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Two Athenian Models for Samson Agonistes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2021

Wilmon Brewer
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Extract

In composing Samson Agonistes, Milton took from the Bible only his chief characters and his catastrophe, that is Samson's being led away from the prison to entertain the Philistines and his destruction of their theatre. The events which Milton presents before and after his catastrophe do not appear in the Bible, and none of them follow necessarily from anything narrated there. Careful investigation has shown further that Milton made no important use of any other version of the story of Samson. Accordingly, the question arises how did Milton develop the plot of Samson Agonistes?

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , December 1927 , pp. 910 - 920
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1927

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References

1 While preparing this essay, I have read the work of all recent critics of Samson Agonistes—eleven in number, but have been able to derive from them only an occasional hint. The idea that Milton borrowed most of his plot from the Prometheus Bound is original with me and nearly all the parallels which I point out between these two dramas are of my own discovery. The idea that Milton borrowed from the ιEdipus at Colonus I owe to a hint in Mr. H. M. Percival's two editions of Milton's tragedy, but the parallels noted in the latter part of this essay are without exception the result of ny own investigation.

2 For Shakespeare in Milton's poetry, see Professor Alwin Thaler, “The Shaksperian Element in Milton,” PMLA, XL, 645–691.

3 Paradise Regained, II, l. 210; III, l.310 and ll.333–4; IV, l.412.

4 Paradise Lost I, l. 48, ll. 94 ff., ll. 262–3; II, l. 821; IV, ll. 868–9; VI, ll.431 ff.; IX, ll. 171 ff. Many of these passages have been pointed out individually by Thyer and other early editors, but they have not been used as the basis for a general comparison.

5 For the historical influence of Prometheus Bound, see Paul Elmer More's introduction to his translation of the drama (p. 46). For the purpose of Æschylus, see the introduction to Wecklein's edition of the tragedy in the College Series of Greek Authors.

6 Excepting the lost Prometheus Unbound of Æschylus.

7 The description of Harapha by the chorus (ll. 1061 ff.) does not give the preparation usual in great drama.

8 Thus, for example, immediately after the parados, Prometheus engages in dialogues with the chorus, with Oceanus, and again with the chorus; Samson engages with the chorus, with Manoah, and again with the chorus. But Æschylus introduces his first choral ode after the second dialogue; and Milton, after the first. This causes a purely artificial difference.

9 The Oceanids are of course divinities.

10 While making the threat, the hero in each case intentionally misinterprets the preceding speech of the emissary. The parallel cannot be shown here without too long a citation of the context. It occurs between lines 980–981 of Prometheus Bound, and lines 1346–1347 of Samson Agonistes.

11 Lines 377–380. The corresponding passage of Samson Agonistes (noted by Thyer) occurs at lines 184 ff.

12 Differences of language and meter between English and Greek seem not to affect the truth of this observation, for the translations of Sophocles in the Loeb Library correspond approximately, and those of Euripides exactly, with the length of the original.