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Action and Suffering: Samson Agonistes and the Irony of Alternatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Anthony Low
Anthony Low*
Affiliation:
New York University, New York, N. Y.
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Abstract

To the various kinds of irony that critics have noticed in Milton's Samson Agonistes may be added another, the irony of alternatives. This irony is based on a proposition with alternative possibilities posited by one of the characters: either this will happen or that; but both choices eventuate, although they appear to be mutually exclusive. Milton calls this kind of proposition axioma disjunclum contingens in his Art of Logic. Samson s prophecy that he will either die or do some great deed, the doubts of his friends whether he has been slain by or is slaying the Philistines, their expectation of either good or bad news are all ironically resolved in the catastrophe, which combines alternatives and reveals the simplifying power of providence. Similarly, although the Chorus states that there are two kinds of heroism, active and passive, either of which may be Samson s, both eventuate. Samson s heroism includes both courageous action and Christian patience as he slays and is slain. In his conclusion, Milton fuses genuine tragedy with religious drama, because Samson as an active hero dies tragically, and as a martyr wins a spiritual victory and the crown of patience.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 84 , Issue 3 , May 1969 , pp. 514 - 519
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1969

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References

1 Milton (London, 1930), p. 343.

2 John Milton (New York, 1964), p. 197.

3 Art of Logic, Bk. ii, Ch. viii; in The Works of John Milton, ed. Frank A. Patterson, Columbia edition (New York, 1931–40), xi, 365.

4 The precedent to 11. 1387–89 is noted by J. C. Maxwell, in “Milton's Samson and Sophocles' Heracles,” PQ, xxxiii (1954), 90–91. Maxwell compares SA, 11. 1387–89 to Sophocles' Trachiniae, 11. 79–81: “The alternative possibilities remind us of the ‘tablet’ which Heracles left with Deianeira, containing oracles to the effect ‘that either he shall meet his death, or, having achieved this task, shall have rest thenceforth, for all his days to come’.” But as Maxwell points out, the first half of the oracle is dropped from consideration when Heracles returns to it at the end of the play (II. 1169–73); and it is rather “ambiguous” than “unsearchable.” Moreover, the oracle, unlike that in Oedipus, at most has a potential relation to the action that remains effectively undeveloped. Nevertheless, the unusualness of the device leads Maxwell to propose a debt to the Trachiniae in this passage of Samson.

5 For a discussion of conscious and unconscious dramatic irony in Samson see William R. Parker's “Tragic Irony in Milton's Samson Agonistes,” Etudes Anglaises, i (1937), 314–320. The essay is also printed, slightly modified, in Parker's Milton's Debt to Greek Tragedy in Samson Agonistes (Baltimore, Md., 1937), pp. 157–167.

6 My text is Paradise Regained, the Minor Poems, and Samson Agonistes, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (New York, 1937).

7 The Miltonic Setting (London, 1938), pp. 1–28.

8 See Jon S. Lawry, “‘Eager Thought’: Dialectic in ‘Lycidas’,” P M LA, lxxvii (1962), 27–32; and B. Rajan, “Lycidas: The Shattering of the Leaves,” SP, lxiv (1967), 51–64.

9 See Roy Daniells, Milton, Mannerism and Baroque (Toronto, 1963), or, contra, Rosemond Tuve, “Baroque and Mannerist Milton?” JEGP, lx (1961), 817–833. Although Miss Tuve questions interpretations of literature in terms derived from painting and architecture, she provides extensive references in this field. For another approach to Milton's “dialectic” see Thomas Kranidas, The Fierce Equation: A Study of Milton's Decorum (The Hague, 1965), pp. 47–48, et passim. Kranidas calls Milton's habit the “larger decorum.”

10 See T. S. K. Scott-Craig, “Concerning Milton's Samson,” RN, v (1952), 45–53. On Samson as a “type” of Christ, see the enlightening comments of William G. Madsen, “From Shadowy Types to Truth,” The Lyric and Dramatic Milton, ed. Joseph H. Summers (New York and London, 1965), pp. 95–114, reprinted with slight modification in Madsen's From Shadowy Types to Truth (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1968), pp. 181–202.

11 See A. S. P. Woodhouse, “Tragic Effect in Samson Agonisies,” UTQ, xxviii (1959), 205–222; and my “Tragic Pattern in Samson Agonisies,” forthcoming in Texas Stud, in Lit. and Lang.

12 See Arnold Stein, Heroic Knowledge (Minneapolis, Minn., 1957), p. 156.

13 See 11. 124–145, 340–348, 1119–29.

14 See also Samson's retort to Harapha during their debate on the legality of Samson's activities, which echoes Milton's justification of the deposition of kings: “force with force / Is well ejected when the Conquer'd can” (11. 1206–07).

15 Tillyard, Milton, p. 301, and The Miltonic Setting, pp. 85–88; Stein, Heroic Knowledge, pp. 178–191, 197.

16 “Chivalric Themes in Samson Agonistes,” Studies in Honor of John Wilcox, ed. A. D. Wallace and W. O. Ross (Detroit, Mich., 1958), pp. 33–34.

17 “Despair and ‘Patience as the Truest Fortitude’ in Samson Agonistes,” ELH, xxx (1963), 119,120. See also Ann Gossman, “Samson, Job and ‘the Exercise of Saints’,” ES, xlv (1964), 212–224; Kenneth Fell, “From Myth to Martyrdom: Towards a View of Milton's Samson Agonistes,” ES, xxxiv (1953), 145–155; and M. A. N. Radzinowicz, “Samson Agonistes and Milton the Politician in Defeat,” PQ, xliv (1965), 454–471. Mrs. Radzinowicz seems at one point (p. 470) about to anticipate my thesis here, but draws back from it because she thinks Milton's purpose in the play is to advocate patience and self-mastery as alternatives to political action.

18 Nash, “Chivalric Themes in Samson Agonistes,” p. 33.

19 See Joseph H. Summers, “The Movements of the Drama,” The Lyric and Dramatic Milton, p. 169; and John M. Steadman, Milton and the Renaissance Hero (Oxford, 1967), p. 34.

20 That the Chorus, far from expressing Milton's authoritative opinion throughout the play, undergoes a process of moral and intellectual education is demonstrated by John Huntley, “A Revaluation of the Chorus' Role in Milton's Samson Agonistes,” MP, lxiv (1966), 132–145.

21 See Howard Schultz, Milton and Forbidden Knowledge (New York, 1955), pp. 71–82; or Helen C. White, “Some Continuing Traditions in English Devotional Literature,” PMLA, lvii (1942), 966–980.

22 Le prose diverse di Torquato Tasso, ed. Cesare Gusati (Firenze, 1875), i, 116–120; cited by Steadman, Milton and the Renaissance Hero, p. 13.

23 For discussions relevant to this question see Una Ellis-Fermor's “Samson Agonisies and Religious Drama,” The Frontiers of Drama (London, 1945), pp. 17–33; A. S. P. Woodhouse's “Tragic Effect in Samson Agonisies”; and my “Tragic Pattern in Samson Agonisies.” I would like to thank the Research Committee of Seattle Univ. for financial assistance in preparing this paper; Sister Helen for her aid in the library; and my friends and former colleagues Murray Prosky and A. J. Magill for their frequent encouragement at difficult moments.