What do you think?
Rate this book
Samson Agonistes
A tragedy by John Milton, it is considered the greatest English drama based on the Greek model and is known as one more suited for reading than performance. The work deals with the final phase of Samson's life and recounts the story as told in the Old Testament Book of Judges. Himself blind when he wrote Samson Agonistes, Milton depicts Samson, the once mighty warrior, as blinded and a prisoner of the Philistines. Samson conquers self-pity and despair, however, and is granted a return of his old strength. He pulls down the pillars that support the temple of the Philistine god Dagon, crushing himself along with his captors.
170 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1671
22 people are currently reading
1890 people want to read
About the author
John Milton
3,766 books2,236 followersPeople best know John Milton, English scholar, for
Paradise Lost
, the epic poem of 1667 and an account of fall of humanity from grace.
Beelzebub, one fallen angel in Paradise Lost, of John Milton, lay in power next to Satan.
Belial, one fallen angel, rebelled against God in Paradise Lost of John Milton.
John Milton, polemicist, man of letters, served the civil Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote in blank verse at a time of religious flux and political upheaval.
Prose of John Milton reflects deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. He wrote in Latin, Greek, and Italian and achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica (1644) in condemnation of censorship before publication among most influential and impassioned defenses of free speech and the press of history.
William Hayley in biography of 1796 called and generally regarded John Milton, the "greatest ... author," "as one of the preeminent writers in the ... language," though since his death, critical reception oscillated often on his republicanism in the centuries. Samuel Johnson praised, "with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the ... mind," though he, a Tory and recipient of royal patronage, described politics of Milton, an "acrimonious and surly republican."
Because of his republicanism, centuries of British partisanship subjected John Milton.
Beelzebub, one fallen angel in Paradise Lost, of John Milton, lay in power next to Satan.
Belial, one fallen angel, rebelled against God in Paradise Lost of John Milton.
John Milton, polemicist, man of letters, served the civil Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote in blank verse at a time of religious flux and political upheaval.
Prose of John Milton reflects deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. He wrote in Latin, Greek, and Italian and achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica (1644) in condemnation of censorship before publication among most influential and impassioned defenses of free speech and the press of history.
William Hayley in biography of 1796 called and generally regarded John Milton, the "greatest ... author," "as one of the preeminent writers in the ... language," though since his death, critical reception oscillated often on his republicanism in the centuries. Samuel Johnson praised, "with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the ... mind," though he, a Tory and recipient of royal patronage, described politics of Milton, an "acrimonious and surly republican."
Because of his republicanism, centuries of British partisanship subjected John Milton.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 157 reviews
December 24, 2024
Samson is really, really stuck.
The love of his life has ruined him with her mind games and deceit. Since he has always been mentally challenged, he now just can't cope.
And the Pharisees have made a mockery of him.
Chained and drained of all manhood, he is their Boy Toy. "As flies to young boys, so (he) is to (them) - they kill (him) for their sport!"
What a Comeuppance.
"But the hair, Samson - the HAIR, old boy..."
Gimme a head with hair
Long, beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming, streaming
Flaxen, waxen
Hair (hair) hair (hair) hair (hair) HAIR
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow
My HAIR!
Oh yeah, that's right! When Delilah's shears are put away, this Jewish Prophetic Pariah can PLAY.
And play he does.
And he really brings down the house...
In his morbid mind's eye, you see, he has "memorized another Golgotha," as the Scottish soldier who's at the scene of the battle says of King Macbeth.
Memorized it to prefigure it.
And thus Samson's punishing relexive sacrifice fits right in with so many other Old Testament reminders to us of the promises of Jesus -
No pain, no gain -
For, in the end, that pain and grief will be transfigured in Resurrection!
And John Milton does His poetic prophecy PROUD.
The love of his life has ruined him with her mind games and deceit. Since he has always been mentally challenged, he now just can't cope.
And the Pharisees have made a mockery of him.
Chained and drained of all manhood, he is their Boy Toy. "As flies to young boys, so (he) is to (them) - they kill (him) for their sport!"
What a Comeuppance.
"But the hair, Samson - the HAIR, old boy..."
Gimme a head with hair
Long, beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming, streaming
Flaxen, waxen
Hair (hair) hair (hair) hair (hair) HAIR
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow
My HAIR!
Oh yeah, that's right! When Delilah's shears are put away, this Jewish Prophetic Pariah can PLAY.
And play he does.
And he really brings down the house...
In his morbid mind's eye, you see, he has "memorized another Golgotha," as the Scottish soldier who's at the scene of the battle says of King Macbeth.
Memorized it to prefigure it.
And thus Samson's punishing relexive sacrifice fits right in with so many other Old Testament reminders to us of the promises of Jesus -
No pain, no gain -
For, in the end, that pain and grief will be transfigured in Resurrection!
And John Milton does His poetic prophecy PROUD.
February 27, 2021
I recommend this unfairly neglected work to all lovers of memoir and fans of confessional poetry. Sure, it is a biblically-themed work in classical form, but it is also an intense experiment in personal expression, for here John Milton explores the fate of a hero much like himself: the blind Samson, a defeated warrior for righteousness, surrounded by victorious enemies, looking for one last deed to justify himself before the Lord.
Although there is some dispute about when Samson Agonistes was written, there is little doubt about its reputation as one of the finest “closet dramas” in English. (Closet drama: a play never intended to be performed upon a stage.) Sophoclean in form, Aristotelian in aesthetics, and biblical in narrative, it is nevertheless a profoundly personal expression of John Milton—not only as poet, but as theologian, philosopher, and man.
Milton contemplated a tragedy based on the story of Samson as early as the 1640’s, and, although some of the passages of the chorus could have easily been written this early (they remind me in form and music of “Il Penseroso”), it is more reasonable—and pleasing—to see the body of the work as a product of the late 1660’s, after Paradise Lost, when Milton himself began to resemble his biblical hero. Blind for more than ten years, having worn out his eyes in the service of the Puritan Commonwealth, he was now—in the first decade after the Restoration—a stranger in his own land; his political pamphlets were burnt, he was forced into hiding, and briefly—even after a general amnesty—he was thrown into prison, only to be released because of the pleas of a few influential friends. During this period of spiritual isolation, out of the despair of a Commonwealth destroyed, he completed his life-affirming masterpiece, Paradise Lost.
The hero of Samson Agonistes has much in common with the aging Milton: blind, estranged from his people, a slave and prisoner in the Philistine city of Gaza. Milton is interested in exploring—it seems to me—all the ways in which this biblical hero is both like and unlike himself: in suffering, in anger, in hubris, in his response to divine inspiration, in courage and self-sacrifice. One of the tell-tale signs of his identification with Samson is the change he makes in the biblical narrative: Delilah, who is identified in Judges merely as “a woman in the valley of Sorek”, has become in Samson Agonistes Samson’s lawful wife. (The thrice-married Milton had wife troubles of his own, and had written, in 1643, “The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.")
This play is far from a being a dry exercise in biblical homage and Attic imitation. Not only is there much to argue about in reference to Milton’s creation Delilah (who, however chauvinist in conception she may be, certainly gives as good as she gets), but Samson’s final act is problematic too, making him look—in these days of ISIS—less like a hero and more like a suicide bomber.
Still, there is much here to delight and interest the reader, not the least of which is the glimpse it gives us into the heart of Milton—blind, besieged, yet moving toward nobility.
Here are a few representative passages. First, Samson on blindness:
Since light so necessary is to life,Delilah defends herself:
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the Soul,
She all in every part; why was the sight
To such a tender ball as th' eye confin'd?
So obvious and so easie to be quench't,
And not as feeling through all parts diffus'd,
That she might look at will through every pore?
Then had I not been thus exil'd from light;
As in the land of darkness yet in light,
To live a life half dead, a living death,
And buried...
And what if Love, which thou interpret'st hate,The blind Samson challenges the giant Harapha of Gath to a fair fight:
The jealousie of Love, powerful of sway
In human hearts, nor less in mine towards thee,
Caus'd what I did? I saw thee mutable
Of fancy, fear'd lest one day thou wouldst leave me...
...sought by all means therefore
How to endear, and hold thee to me firmest:
No better way I saw then by importuning
To learn thy secrets, get into my power
Thy key of strength and safety...
...I knew that liberty
Would draw thee forth to perilous enterprises,
While I at home sate full of cares and fears
Wailing thy absence in my widow'd bed;
Here I should still enjoy thee day and night
Mine and Loves prisoner...
Therefore without feign'd shifts let be assign'd
Some narrow place enclos'd, where sight may give thee,
Or rather flight, no great advantage on me;
Then put on all thy gorgeous arms, thy Helmet
And Brigandine of brass, thy broad Habergeon
Vant-brass and Greves, and Gauntlet, add thy Spear
A Weavers beam, and seven-times-folded shield,
I only with an Oak'n staff will meet thee,
And raise such out-cries on thy clatter'd Iron,
Which long shall not with-hold mee from thy head,
That in a little time while breath remains thee,
Thou oft shalt wish thy self at Gath to boast
Again in safety what thou wouldst have done
To Samson, but shalt never see Gath more.
Read
September 16, 2012on blindness:
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse then chains,
Dungeon, or beggery, or decrepit age!
Light the prime work of God to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd,
Inferiour to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me,
They creep, yet see, I dark in light expos'd
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong,
Within doors, or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more then half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first created Beam, and thou great Word,
Let there be light, and light was over all;
Why am I thus bereav'd thy prime decree?
The Sun to me is dark
And silent as the Moon,
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the Soul,
She all in every part; why was the sight
To such a tender ball as th' eye confin'd?
So obvious and so easie to be quench't,
And not as feeling through all parts diffus'd,
That she might look at will through every pore?
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse then chains,
Dungeon, or beggery, or decrepit age!
Light the prime work of God to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd,
Inferiour to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me,
They creep, yet see, I dark in light expos'd
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong,
Within doors, or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more then half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first created Beam, and thou great Word,
Let there be light, and light was over all;
Why am I thus bereav'd thy prime decree?
The Sun to me is dark
And silent as the Moon,
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the Soul,
She all in every part; why was the sight
To such a tender ball as th' eye confin'd?
So obvious and so easie to be quench't,
And not as feeling through all parts diffus'd,
That she might look at will through every pore?
June 24, 2008
Classic literature lovers only. Do not read for fun, because Milton is TOUGH, but if you appreciate close reading and are ready to spend hours poring through intricate details in a very complex and intelligent retelling of Samson, you will learn to appreciate Milton's genius.
December 6, 2020
An imaginative retelling of Samson's last day. Some brilliant moments, all in all very worthwhile. My favorite part was Samson's reflection on his own blindness as the worst part of his miserable condition; knowing all the while that Milton is giving voice to his own anguish over losing his sight.
October 25, 2009
i liked this. he had Samson talking more trash than a gangster rapper!
January 16, 2012
The poetry is wonderful, as usual with Milton, but the tone of the entire work seems more whiny and petulant than anything else. The characterization of Samson in this tragedy is clearly the result of Milton's personal frustrations with his own life, and it seems probable that he wrote it as a form of cathartic release. All in all, I would say stick to Paradise Lost and Milton's other, shorter poems.
Read
January 18, 2024i get the vibe milton did not like being blind. also dalila literally did nothing wrong my girl was trying to free palestine from a mass murderer. this play was sexist but in that fresh and interesting way only a 17th century closeted gay man can achieve (he’s just scared of having sex with women guys this is normal)
Read
December 10, 2024"All is best, though we oft doubt." Easily one of my favorites from Milton. The project of writing a Christian tragedy is so fascinating, and I think Milton is one of the few to successfully accomplish such a feat.
May 14, 2018
I came across it again (having last read it forty years ago or so) while listening to Handel's wonderful opera, "Samson". I was thinking to myself "and who wrote the stupendous libretto" until the penny dropped!
Like Parzival, Milton's Samson and Milton himself of course can only portray so vividly debate and furnish a picture of an opponent whom he wishes very literally in hell when he himself knew the temptation, "the wound". This -what does one call it poem? play? neither name seems adequate, this account if one will, this argument, is biographical in two ways-firstly, because Milton was himself blind and therefore in deepest empathy with Samson and secondly, becuase Milton surely himself deeply felt the power of temptation of the alternative to sight, he felt it as keenly as Parzival in Klingsor's castle. I was struck by the simplicity of language for the writer of Paradise Lost. This is unquestionably a masterpeice, every word in its place, not a word too little nor superfluous. Surely the writer did not want us to cast more than a momentary glance in the direction of Degon's merriment and wine, but to put it bluntly, they do sound like fun. There we come to it of course, namely what Ezra Pound dubbed Milton's "beastly Hebraism". This is the God of the Old Testmanet with as it were a vengeance and it is the triumph of the Jews over the (Aryan) Philistines. A question to the Hebrew party: Delilah is a traitress and Judith (who acted simialrly in the interests of HER people a heroine?). One might cynically avere that hisotry is indeed written by the victors. A masterpiece this however remains, incorporating to a high degree the two elements of Western culture, the heathen and the Hebraic.
Like Parzival, Milton's Samson and Milton himself of course can only portray so vividly debate and furnish a picture of an opponent whom he wishes very literally in hell when he himself knew the temptation, "the wound". This -what does one call it poem? play? neither name seems adequate, this account if one will, this argument, is biographical in two ways-firstly, because Milton was himself blind and therefore in deepest empathy with Samson and secondly, becuase Milton surely himself deeply felt the power of temptation of the alternative to sight, he felt it as keenly as Parzival in Klingsor's castle. I was struck by the simplicity of language for the writer of Paradise Lost. This is unquestionably a masterpeice, every word in its place, not a word too little nor superfluous. Surely the writer did not want us to cast more than a momentary glance in the direction of Degon's merriment and wine, but to put it bluntly, they do sound like fun. There we come to it of course, namely what Ezra Pound dubbed Milton's "beastly Hebraism". This is the God of the Old Testmanet with as it were a vengeance and it is the triumph of the Jews over the (Aryan) Philistines. A question to the Hebrew party: Delilah is a traitress and Judith (who acted simialrly in the interests of HER people a heroine?). One might cynically avere that hisotry is indeed written by the victors. A masterpiece this however remains, incorporating to a high degree the two elements of Western culture, the heathen and the Hebraic.
February 18, 2021
Review edited to tentatively declare this as being in the top 5 things I've ever read.
no point in anyone bothering to write anything, nothing will ever top Milton. What a way for Milton to end his career. Read for thesis project.
no point in anyone bothering to write anything, nothing will ever top Milton. What a way for Milton to end his career. Read for thesis project.
June 10, 2016
My first reading of Milton (though I've heard of him for years). This is the biblical story of Samson the Nazirite whose strength depended on his hair, and who was betrayed by Delilah, treated as a Greek epic. I love it. The story of Samson I felt was never very preachy - he was just a really epic figure from ancient Israel.
Also, the lament for his loss of sight was very genuine, because Milton himself was blind when he wrote this. I could feel his sadness. I loved how he filled out certain details that weren't in the original text too. I'm glad this exists.
Also, the lament for his loss of sight was very genuine, because Milton himself was blind when he wrote this. I could feel his sadness. I loved how he filled out certain details that weren't in the original text too. I'm glad this exists.
December 16, 2024
Probably my favourite of Milton’s writing cause I actually understood what was going on.
May 29, 2016
[I use "Dalila" instead of Delilah as it conforms with the spelling in Agonistes. “Delilah” is more often used in biblical translations]
"Samson Agonistes" is considered Milton's major work, second only to "Paradise Lost". To start, I read Judges 13-16 which detailed the birth and death of Samson, of which his relationship with Philistine woman Dalila/Delilah is the crux of his career. The biblical account of Samson is a brutal, cruel, and crafty man of extraordinary strength, fail in his besotted relationship with Delilah even though she had tricked him repeatedly. God in this story is severe enabler and partisan on the side of Israel. Brutal deaths strewn copiously in this story.
However Milton’s poem is of a noble brutality and intelligence infused with spirit of God. Samson’s raw physical power and his readiness to inflict bodily violence are ennobled by Milton’s casting in the monotheistic light — my God vs. yours, Hebrew God vs. Dagon. Miltonic Samson is fully aware of the role of God’s spirit in his body and mind. He is a mixture of crude masculine human, a fraction of feeling person, and a “philosophic zombie” animated by an archaic force to do bodily violence.
Samson did not kill solely for his own enjoyment, but for the glory of his tribe, the directly Chosen, and God. The fact that God’s dealing with Samson is “various” and “contrarious” did not dismay Samson because of his absolute confidence and trust in God’s power. His own humiliation is accounted by his own failure of obedience and intelligence.
Samson and Job, both endured the changing hands of God, upheld their own faith despite their own personal calamities. More than the passive nobility of Job, Samson remains throughout the active weapon of God’s force.
This poem is heroic, bombastic, and glorious in the Homeric vein. It is also particularly troubling in light of our own modern age as we reflect the vastly different world views of someone whose animating spirit resides above the common life, where the tribal identities reduce human lives into Things. Simone Weil’s Power of Force reminds me of how warfares change all lives into Things. Samson is such a Thing, as well as Dalila. Our own empathy resides with the Chorus and his father Manoa who understood the common human life and the life of the transcended spirit.
*** Specific notes ***
The poem starts with Samson in his darkest calamity - body deformed, self enslaved, spirit in torment, God deserted. Except for the comfort of his father, Samson has lost all sap and will to live, yet even death is beyond reach. Suicide is an act of cowardice, and offense to God. Dying in the display of the pagan revelry like a performing animal, compounding his past shame of being tricked by Dalila's feminine wiles and his garrulity?
Then the accused wife comes to plead for understanding and forgiveness. We witness a barely contained contest between man and wife in asserting their own side of moral righteousness. Each gives a "narrative" of their intention and circumstances, leaving no room for negotiation. The anger, bitterness and stern refusal from Samson to grant to any of Dalila's demands, asserting his higher spousal right as husband, and the inadmissibility of her plead of duress under her own obligations to her tribe and her god Dagon.
Dalila gave up her unsuccessful plead to soften Samson. She walked away with her own dignity in tact "nor too much disapprove my own". The moral relativism is most evident in Dalila's contemplation of her legacy:
"Fame if not double-fac’t is double-mouth’d,
And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds,
On both his wings, one black, the other white,
Bears greatest names in his wild aerie flight."
She knows that she is forever the villain of one people, and heroine of another. That is quite acceptable since her own people would honor her for posterity.
Now Samson is commanded to perform for the Philistine festival. He rejected with spirit: “
My self? my conscience and internal peace.
Can they think me so broken, so debas’d With corporal servitude, that my mind ever
Will condescend to such absurd commands?”
Yet he knows that he is not entirely abandoned by God. The ending drama is off-stage, described only through an eye witness. It is not just the glory but the peace that comforted his father as “With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent.”
"Samson Agonistes" is considered Milton's major work, second only to "Paradise Lost". To start, I read Judges 13-16 which detailed the birth and death of Samson, of which his relationship with Philistine woman Dalila/Delilah is the crux of his career. The biblical account of Samson is a brutal, cruel, and crafty man of extraordinary strength, fail in his besotted relationship with Delilah even though she had tricked him repeatedly. God in this story is severe enabler and partisan on the side of Israel. Brutal deaths strewn copiously in this story.
However Milton’s poem is of a noble brutality and intelligence infused with spirit of God. Samson’s raw physical power and his readiness to inflict bodily violence are ennobled by Milton’s casting in the monotheistic light — my God vs. yours, Hebrew God vs. Dagon. Miltonic Samson is fully aware of the role of God’s spirit in his body and mind. He is a mixture of crude masculine human, a fraction of feeling person, and a “philosophic zombie” animated by an archaic force to do bodily violence.
Samson did not kill solely for his own enjoyment, but for the glory of his tribe, the directly Chosen, and God. The fact that God’s dealing with Samson is “various” and “contrarious” did not dismay Samson because of his absolute confidence and trust in God’s power. His own humiliation is accounted by his own failure of obedience and intelligence.
Samson and Job, both endured the changing hands of God, upheld their own faith despite their own personal calamities. More than the passive nobility of Job, Samson remains throughout the active weapon of God’s force.
This poem is heroic, bombastic, and glorious in the Homeric vein. It is also particularly troubling in light of our own modern age as we reflect the vastly different world views of someone whose animating spirit resides above the common life, where the tribal identities reduce human lives into Things. Simone Weil’s Power of Force reminds me of how warfares change all lives into Things. Samson is such a Thing, as well as Dalila. Our own empathy resides with the Chorus and his father Manoa who understood the common human life and the life of the transcended spirit.
*** Specific notes ***
The poem starts with Samson in his darkest calamity - body deformed, self enslaved, spirit in torment, God deserted. Except for the comfort of his father, Samson has lost all sap and will to live, yet even death is beyond reach. Suicide is an act of cowardice, and offense to God. Dying in the display of the pagan revelry like a performing animal, compounding his past shame of being tricked by Dalila's feminine wiles and his garrulity?
Then the accused wife comes to plead for understanding and forgiveness. We witness a barely contained contest between man and wife in asserting their own side of moral righteousness. Each gives a "narrative" of their intention and circumstances, leaving no room for negotiation. The anger, bitterness and stern refusal from Samson to grant to any of Dalila's demands, asserting his higher spousal right as husband, and the inadmissibility of her plead of duress under her own obligations to her tribe and her god Dagon.
Dalila gave up her unsuccessful plead to soften Samson. She walked away with her own dignity in tact "nor too much disapprove my own". The moral relativism is most evident in Dalila's contemplation of her legacy:
"Fame if not double-fac’t is double-mouth’d,
And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds,
On both his wings, one black, the other white,
Bears greatest names in his wild aerie flight."
She knows that she is forever the villain of one people, and heroine of another. That is quite acceptable since her own people would honor her for posterity.
Now Samson is commanded to perform for the Philistine festival. He rejected with spirit: “
My self? my conscience and internal peace.
Can they think me so broken, so debas’d With corporal servitude, that my mind ever
Will condescend to such absurd commands?”
Yet he knows that he is not entirely abandoned by God. The ending drama is off-stage, described only through an eye witness. It is not just the glory but the peace that comforted his father as “With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent.”
April 12, 2018
I've long considered myself a huge Uncle Miltie fan, based on my outsize undergraduate enthusiasm for Paradise Lost, which I found to be surprisingly timeless, appealingly odd, and deliciously grand. Having fallen in love with the sublime, eschatological epic during a freshman Western Civ course, I hungrily consumed Paradise Regained on the winter-break plane trip to my mother's house. As sequels go, it was, shall we say, no Godfather II, but I attributed my disappointment to the chilling presence in the poem of notorious narrative wet blanket, Jesus. I hope I find the time in my remaining reading years to revisit Paradise Lost, but my experience with Samson Agonistes has probably slaked any desire I might have had for further exploration of the oeuvre. I think Milton may be one of those one-book writers.
The critical consensus seems to be that Samson Agonistes is a parable of Milton's own career. He did, after all, choose for his homage to Attic tragedy the most famous blind guy in the Bible, a self-righteous straight-edger who can't catch a break from his allies, let alone his enemies. This "closet drama"*, published in the same volume with Paradise Regained in 1671, is learned and sonorous and impressively adapts a rather skeletal folktale from Judges to the form of classical tragedy, but, where Paradise Lost integrates bracing elements of political radicalism and cosmological loopiness with its reformed theology, a lot of Samson Agonistes just feels Puritan in the worst sense of the word.
The overriding point of this poem, it seems to me, is tutelary deities over bitches. Samson and the chorus of his Danite friends and acquaintances are in tiresomely repeated agreement that he deserves his blinding and degradation at the hands of his enemies because he was dumb enough to confide in his wife. I consider myself a feminist, but I'm not making an ostentatious display of my wokeness here. I try not to bring my 21st-century values to a centuries-old text. I have to say, though, I found the relentless misogyny off-putting. One of the things I remember loving about Paradise Lost was the humanity in Adam's choice of his wife over a life of ease in Paradise. Here the sinful Adam:
How can I live without thee, how forgoe
Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn'd,
To live again in these wilde Woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart;
That's just lovely. For Samson, though, "favoured of the Lord," a man's wife is:
A cleaving mischief, in his way to vertue
Adverse and turbulent, or by her charms
Draws him awry enslav'd
With dotage, and his sense deprav'd
To folly and shameful deeds which ruin ends.
I guess I'll take a loyal sinner over an angry judge just about every time. I will say, if you're going to read Samson Agonistes, this is an excellent choice of edition. F.T. Prince's notes were very helpful.
*intended for reading rather than performance
The critical consensus seems to be that Samson Agonistes is a parable of Milton's own career. He did, after all, choose for his homage to Attic tragedy the most famous blind guy in the Bible, a self-righteous straight-edger who can't catch a break from his allies, let alone his enemies. This "closet drama"*, published in the same volume with Paradise Regained in 1671, is learned and sonorous and impressively adapts a rather skeletal folktale from Judges to the form of classical tragedy, but, where Paradise Lost integrates bracing elements of political radicalism and cosmological loopiness with its reformed theology, a lot of Samson Agonistes just feels Puritan in the worst sense of the word.
The overriding point of this poem, it seems to me, is tutelary deities over bitches. Samson and the chorus of his Danite friends and acquaintances are in tiresomely repeated agreement that he deserves his blinding and degradation at the hands of his enemies because he was dumb enough to confide in his wife. I consider myself a feminist, but I'm not making an ostentatious display of my wokeness here. I try not to bring my 21st-century values to a centuries-old text. I have to say, though, I found the relentless misogyny off-putting. One of the things I remember loving about Paradise Lost was the humanity in Adam's choice of his wife over a life of ease in Paradise. Here the sinful Adam:
How can I live without thee, how forgoe
Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn'd,
To live again in these wilde Woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart;
That's just lovely. For Samson, though, "favoured of the Lord," a man's wife is:
A cleaving mischief, in his way to vertue
Adverse and turbulent, or by her charms
Draws him awry enslav'd
With dotage, and his sense deprav'd
To folly and shameful deeds which ruin ends.
I guess I'll take a loyal sinner over an angry judge just about every time. I will say, if you're going to read Samson Agonistes, this is an excellent choice of edition. F.T. Prince's notes were very helpful.
*intended for reading rather than performance
February 24, 2017
This day will be remarkable in my life
by some great act, or of my days the last.
Samson Agonistes is to many Milton scholars his Tempest, the last of his poems; and certainly one of the richest, based on the biblical story of Samson and Delilah with autobiographical references evident here and there linking together Milton's blindness with Samson's. Written as a closet drama -- a play to be read to oneself rather than staged -- it tells a story that should be familiar to many Western readers, though probably more to Milton's contemporaries than to modern readers. Personally, I found it impossible to picture Samson and Delilah any other way than as they appear in the film by Cecil B. DeMille, Victor Mature as Samson and Hedy Lamarr as Delilah, who was as much the downfall of Samson as Eve was for Adam.
Milton was undoubtedly very misogynistic and blamed women -- not specific women, but women generally speaking -- for many of the problems of humankind ("[I]t was a weakness/In me," says his Dalila, "but incident to all our sex,/Curiosity, inquisitive, importune/Of secrets, then with like infirmity/To publish them, both common female faults"). This is certainly a problem for the modern reader and particularly the feminist when approaching Milton -- but the same goes for Shakespeare, Montaigne and others of that period (and can still be found in some contemporary writers) and while this is no doubt a weakness (and we should be critical when reading him as modern readers) it shouldn't detract from the overall quality of the work.
While Milton takes some interesting liberties with the biblical account of Samson and Delilah, just as he does in works like Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, dealing with the story of the Fall of Man and the temptation of Christ, respectively, which add a fresh twist to an old tale, it is when his play seems most autobiographical that I found it most fascinating. And it is impossible not to sympathize with the author, who like Samson was imprisoned in darkness, a prison unto himself by his loss of sight, which rendered him immediately more advanced in years and, like Shakespeare's Timon, isolated when adversity displaced prosperity in his life. And yet, for Milton, like Samson, physical blindness - terrible as it is - is not so dreadful as the blindness of the spirit which is manifest in the society into which he was thrust.
by some great act, or of my days the last.
Samson Agonistes is to many Milton scholars his Tempest, the last of his poems; and certainly one of the richest, based on the biblical story of Samson and Delilah with autobiographical references evident here and there linking together Milton's blindness with Samson's. Written as a closet drama -- a play to be read to oneself rather than staged -- it tells a story that should be familiar to many Western readers, though probably more to Milton's contemporaries than to modern readers. Personally, I found it impossible to picture Samson and Delilah any other way than as they appear in the film by Cecil B. DeMille, Victor Mature as Samson and Hedy Lamarr as Delilah, who was as much the downfall of Samson as Eve was for Adam.
Milton was undoubtedly very misogynistic and blamed women -- not specific women, but women generally speaking -- for many of the problems of humankind ("[I]t was a weakness/In me," says his Dalila, "but incident to all our sex,/Curiosity, inquisitive, importune/Of secrets, then with like infirmity/To publish them, both common female faults"). This is certainly a problem for the modern reader and particularly the feminist when approaching Milton -- but the same goes for Shakespeare, Montaigne and others of that period (and can still be found in some contemporary writers) and while this is no doubt a weakness (and we should be critical when reading him as modern readers) it shouldn't detract from the overall quality of the work.
While Milton takes some interesting liberties with the biblical account of Samson and Delilah, just as he does in works like Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, dealing with the story of the Fall of Man and the temptation of Christ, respectively, which add a fresh twist to an old tale, it is when his play seems most autobiographical that I found it most fascinating. And it is impossible not to sympathize with the author, who like Samson was imprisoned in darkness, a prison unto himself by his loss of sight, which rendered him immediately more advanced in years and, like Shakespeare's Timon, isolated when adversity displaced prosperity in his life. And yet, for Milton, like Samson, physical blindness - terrible as it is - is not so dreadful as the blindness of the spirit which is manifest in the society into which he was thrust.
August 13, 2008
I just got accepted to a conference to speak on this work by Milton! Critics have really been excited about this book for the last ten years or so: it opens a lot of debates about Milton's politics, theology, typology, possible misogyny and (what I'm writing about) rhetoric.
Milton complete reinvents Samson for his own literary purposes, which makes it an interesting contrast to PARADISE REGAINED (also published in 1671). No longer the jockish, arrogant, divinely tough brute memorable in the Old Testament, here he's introspective, intellectual, and moaning his wounded pride (Meanwhile, "Dalila" seems genuinely repentant). Of course, it helps to remember that Milton wrote this during his own blindness, and therefore related very well to a blind revolutionary.
Like PROMETHEUS BOUND, which makes sympathetic one who defied the gods, there are prevalent questions about Samson and terrorism: when Samson takes down the Philistines, it's an act of political terrorism, one that is justified because Samson is acting on God's will. For Milton, Samson is a hero, just as Aeschylus secretly sympathizes with the idealistic Prometheus and Shelley would later hero-ise him.
Those who fell in love with PARADISE LOST should turn to SAMSON, his next greatest work.
Milton complete reinvents Samson for his own literary purposes, which makes it an interesting contrast to PARADISE REGAINED (also published in 1671). No longer the jockish, arrogant, divinely tough brute memorable in the Old Testament, here he's introspective, intellectual, and moaning his wounded pride (Meanwhile, "Dalila" seems genuinely repentant). Of course, it helps to remember that Milton wrote this during his own blindness, and therefore related very well to a blind revolutionary.
Like PROMETHEUS BOUND, which makes sympathetic one who defied the gods, there are prevalent questions about Samson and terrorism: when Samson takes down the Philistines, it's an act of political terrorism, one that is justified because Samson is acting on God's will. For Milton, Samson is a hero, just as Aeschylus secretly sympathizes with the idealistic Prometheus and Shelley would later hero-ise him.
Those who fell in love with PARADISE LOST should turn to SAMSON, his next greatest work.
June 4, 2009
I read an edition of Paradise Lost that included some other stuff by Milton in the back. One characteristic of a lot of them was that they used ancient Greco-Roman genres and themes to talk about Christian religious topics. I thought some of the shorter works, like this tragedy about Samson written in the ancient Greek style, were well done, but Paradise Lost itself was a bit boring because the theological exposition encumbered the action too much.
October 3, 2012
As a verse drama that Milton, in his argument, assures the reader was never meant to be acted, Samson Agonistes is kind of a weird one. That said, if one wants to read the emotional tsunami of Samson's last day as written by a guy who happened to be blind and one of the greatest poets who has ever written, well, this is a pretty good place to start. Plus it is short enough that one could finish it in a sitting, if one was a determined enough sitter. Busting with good lines-- give it a try.
April 21, 2021
This one is hard to rank due its strangeness in relation to the rest of Milton’s work. Yet I really enjoyed it and found it to be a fitting swan song to his career. In a sense he finally did what he always wanted - write a poem in the style of his influencers that was equally classical as it was biblical. By combining Greek tragedy, the Samson story, and his own life of struggle of exile, Milton releases all his pent up skills and fears. The existential yet faithful musings of the imprisoned and blind Samson are some of Milton’s most genuine words and surely come directly from his own spiritual life. Basically this one hit the most personally for me as a person of faith and many of the lines I wrote down in my journal to think through later. It lacks the epic scale of PL but finds its power in its meekness. The triumph of Samson is set as powerfully as Christ’s sacrifice, and after reading of Milton’s life of theological questioning I’m sure he was glad to retell the story of a disgraced man who ultimately died in the very of fulfilling his destiny - the climactic moment in which Samson learns simultaneously why he was given strength at all and why he had to suffer.
Didn’t love Samson’s in depth break down as to why men are superior beings to women, but to quote Woolf...that will always be “Milton’s bogey.” It was funny though when Dalila comes to ask to be forgiven and he says “Out hyena.”
I also loved how Milton framed the conflict in highly spiritual terms. This connects to the “mythos” he has set up in PL where all the fallen angels become pagan gods. Dagon is not a faceless idol of the Philistines, but a character that readers will have met before and know is a genuine spiritual entity.
Final note: loved the sonnet-like ending stanza, after justifying why his epics don’t need rhyme for thousands of lines in PL and PR, Milton ends his career with a sweet stanza of rhyme. It’s a beautiful touch.
Didn’t love Samson’s in depth break down as to why men are superior beings to women, but to quote Woolf...that will always be “Milton’s bogey.” It was funny though when Dalila comes to ask to be forgiven and he says “Out hyena.”
I also loved how Milton framed the conflict in highly spiritual terms. This connects to the “mythos” he has set up in PL where all the fallen angels become pagan gods. Dagon is not a faceless idol of the Philistines, but a character that readers will have met before and know is a genuine spiritual entity.
Final note: loved the sonnet-like ending stanza, after justifying why his epics don’t need rhyme for thousands of lines in PL and PR, Milton ends his career with a sweet stanza of rhyme. It’s a beautiful touch.
November 14, 2019
In terms of polished writing this is much better than Paradise Lost. PL forces the reader to drink from a fire hydrant, as it were. Milton gives you the pure essence of language and never lets up. SA has the same polished style but it isn’t as intense. It’s not as grand, either. We are dealing with a pure tragic hero, leaving aside the question of whether Milton intended Satan to be read as such.
He deliberately models Samson after the tragedies. He takes some liberties but not as many as one would expect. Delilah’s name is pronounced “Dolly-lah,” presumably for rhythmic purposes.
To his credit, Milton, following the Bible and contrary to legalist, prudish commentators, has Samson say that his first marriage to a Philistine was God’s doing. How many times do you hear do-gooders attack Samson for marrying a pagan? That’s not what the Bible says.
Unfortunately, he tells the story as Samson marrying Delilah, which the Bible never states. I think I know why Milton did this: he might be reading his own failed marriage over this template.
He deliberately models Samson after the tragedies. He takes some liberties but not as many as one would expect. Delilah’s name is pronounced “Dolly-lah,” presumably for rhythmic purposes.
To his credit, Milton, following the Bible and contrary to legalist, prudish commentators, has Samson say that his first marriage to a Philistine was God’s doing. How many times do you hear do-gooders attack Samson for marrying a pagan? That’s not what the Bible says.
Unfortunately, he tells the story as Samson marrying Delilah, which the Bible never states. I think I know why Milton did this: he might be reading his own failed marriage over this template.
September 10, 2025
I appreciate that Milton was speaking from his own political issues as well as his own blindness. It really shows his own appreciation of Samson. He could honestly be in his situation. That said, despite numerous examples of faithful, loving, and strong women in the Bible record, Milton falls into the misogyny of his era. First he tries to play Delilah as weak when I prefer the Bible’s version of her as conniving and greedy. Female evil exists but Milton won’t allow it. He only allows for weakness and eventual submission. And he accuses the whole gender instead of just Delilah. It’s a disgusting portrayal. For a man that knew his Bible so well, I expected a little better. I do wish also that this had been in the action and not just people talking about the action but I find it forgivable when we have the Bible account already there. Overall, 4 stars.
October 19, 2022
Outstanding. Milton imagines a blind, lamenting, and repentant Samson, still recognizably himself but grown wiser, talking with his father, his fellow Danites, Delilah, and two Philistines as he sits in prison. Using the model of classical tragedy, the story of Samson is unpacked in soliloquies and dialogue. I loved hearing the biblical story recast by Milton, sometimes in early modern English political vocabulary. Here, for example, is how Delilah describes the Philistine authorities' entreaties for her to betray Samson:
It was not gold, as to my charge thou lay'st,
That wrought with me: thou know'st the Magistrates
And Princes of my countrey came in person,
Sollicited, commanded, threatn'd, urg'd,
Adjur'd by all the bonds of civil Duty
And of Religion, press'd how just it was,
How honourable, how glorious to entrap
A common enemy, who had destroy'd
Such numbers of our Nation: and the Priest
Was not behind, but ever at my ear,
Preaching how meritorious with the gods
It would be to ensnare an irreligious
Dishonourer of Dagon: what had I
To oppose against such powerful arguments?
I listened to the free LibriVox recording here: https://librivox.org/samson-agonistes...
It was not gold, as to my charge thou lay'st,
That wrought with me: thou know'st the Magistrates
And Princes of my countrey came in person,
Sollicited, commanded, threatn'd, urg'd,
Adjur'd by all the bonds of civil Duty
And of Religion, press'd how just it was,
How honourable, how glorious to entrap
A common enemy, who had destroy'd
Such numbers of our Nation: and the Priest
Was not behind, but ever at my ear,
Preaching how meritorious with the gods
It would be to ensnare an irreligious
Dishonourer of Dagon: what had I
To oppose against such powerful arguments?
I listened to the free LibriVox recording here: https://librivox.org/samson-agonistes...
Read
December 6, 2024and samson’s greatest loss is his BLINDNESS? projecting much?
May 10, 2024
Not quite a dramatization, but a good dramatic edition.
September 26, 2015
Very short, with little characters focused on the Biblical story from the Book of Judges. I don’t read this completely as tragedy in that the reaction to Samson’s death is not exactly perceived as tragic, but confirming of his heroism and duties to his religion. If there is anything tragic, it’s Samson’s self-acceptance of his misfortunes throughout the drama; it’s the sad realization that tragedy is designed and intended towards something greater than the despair it momentarily enacts. The diction for the most part was ok but nothing compared to Milton’s other works.
Notable Quotations
Hopeful of his Delivery, which now proves [ 1575 ]
Abortive as the first-born bloom of spring
Nipt with the lagging rear of winters frost.
Notable Quotations
Hopeful of his Delivery, which now proves [ 1575 ]
Abortive as the first-born bloom of spring
Nipt with the lagging rear of winters frost.
December 30, 2021
Decided to start rereading this masterpiece. The Samson-Dalila, Samson-Harapha verbal fights still ring with a kind of brilliance. The ambiguities and difficulties are now more prominent. The poetry is still of a hard gravity mixed with experimentalism of the highest kind (Milton was one of the great experimental poets when it came to reshaping poetic genres for his own ends).
Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves
With calm of mind, all passion spent.
Having read a lot of Greek tragedy now, I think Greek tragedy is much better. But Milton made an admirable and mostly successful reshaping of Greek tragedy with biblical material to make a really compelling theater of the mind.
Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves
With calm of mind, all passion spent.
Having read a lot of Greek tragedy now, I think Greek tragedy is much better. But Milton made an admirable and mostly successful reshaping of Greek tragedy with biblical material to make a really compelling theater of the mind.
March 13, 2018
Milton took the format of Greek tragedy and applied it to the biblical story of Samson and Delilah in this interesting little exercise in tragedy that has some autobiographical elements. While the poetry is just as gripping while dense as any of Milton's best work is the play seems to lose its way and repeat itself a bit too often in my opinion. I will certainly read this again in different circumstances sometime and I may change my opinion, but this work felt a lot darker and more difficult to focus on than Paradise Lost or Regained.
December 15, 2025
autobiographical but also autopoetic — including opinions on all sorts of phenomena including pure vs. pomp religion, chosenness, nationhood, mythmaking and historical memory (not to omit the 'workability' of some marriages), and written in gracefully contoured unity of form with a classically calibrated 'socially purifying catharsis'
edit: adding the fifth star after 2 years because this is really just grandpa milton's lovably transparent swan song – no notes
edit: adding the fifth star after 2 years because this is really just grandpa milton's lovably transparent swan song – no notes
April 2, 2020
"უძლურო განსჯავ, მოქცეულო ძლიერ სხეულში!
გარეშე სიბრძბის ორწილისა რაღა არს ძალა,
თუ არა მხოლოდ მოუქნელი, მოუხეშავი,
თანვე ამაყი, რა ადვილად განადგურდება,
თუკი გაება ორგულობის მახეში იგი"
"ვიცი, რას შეაქვს გახრწნილება ხალხის გულებში,
რა აიძულებთ, რა უბიძგებთ მონობისაკენ,
ბორკილს არიან მიჩვეული,
ბორკილი უყვართ,
სულით მდაბალნი ვერ ჰგუობენ თავისუფლებას"
გარეშე სიბრძბის ორწილისა რაღა არს ძალა,
თუ არა მხოლოდ მოუქნელი, მოუხეშავი,
თანვე ამაყი, რა ადვილად განადგურდება,
თუკი გაება ორგულობის მახეში იგი"
"ვიცი, რას შეაქვს გახრწნილება ხალხის გულებში,
რა აიძულებთ, რა უბიძგებთ მონობისაკენ,
ბორკილს არიან მიჩვეული,
ბორკილი უყვართ,
სულით მდაბალნი ვერ ჰგუობენ თავისუფლებას"
Displaying 1 - 30 of 157 reviews