As a play, Samson Agonistes falls into the literary genre of drama. Milton declares in the preface to the play that Samson Agonistes is a tragedy in the most traditional sense: he models the play on Greek tragedy, noting particularly the tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Milton also notes in this preface that he never intended the play to ever be performed on the stage. For Milton, this disclaimer is a way for him to explain the lack of stage direction or division of the text into acts and scenes. But Milton's note also places the text firmly in the sub-genre of closet drama.
Closet dramas are plays that are not written for the stage. As such, they feature no stage direction or other markers of performance. One crucial difference between traditional drama and closet drama during the early modern period was the plot. In a traditional drama, especially a tragedy, audiences were likely to witness elaborate fight scenes between characters as part of the storyline. In a closet drama, by contrast, action gives way to dialogue and philosophical discussion. In this way, many have argued that closet drama began with the ancient Greek dialogues written by philosophers like Plato, in which characters do little else but think out loud about the nature of humanity and the order of the universe.
Just as traditional drama enjoyed heightened popularity during the English Renaissance, so too did closet drama, though it certainly self-selected a difference audience (those reading closet drama, of course, had to be literate). Closet drama during this period has come to be associated primarily with women writers, whose work would not have been permitted to be performed in the theaters. Notable women writers of closet drama include Mary Sidney, Margaret Cavendish, and Elizabeth Cary.
One can only speculate why, precisely, Milton chose to structure Samson Agonistes as a closet drama. However, it is likely that, given Milton's repertoire, he too was more concerned with philosophical and spiritual discourse than he was with advancing a particular plot. Indeed, Milton's story of the biblical Samson relegates all of Samson's impressive feats to the past, focusing instead on Samson's idle and stagnant state as a prisoner of the Philistines. As such, the play concentrates intensely on the individual's private relationship with God, an important element of Milton's puritanical doctrine that informed much of his poetic and political work.
