Many students have found a course in bibliography and research meaningful for their future work, teaching, publication and oral presentations; conversely, others whose later teaching and writing would have benefited from such study have come to regret the lack of such a course. Three matters are important in setting up the course:

A. ‘Bibliography’ covers more topics than simply documentation forms. Though knowledge of the Chicago Manual of Style or the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers is important, these handbooks do not investigate ‘bibliographic’ matters that research will encounter.

B. The course should present content and activities that relate to many fields, approaches, and interests as well as many periods of literature and all genres. Content and activities should encompass the fields and interests of the students, the methodologies of writing and criticism, and the kinds of work that the future may require of a dedicated professional. Therefore, the course should not be devoted, for example, to a study of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (the instructor's particular interest), but its study may very easily be included.

C. The course should include such topics as editing, resources for information, the significance of past ‘knowledge’, the revision of past knowledge by updated study, and sources of correct and up-to-date information. Memory can often be faulty; knowing where to find information is ultimately more important than actually knowing it.

THE text of Samson Agonistes poses a number of problems: its received text in terms of orthography, punctuation, capitalization, and the like; and therefore, its exactness of words and its prosody; its date of composition and even its date of publication. While no problems with specific line lengths and lineage or with images have been raised, such a destabilized text does not offer strong reliability. Some questioning of the similes at the end of the poem as to meaning, application, and appropriateness of their being included has been voiced. The dramatic poem appears in only one text, that of 1671, printed like its companion Paradise Regain’d by J. M., identified as John Macock(e). The lack of other renderings of the text, whether in full or part, in manuscript or print, limits an interpreter of the text to this one edition, and its problems therefore cast uncertainties over a number of matters readers would like to explore.

PRINTING AND TEXT

Changes were made in the type as the 1671 volume was being printed, with two states in signatures B, C, F, H, K, M, N, and P. Samson Agonistes is given on sigs. I–P. The final gathering is a half sheet, and the preliminary material before the beginning of Regain’d is apparently a quarter sheet, of course unsigned. Signature [A] does not seem to be part of the final printed sheet, signature P, as would often occur in contemporary printing practice. Harris F. Fletcher1 reports that signatures B and following were printed before the preliminary material in signature [A], and that the introductory material for Samson Agonistes on I1–4 (eight pages; in order, title page, “Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call’d Tragedy,” “The Argument,” and “The Persons”) was printed continuously with the rest and without interruption. He noted only that the title pages of both works employed a different font in the second “X” of their dates (MDCLXXI). That the printer made errors or his copy text was difficult to follow seems clear from the fact that P4, in two states, has Errata for both poems, involving word changes, spelling, punctuation, and omission; the rather careless printer made numerous errors in line numbers in both Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes, as well. Page P3v is an “Omissa” sheet for Samson Agonistes; the omissa to be inserted are present lines 1527–35 and 1537.

John Milton’s dramatic poem Samson Agonistes has long been a favorite work of many people, and has long been read as simply a version of the story of Samson in the Bible and its author’s “last” view of his world, now blind and victim of domestic and political strife. Its “strange” prosody seen in terms of English syllabic verse, its Hebraic origin in Greek form with Christian import, its alleged figuration of a Christ figure, its relationship with its first publication’s companion poem Paradise Regain’d (or lack thereof), its nonconformity to expected stage presentation have all evoked numerous critical statements since the mid-eighteenth century. In the last half of the twentieth century it has also been scrutinized as possibly not just a simple version of the confused Samson legend of the Bible, and Samson has been examined as not just a folk hero, positive of evaluation, but a negative figure to be rejected as exemplar. It has been speculated as earlier work in composition, or at least earlier in its first inspiration and partial writing, yielding perhaps an “unfinished” text. Biographical substance in any direct way has been rejected (and then reasserted). On one hand there is misogynistic Milton’s view of woman and the wrestlings with power structures in the patriarchal world of both gender and government. On the other there is some infrequent rebuttal through its presentation of a renovated woman and an ideal concept of marriage. Basic to many of these arguments is the assumption that the author is expressing his own beliefs and attitudes when Dalila and Samson’s relationship with her are introduced, yielding a masculinist Milton of the most extreme kind. In turn are provoked defenses of Milton through a reading of Dalila in positive terms and through argument of genderizations during his lifetime (which, indeed, continue in contemporary life). The dramatic poem has taken on political dimensions in the past and in the present.

My study of Milton and this text raises fundamental objections to the usual interpretations I hear and read: “biography,” prosody, the dates of composition and the reliability of text, the generic expectations, the figure of Samson and his seeming typology, the political philosophy which its author would read out of that text, and, most importantly for today’s critical world, the female/male questions that are raised and Milton’s attitude toward them.

A major question that is usually not directly made part of gender discussions of the dramatic poem, but that does direct many people’s thinking, is the alleged biographical nature of the work. Because Milton was blind and Samson was blind, they become equated, thus also aligning the monarchy, which Milton argued against, with the Philistines; such identification calls for a real-life Dalila, and Mary Powell, Milton’s first wife, becomes the dubious recipient of that role. But then it is supposed there would be a real Harapha, and nominated has been Salmasius, that is, Claude Saumaise, whose Defensio Regia, Pro Charles I elicited Milton’s governmentally assigned Pro populo Anglicano defensio and who was for a while thought the author of Regii sanguinis clamor ad cúlum adversus parricidas Anglicanos, a rebuttal of Milton’s tract. (That is, Salmasius wrote a defense of Charles I immediately after Charles’ execution by the Parliamentarians, of whom Oliver Cromwell was a major leader, and Milton, having become the Secretary for Foreign Languages to the newly formed Council of State, was ordered to write a rebuttal, justifying the new government and the actions which brought it to power. In turn a tract impugning the “Parricide,” the shedding of the blood of the patriarchal king, was published attacking Milton. This was written by Peter Du Moulin, but was early assigned to Salmasius.) Even Milton’s father has been talked of in connection with the role of Manoa, as farfetched as that would seem to be! Manoa represents, for Howard Erskine-Hill, the image of those who acted to save Milton in 1660 from punishment for his work with the Cromwellian government. The insubstantiality of this kind of biographical reading of the dramatic poem, as well as the silliness it has brought in tow, has been repeatedly shown, but it is the foundation on which such important studies as Hill’s Milton and the English Revolution and Radzinowicz’s Toward Samson Agonistes have been built. Any biographical reading of the poem is deeperset and should involve the political substruct of the poem. Hill and Radzinowicz do examine the political underpinnings of the work but in literal terms of Milton’s experience rather than as political perception.

THE dramatic character (in a dramatic work as well as on the stage) operates with its own integrity. That “integrity” may ultimately define a pernicious, lying deceitful person within the literary work, but that person must be understood from that dramatic character’s own existence, not from some prejudgment. (Compare, for instance, Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello or Thersites in Troilus and Cressida.) Of course, an author may be doctrinaire and offer only a mouthpiece for personal views or a figure espousing opposed views which are to be negated (or even ridiculed) in the course of the action. But generally a dramatic character takes on its own life, a personality that acts and thinks in definition of that individual being. Some characters will be better defined than others, those who are leading performers in the drama; some will be defined largely in relationship with the leading performers. In Samson Agonistes it is Samson who is the leading character with Manoa, Dalila, and Harapha as other characters whose relationship with him in the work define a reading of them. Manoa and Dalila (as Delilah) have prepoem existences that are recalled in the narratives recounting the past. Are their existences in the present the same as their existences in the past? Do not their existences in the present offer dramatic characters with their own integrity within the drama? Are they not different from the figures of the biblical story? The Public Officer and the Messenger are functionary only, offering nothing of individual selves, and the Chorus operating as a voice and in the exodos as two voices is defined in relationship to Samson, but it also exhibits a variability, a mercurial stance depending on the specific circumstance in which and with whom Samson is involved. Its “integrity” is there though based on reaction. Some criticism has seen the Chorus as Milton’s voice, not recognizing its reactive stance and its inconsistencies.

The lack of attention to dramatic characters in looking at Milton’s dramatic poem and its author is a common critical failure of readers of this work. Since Milton’s God is Samson’s God, since Milton emphasized marriage and “companionship of mind,” Samson has been seen primarily in positive terms within the poem, and Dalila only in negative ones. Readers of Milton’s works seldom seem to entertain the possibility that he and his text offer ambiguity rather than personal ideological positions.

THE positive view of the biblical Samson, representing an agent of the true God who pulls down the pillars around the heads of those opposed to the true God and his nation, overlies Milton’s poem. One can understand the flickerings of a Christ typology illuminating this Samson, particularly after one has moved in the 1671 volume from the earthly Jesus who will become the Christ (with his ministry and crucifixion after the end of the poem) to a human being who has succumbed to wrong thinking and who now, through trial, must learn repentance. In his final actions he joins the presentations of Milton’s contemporaries as the culture hero that Jackie Di Salvo has delineated for us. Milton’s dramatic poem, however, is concerned with how the positive Samson recovered from his errors of the past, what those errors were, and thus how they can be overcome. While in his final actions Milton’s Samson may become a symbol of the Good Old Cause as Christopher Hill views the biblical Samson, within the full poem more has happened and is happening, setting up a criticism of the adherents of that cause which has failed through such errors as are observable in the representative Samson. Such underlying criticism of the adherents of the Good Old Cause, not the Cause itself, is similar to Milton’s intent in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649), which he wrote

If Samson does represent the Good Old Cause, it has failed in the past because of pride, foremost, but also because of abrogation of vows and self-interest.

On the other hand, Laura Lunger Knoppers argues that the execution of the regicides and its spectacle of martyrdom in the early years of the Restoration provided Milton with example for Samson as divine witness to the Good Old Cause.

BECAUSE of his importance in the history of literature and culture itself, Milton has been singled out as an epitome of influence upon people’s thinking about gender concerns. The view of Eve that some readers have seen in Paradise Lost is accepted both as valid and as reflective of Milton’s own beliefs. Since Eve is prototypical woman, the characterization that is advanced becomes the commonplace analysis of woman by and for a male audience and, through patriarchal domination, for a female audience as well. The point of Milton’s influence on culture and of subordinate, inferior status for woman in patriarchal society was made by Virginia Woolf in her reference to “Milton’s bogey” in A Room of one’s Own. The first part of that point is eminently correct, for many people have learned even their Bible from Milton’s poem: what is read there is what is deemed Truth. But of course that depends on how one interprets what is read, and in the case of Eve much depends on not only careful and deep reading but on what attitudes, expectations, and beliefs the reader starts with. The gender relationships of the second part of that bogey have, from Hebraic times to the present, been observable in practice and thus in attitude over and over again, though Milton and his poem be nowhere in the background of those who so classify woman. Again it should be obvious that the second part in terms of Milton and his poem depends upon the interpretation of the poem and its characterization of Eve. If readers see Eve as inferior and take on Adam’s attitude in his Book X diatribe in Paradise Lost, then many people can be said to have learned of Woman’s alleged inferior and evil nature from it; but if one reads differently, chalking up Adam’s action and reaction to Milton’s scorn, one comes to see Woman as the hope for salvation. A masculinist attitude is not removed, but anything misogynistic is dispelled. “Milton’s bogey” should be read not as what Milton believed to be a “bogey,” but as the “bogey” that one kind of reading of Paradise Lost can create for some people.

MANY years ago William Riley Parker remarked the “legend” that the career of John Milton as poet and prose writer exhibits an agenda of hopes for achievement that, one item after another, was completed without swerving from his determined course. While we can argue with that “legend” as far as his career is concerned, it does epitomize a consistency, even a pertinacious unswerving, of thought and of value in life and of belief in God. We may credit as the cause of his not following a ministerial career in 1632, when he was graduated from Cambridge University with a master of arts degree, that he did not receive a fellowship or a preferment for a parish living, or that he felt it incumbent to stay at his father’s house to care for his aging parents. Yet, as his letter in the Trinity MS addressed to an unknown friend relates, he felt he would not make a good preacher, and as the sonnet “How Soon Hath Time,” which he enclosed with that letter, indicates, he was, shortly before his graduation, uncertain of what he wanted to do in life or where his life would lead him. He is not rejecting ministerial and religious thought, only a clerical career; “All is … / As ever in [his] great task-maisters eye.” For Milton the prime thought motivating any of his actions generates from his belief in God and God’s omnipotence and omniscience and mercy.

“A Paraphrase on Psalm 114,” the earliest poem we have by Milton (apparently written in 1624), is a Passover psalm celebrating the miraculous action of God. As reference to Exodus xiv:21 reveals, comparison is made with the Lord’s separating the waters of the Red Sea so that the chosen people, the Israelites, could pass over to Canaan and escape the bondage of Pharaoh (metaphorically construed as Satan). God will act to help and save his true servants even against all seeming impossiblities, such as the waters of the Red Sea would render, normally blocking passage through it. Psalm civ depicts an event in the conquest of Canaan when the Israelites, bearing the Ark of the Covenant, pass over the river Jordan.

SAMSON is led on to the scene out of his prison in Gaza by someone (“Thy guiding hand”), apparently a young Danite, who, one would imagine, stays in close position to aid the blind man, although no further reference is made to him. Someone also leads Samson off alone after line 1426, and this according to the argument could be the Ocer. Samson is brought to the “spacious Theatre” (1615, 1605) “as a public servant,” perhaps by this same officer who conducts him to center stage. Perhaps it is more likely that the young Danite served both to lead Samson to the theater and to the pillars; the Bible specifically refers to “the lad that held him by the hand.” “Where they led him” and later “for intermission sake they led him/ Between the pillars’’ (1623, 1629–30, my italics) sets up some possible confusions. Samson requests that “his guide” let him lean against the Pillars” and “He unsuspitious led him” (1630–35). The messenger’s word “they” may thus mean only that the Philistines allowed such movement to occur, there being but one Philistine guide or the young Danite. But the first-line reference to “Thy guiding hand” also sets up the ambiguity that intended is God’s hand that is operative from the very beginning of the dramatic poem straight through to the denouement when “his guide” enables him to effect the catastrophe. God is invoked by the Chorus when Samson leaves their presence:

The text thus supports an interpretation of the full poem as guided by God who oversees Samson’s renovation and triumph of person over the Philistines. Such a reading calls into question the reading of Samson’s death as self-murder and the whole as a narrative of a still boastful, violent, and negative exemplar.

Samson’s “here leave me to respire” (11) suggests further meanings than simply “breathe” or “breathe again” the wholesome air outside the “common Prison.” The word implies the “spiritus” of God and is seconded by the air’s being “The breath of Heav’n fresh-blowing, pure and sweet” (10).

AS a result of recent feminist critical movements, the two important female characters in John Milton’s major poems have come under particular scrutiny, with an accompanying reassessment of Milton himself as male author. These fictionalizations are Eve in Paradise Lost, a portrayal of the female progenitor of human life in the Bible, generally believed to have had real existence, and Dalila in Samson Agonistes, a rendition of Delilah in the biblical story found in Judges. She and the Samson story are treated as truly historical because they are biblical, by some people as actual persons in every detail. But the points of tangency between these two female literary personages are slight and their differences at least those one always finds between individuals. The new critical scrutiny has also involved revisions of Samson as symbol during the mid-seventeenth century, within the dramatic poem, and for a political present. The privileging of the feminine discourse and the political issues has, unfortunately, disengaged parts of the poem from the whole and has frequently ignored the literary nature of the work. The study here presented reviews much that has gone before in the reading of the dramatic poem but extends and amplifies and reinterprets that commentary, and offers an approach to the text that reifies both the world of the poem and the uncertainties of the world of the poem as not only reader-available but writer-created.

In the dramatic poem we see Milton expanding the bare biblical story of Samson’s work at a grist mill as the captive of his tribe’s enemies, the Philistines, and his being galvanized into the Great Deliverer it had been prophesied he would be when he pulls down the pillars of the Philistine temple, killing the lords and aristocracy gathered therein. Whether he is indeed through his action the Great Deliverer and how one understands the person Samson at this momentous event are questions that have arisen for readers of Milton’s text, a text thus seen as recounting the Bible story but subverting it through analysis into a questioning not only of whether such action accomplishes delivery and exemplifies championship, but also of motivation and the possibility of renovation.

EVE is not a seductress, of course, although Adam is seduced by her female charms; she is not fraudulent, not even after the Fall when she believes that she has taken on Wisdom and Godliness, and though she is acting as Satan is hopeful she will, she is not consciously his agent. She is woman and she is wife; and she becomes an exemplar of sincere repentance. Eve and Dalila seem not to have certain qualities in common, and certainly do not have others in common. They cannot be put together in a generality without clear specifications of person and circumstance, neither as woman nor as wife. (Compare Bennett’s and Revard’s articles noted before on concepts of Woman and on linking of Eve and Dalila.) Eve as wife works with her husband, has her own activities and responsibilities, is companion and helpmate, exercises her own mind, argues its reasoning, and makes her own choices. Adam as masculine being takes on certain activities and responsibilities better demanding strength, and Eve as feminine being takes on certain activities and responsibilities not requiring so much strength. This can be seen in their differing gardening activities, for example. A similar division of activity is seen in Adam’s naming the animals and Eve’s naming the flowers (naming ability being assigned to humankind in Milton, not simply to the male as in the Bible). Beneath this is an implication of the activity of animals and the passivity and beauty of flowers, with engendering overtones. Milton separates man and woman through various gendering descriptions and associations, even though today many people minimize (and even try to eliminate) such separations. The difference in the physicality of sexual parts is too obvious and inadequate as an explanation of genderfication in culture. Milton, though we do not like the stereotyping, offers some explanation. On the other hand, we see no wifely qualities in Dalila other than sexual partner and, if we accept her as being sincere, concern now for her husband’s plight. Her repentance and what might have been its results had Samson credited it are quite different from Eve’s.

The concept of Eve and Dalila as Woman in Milton’s poems must be placed in relation to Adam and Samson.

THE concepts of tragedy that we have looked at in Chapter 3 and the questions of Samson’s development taken up in Chapter 4 do not really account for the reader’s reaction at the end of the dramatic poem. This reaction is due in large part, I argue, to a vague identification with the hero and becomes the key to what is the tragedy that the drama exposes. The substance of tragedy has been molded in various ways. At the base is the effect which the readers (or audience) feel when the final lines are voiced, an effect rather difficult of definition or description. As I read the final lines of Samson Agonistes I am crushed by a sense of waste, a sense of What is the Good? a sense of frustration. Samson seems to have triumphed and his faith in God seems to have been shown, and the “evil” Philistines have been punished for their treatment of the Danites and Samson particularly. But have the Philistines been punished indeed? has the audience achieved new acquist? are we certain God’s face will appear when least expected? It is this sense of frustration which dominates. We are calmed by having experienced a serious imitation of our own sense of pity and our own fears of life, but we recognize that Samson’s story is constantly played through time and that we are part of another recurrence. The pity we feel is both self-pity and compassion for others caught in the trials of life. We are too often Samson the proud, the self-defeated one relying on “prophecy” and on hope. The fears we experience concern both our personal conquering of temptations and the pernicious motives that surround us everywhere. We are constantly like Samson making bad choices and succumbing to self-deceit. We constantly look to the future to be different and to solve the ills and problems of the past – a kind of “Happy New Year” syndrome.

What sets Samson Agonistes apart from much Elizabethan tragedy is that we do not feel simply a contest between virtue and vice with everything neatly colored white or black. We are not, in this drama, shown the road to ruin: the road already has been walked. We are not shown the way of all flesh: the flesh has previously succumbed.