Samson Agonistes

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An Etching of Samson, from an 1882 German Bible

Samson Agonistes (Greek: "Samson the agonist") is a tragic closet drama by John Milton. It appeared with the publication of Milton's Paradise Regain'd in 1671, as the title page of that volume states: "Paradise Regained / A Poem / In IV Books / To Which Is Added / Samson Agonistes". It is generally thought that Samson Agonistes was begun around the same time as Paradise Regained but was completed after the larger work, possibly very close to the date of publishing, but there is no agreement on this.

Samson Agonistes draws on the story of Samson from the Old Testament, Judges 13-16; in fact it is a dramatization of the story starting at Judges 16:23. The drama starts in medias res. Samson has been captured by the philistines, had his hair, the container of his strength, cut off and his eyes cut out. Samson is "Blind among enemies, O worse than chains" (66).

As blindness overtook Milton, it becomes a major trope in Samson Agonistes, and is seen also in Paradise Lost (3.22-55) and his 16th Sonnet. Many scholars have written about the impact of Milton's increasing blindness on his works.^{[citation needed]} This recurrence of blindness came after Milton temporarily gave up his poetry to work for Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth government. He continued this service even though his eyesight was failing and he knew that he was hastening his own blindness. The correlation is significant to the Agonistes plot: Milton describes Samson as being "Eyeless in Gaza", a phrase that has become the most quoted line of Agonistes. Novelist Aldous Huxley used it as the title for his 1936 novel Eyeless in Gaza.

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Samson's blindness, however, is no way a direct analogy to Milton's. Rather, Samson's blindness plays various symbolic roles. One is the correlation between Samson's inner blindness as well as outer, the fact that he believes his "intimate impulses" to be divine messages, yet is never in any way divinely affirmed in this, unlike the rest of Milton's divinely influenced characters. Samson's inability to see that his inner vision does not correlate to divine vision is manifest in his physical blindness. It also plays on his blindness to reason, leading him to act overhastily, plus the fact that he is so easily deceived by Delila, "blinded" by her feminine wiles.

It is interesting to note that some of the chorus's lines in Samson Antagonistes are rhymed, thus suggesting a return of the "chain of rhymes", which itself reflects upon Samson's imprisonment.

The Persons (Cast)

Samson
Manoa the Father of Samson
Dalila his Wife (It should be noted that she is never named as his wife in any Biblical text.)
Harapha of Gath
Publick Officer
Messenger
Chorus of Danites

Samson Agonistes was performed in April 2008 at the University of California Berkeley (English Department Events Page) by members of the English Undergraduate Association.