, 117±18, 122, 126, 128 Marshall, William, 15 martyrdom, 55±57 Martz, Louis L., 57n24, 80, 137n13 Marvell, Andrew, 15 Marx, Karl, 94 McAlister, Caroline, 85, 91 McDonald, Henry, 53, 69 Melbourne, Jane, 62 Messenger, 35, 42, 53±54, 60, 87, 105, 133, 135±36 metonym, 59 and n26, 63, 68, 79±80, 86± 87 Millennium, 106±107

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Index Miller, Arthur, 109 Milton, Elizabeth Minshull, 33 Milton, Katherine Woodcock, 33 Milton, John ``Ad Ioannem Rousium,'' 22, 24 ``Ad Patrem,'' 24 Apology for Smectymnuus, 55, 93 and n5 Areopagitica, 6, 25±26, 75, 77, 78n19, 88, 90 and n14, 94n7, 101, 104, 121, 128 De doctrina christiana, 8 and n10, 56, 60±61, 64, 88 and n10, 104n2 divorce tracts, 32±33, 71, 84n2, 115 Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, The, 32, 76, 125, 129n5 ``Fifth Ode of Horace,'' 22 History of Britain, The, 22 letters, 115, 138 ``Lycidas,'' 18n1, 21 ``Mask, A'' (``Comus''), 18n1, 21, 29, 103, 126, 132, 141, 143 ``Naturam non pati senium,'' 106 Of True Religion, 40, 90, 94 ``On the Morning of Christs Nativity,'' 18n2 Paradise Lost, ix, 1, 4±5, 6n6, 7n8, 8± 9n11, 10, 15, 37±40, 52, 64, 65 and n1, 66, 75n17, 83n1, 84, 88±89, 94, 95n11, 110, 114, 116, 121, 128, 130, 136n9, 140 and n2, 141 Paradise Regain'd, vii, ix, 4n3, 5, 7, 10, 11 and n13, 12±13, 17, 23±24, 29, 37±38, 47, 52, 54, 74n15, 88, 104, 107, 141, 143±44 ``Paraphrase on Psalm 114, A,'' 114, 119, 138±39, 143 Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio, 92±93, 96 Psalms i±viii, 29 Psalms lxxx±lxxxviii, 22, 26±27, 29n18 Ready and Easy Way, The, 85n4, 94n7 Reason of Church-Government, The, 16, 24, 55, 64 Sonnet 7, 88n9, 108, 138 Sonnet 9, 141±42 Sonnet 12, 24, 97n13 Sonnet 14, 132n7 Sonnet 15, 23, 26, 53n18, 95, 100 Sonnet 16, 53n18, 100 Sonnet 17, 53n18, 100 Sonnet 18, 75n7, 107, 132n7 Sonnet 19, 98

Sonnets 12±15, 29 Sonnets 16±23, 29 Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, The, 23±24, 48±49, 53, 54 and n18, 75 and n17, 90, 94n7, 95, 107, 116 Tetrachordon, 32, 99, 118n1, 125 Treatise of Civil Power, A, 94n7 Trinity MS, 21, 30±31, 39, 132n7, 138 ``Upon the Circumcision,'' 140 Milton, Mary Powell, 33, 51n14, 92, 97 and n14, 98±99, 101 Milton, Sarah, 97n14 Mirror for Magistrates, The, 39 misogyny, 32±33, 51n14, 65±80, 83, 84 and n1, 97±98, 114, 123 Mitford, John, 20 mode, 47 ``Modest Confuter,'' 55 Modest Confutation, A, 93 monument, 109±10, 128, 137 Moore, Dinty, 70n9 Morice, William, 96 Morrow, Laurie P., 67 Moses, 56, 108, 111, 134 Moses, Judith, 62 Mother, Great, 66 mother, Samson's, 9 n12, 136n10 Mother, Terrible, 66, 83 and n1 Nazarite, 7, 8, 8±9 n11, 14, 58±59, 109, 113, 120, 130±33 Neumann, Erich, 83n1 Newton, Thomas, 20, 95±96n11 Noah, 137 Odyssey, 41, 126 Oedipus, 103 Olson, Dennis T., 7 n9 Oras, Ants, 28±29 oratorical exercises, 124 Orestes, 103 orthography, 27, 30±32 Othniel, 2±3 Paraeus, David, 38, 40 Parker, William Riley, 18±19, 22, 36, 104n2, 108, 138 Parliamentarians, 26±27, 92, 97, 100, 129 Paul, Saint, 9 n11, 33, 88n9, 97, 99, 125, 129, 144 Peck, Francis, 95±96n11 Perkins, William, 15

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Index Pharoah, 111, 138±39, 143 Philistines, 2±4, 10, 23±24, 26, 31, 37±38, 42, 45, 56n21, 61, 63, 70, 79, 86, 88, 90, 92, 95, 100, 102±103, 105, 107, 110, 110±11n9, 111±12, 114, 116±17, 119±20, 124, 126±29, 131, 133±35, 137, 140, 142, 144 phoenix, 135, 136 and n10, 137 political relationships, 1±2, 24±27, 48±50, 64, 76, 78, 84±91, 92±96, 107 and n4, 111, 116 preliminary materials, 30±32 prohibition, 7, 113 prolepsis, 113, 119 prosody, 20±22, 27±30 psychology, Samson's, 71±72, 73 and n14, 85, 114, 121, 126±27 Public Ocer, 4, 6, 14, 30, 35, 37±38, 60, 103, 112, 119, 131±32 Radzinowicz, Mary Ann, 12, 38, 43, 45n13, 52, 82, 87±88, 92 Ranelagh, Lady, 96 regeneration: see renovation renovation, 5, 8, 40±43, 57, 60±61, 64, 103 and n1, 104 and n2, 118, 137n13 repentance, 5 and n5 Revard, Stella, 36n2, 76n18, 81 rhyme, 20±22, 122 riddling, 10, 57±59, 62 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 40 Rumrich, John P., 136n10 Rushdy, Ashraf H. A., 61±62, 98 Sabrina, 144 sainthood, 132 and n7 Samson Monolith, 51 Satan, ix, 4 n3, 5, 6±7, 46±47, 48n2, 52, 110, 136n9, 138, 140±41 Saul, 10 Saumaise, Claude (Salmasius), 92±93, 96 and n12, 97, 101 Selden, John, 125 Sellin, Paul, 43n10 sexual import, 118n1, 129 and n5 Shakespeare, William, 35 ``Hamlet,'' 44, 105 ``King Lear,'' 52 ``Othello,'' 35 ``Troilus and Cressida,'' 35 Shawcross, John T., 5 n4, 99n18

ship as metaphor, 78±79, 114±15, 122, 128±29 Sirluck, Ernest, 78n19 Sisera, 128 Skulsky, Harold, 46n15 Slights, Camille, 62±63 Smith, Nigel, 86n8 snake imagery, 123, 125±26, 128 (see also evening dragon) Son, The, 24, 110, 136n9 Sophocles, 36±37 ``Antigone,'' 37 ``Oedipus at Colonus,'' 36±38 ``Oedipus Rex,'' 37, 103 Spenser, Edmund, 130 Sprott, Samuel Ernest, 22n8 Stachniewski, John, 64 Stein, Arnold, 52 Stollman, Samuel S., 135n8 structure, 44, 57±58, 60; Greek dramatic, 6, 36±38, 114€. Swetnam, Joseph, 97 Tayler, Edward W., 41, 135n8 temptation motif, 4±15, 75, 77±78, 143 text, 17±20, 30±31 Thomason, Catharine, 132n7 tragedy, 38±44, 102±105, 107 tragedy, Christian, 40±41 Turner, James Grantham, 84n2 Ulreich, John C., Jr., 38±40, 56n22, 57, 62, 70, 73n14, 74±75, 108 Uriel, 83 uxoriousness, 66, 71 Vaughan, Edward, 49n7 violence (and war), 75 and n17, 95±97, 123, 127, 130±31, 134±35 vocation, 64, 88n10 von Maltzahn, Nicholas, 19, 89, 95 Wallace, Meta Schon, 6 n7 Walsh, William, 67±68 Weber, Burton J., 109n8 Welcher, Robert, 86n6 Whore of Bablyon, 78n20 Wilding, Michael, 47n16 Wittreich, Joseph, 49, 52±53, 56, 77, 78n19, 95 and n11, 104 Woman of Timnah, 2, 8, 10, 12, 31, 69, 82±83, 115, 117, 128

157

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Index Wood, Derek N. C., 43n10, 50, 111n10 Woodhouse, A. S. P., 22 Woods, Susanne, 69, 82

Woolf, Virginia, 65, 85 Worden, Blair, 85 and n3, 96 Wright, Thomas, 15

158