I

The story of Samson was, as has been before stated (introductory biography, p. xxxi.), one of those to which Milton gave attention after his return from Italy, while he was in search of a subject for a great epic or drama. At that time, apparently, he considered it little, since the jottings are unaccompanied by any hints as to treatment. He did, however, look at five phases of Samson's history, as is indicated by the note: "Samson Pursophorus, or Hybristes, or Samson Marrying, or Ramath-Lechi, Judges xv., Dagonalia, Judges xvi." Samson Pursophorus, or the Bearer of the Firebrand, would have dealt with the hero's exploit of firing the corn; Samson Hybristes, or the Violent, with his bearing away of the gates of Gaza, or some similar action of disdain for his Philistine foes; Samson Marrying, with his earlier life, and his marriage with the woman of Timnath; Ramath-Lechi, with his slaughter of the Philistines at Lehi; Dagonalia, with his destruction of the temple and his death. When, about 1667, Milton's mind again recurred to this subject, he saw a double reason for choosing the last of these episodes. Samson's story, continued to its last stage, offered a striking parallelism with his own; and besides this personal reason for the selection, there was the obvious artistic one, that the last subject held in solution the other four. Besides being in itself a unified action, with a magnificent climax, and hence naturally adapted to dramatic treatment, it also carried along with it a great fund of previous story, to be drawn upon at the dramatist's will for the purpose of enriching the rather meagre

action with semi-narrative episodes. The exact nature of the drama which Milton proposed to write made this circumstance one of vital importance.

Even in the days of Comus, even when praising Jonson's learned sock and Shakespeare's wild wood-notes, Milton seems never to have had a real sympathy for the English stage. Since that time, the stage bad degenerated rapidly, until the closing of the theatres in 1642 by decree of the Long Parliament. When they reopened at the Restoration it was to produce a species of cynical comedy even more hateful to the Puritan sense than the morbid tragedies of Ford upon which they had closed. Never in sympathy with the type of drama to which he found the stage pledged, Milton was now removed by all conceivable motives from the desire to produce an acting play. He was left free, therefore, from the restrictions of stage-craft; and he took advantage of that freedom to give his work a kind of interest inadmissible except in the closet-drama, but often very effective there. To the purely dramatic episode of Samson's death he added, by way of reminiscence on Samson's part or on the part of the Chorus, the epic material which lay in Samson's life up to the time of his falling prisoner to the Philistines. Almost every episode of that life, from his birth onward, is touched upon; and the immediate action goes on against a background of past events which add incalculably to its dignity and pathos. The meagreness of its action has been frequently objected to in Samson Agonistes; the objection leaves out of account the peculiar type of drama which it represents. We have said that Paradise Regained is a kind of disguised

drama, a dramatic epic; it is equally true that Samson Agonistes holds in solution a large amount of narrative not directly connected with the development, but serving to light up the hero's character, that it

is, in other words, a kind of epical drama. The mighty central figure is made to loom before our imagination not only by the pure dramatist's device of appropriate action, but by the narrative poet's one might almost say the novelist's- devices of cumulative incident, illustration, and comment.

So much for Milton's selection of the closet over the stage drama. His selection of the classic form over the romantic was inevitable. In the first place, the tragedies of Greece and Rome did not lie under the stigma of disgrace with which Puritanism had marked the modern play; at least it was possible for Milton to shed over the ancient forms of tragedy the hallowing association of such names as Plutarch, St. Paul, and Gregory Nazianzen, though perhaps the elaborateness of his apology proves that he did not consider himself, even when following in the footsteps of Sophocles, safe from the attacks of zealous brethren. His original bias toward the classic form, shown in the drafts of plays which he made in 1640-41, had naturally strengthened with age. The turbulence and vividness of romantic drama could only be distasteful to the blind, defeated man of sixty; but into the suppression, the low-keyed passion, of ancient tragedy, he could throw the daily accents of his own heart. Goethe, reading Samson Agonistes in his old age, could find no words adequate to praise it. It is, indeed, as Dr. Garnett observes, an old man's play. The grimness, the grey imminence of Fate, which lies upon ancient tragedy even in its lighter moods, is here reënforced by the mood of a mind fallen upon evil days, when the pitcher is about to be broken at the fountain.

With regard to the famous "three uni

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ties" of Aristotelian criticism, Milton allows himself no liberties; so far, at least, as two of them are concerned, there can be no question. "Unity of time" prescribes that the events of a play should cover a space of not more than twenty-four hours; the action of Samson Agonistes begins at sunrise, and ends about noon, covering, therefore, six or eight hours at the most. "Unity of place" is as strictly observed, since the whole action passes in front of the prison at Gaza. "Unity of action " prescribes that the action shall be "complete and single” (πρᾶξις μία τε καὶ ὅλη). This of course excludes at once the underplot of the Elizabethans, an accessory which Milton unequivocally condemns as "the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, or introducing trivial and vulgar persons; which by all judicious hath been accounted absurd, and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people." It does not exclude episodical material, provided that such material is organically connected with the development of the climax, toward which classical tragedy was expected to move unswervingly from the beginning. In this particular, Samson Agonistes has not escaped criticism; consideration of the points involved will be taken up in the analysis of the play below.

The chorus of Samson is structurally different from the choruses of classical tragedy. Milton describes it as "monostrophic or, rather, apolelymenon, without regard had to strophe, antistrophe, and epode, - which were a kind of stanzas framed only for the music, then used with the Chorus that sung; not essential to the poem, and therefore not material." By discarding the division into balanced strophe and antistrophe, and substituting instead a form of verse entirely unhampered even by rhyme or by fixed line-length, Milton has abandoned the letter in order to follow the spirit of the classic chorus; for the freedom of the form allows the Chorus to con

nect itself very intimately with the shifting mood of the protagonist, to develop his thought or reflect passingly upon his state, without forfeiting, even in the shortest passages, the lyric element. It is worthy of note that Milton follows Sophocles rather than his favorite Euripides in making the Chorus cling closely to the thought and emotion of the play itself, instead of allowing it to wander away into philosophic generalizations only remotely suggested by the action in hand. Occasionally, to be sure, it does so escape, and these rare breakings-away have the effect of wonderfully calming and chastening the crude passion of the piece, throwing the particular tragedy of the moment back into an ideal remoteness where its meaning can be seen pure, untroubled by passing emotion. It will be noticed, however, that these passages occur chiefly after Samson has left the stage, while, according to the classical precedent, the climax is taking place at a distance, or after news of the hero's death has been brought. The effect aimed at is obviously that of calming the spectator, that the play may close in an atmosphere not only purged by pity and terror, but also calmed and sweetened by abstract meditation. The use of the Messenger to announce the catastrophe is of course an indispensable part of the classic apparatus; it is in the passage devoted to him that Milton has caught, perhaps more completely than anywhere else, the very form and pressure of Sophoclean dialogue. Division into acts and scenes Milton omits, as "referring chiefly to the stage, for which this work never was intended;" but the fact that he adds, "It suffices if the whole drama be found not produced beyond the fifth act" shows that he did not neglect the requirements of such division. A brief analysis will make the act-and-scene structure of the drama clear, and will throw light also on the question of its unity of action.

The opening speech of Samson, as he is

"O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse, Without all hope of day!"

His helplessness under indignity is emphasized by the fact that he mistakes the approaching Chorus for a rabble of his enemies, come to stare at and insult him; and the chanting of the Chorus, where pity for his present state is mingled with celebration of his youthful deeds of pride and might, deepens the tragic force of the picture. Samson's second speech introduces the spiritual side of his misery, remorse for his sin of weakness. The rest of Act I. is taken up with the past history of the hero. The elements of his character which it impresses upon us are his wilfulness and amorous weakness; his exultant pride of strength; and his sense of consecration to the task of delivering Israel. This act ends with Manoa's entrance at line 331.

The sight of his son's wretchedness wrings from Manoa, as he enters, a horrified exclamation, "O miserable change!" which intensifies the effect of pity already produced. The old man's querulous questioning of God's dealings with His anointed. champion brings out a new side of Samson's character; for we see that he accepts his suffering nobly, as a just punishment for sin. It is a master-stroke of artistic harmony that accomplishes this without disturbing for a moment the atmosphere of sullen gloom surrounding him. At the same time, occasion is given for a detailed account of his weakness in giving up his secret to Dalila. Upon this ensues the first of those "provocative" elements, calculated to arouse Samson little by little to the