Samson Agonistes Essay Questions

What elements of ancient Greek tragedy are present in Samson Agonistes?

Milton announces in the preface to the play that he has written in the style of the famous Greek tragedians. In Samson Agonistes, the influence of the Greeks manifests in two major ways. The first is the presence of a chorus. The chorus in Samson Agonistes are voices of Israel, and as such they provide laudatory background information about Samson's heroic feats prior to his capture. The chorus also speaks directly to Samson, at times sympathizing with him and at times disagreeing with him, in order to help stir the philosophical discourse that undergirds the play as a whole. Second, Milton compresses the action of the play into a period of no less than 24 hours, a convention taken from the Greek tradition. This brevity creates a sense of urgency to the play but also allows Milton to focus intensely on the experience of a single individual.

"Agonistes" is a Greek word denoting one who faces an inner struggle. How does the title contribute to the play as a whole?

That Milton chooses a Greek term for his title is significant because it once again underscores his debt to the ancient Greek tragedians. Moreover, the title is a straightforward depiction of what becomes a complex philosophical and spiritual journey. Samson's inner struggle is fraught with competing concerns, including his blindness, his relationship with Delila, his duty to Israel, and his temptation to be freed from prison. By the end of the play, however, the chorus suggests that the answer to all these facets of Samson's strife was to maintain a pure commitment to God.

To what extent is Samson a hero at the end of the play?

Milton is careful to discuss Samson's heroism as something of the past: when he still retained his superhuman strength, he performed heroic deeds in the name of Israel, including slaying a lion with his bare hands and killing 1,000 Philistines with only a donkey's jaw bone. Characters frequently lament not only the loss of Samson's sight and strength but also the loss of his heroism. Milton portrays Samson as a flawed hero, one whose mistake has cost him his physical strength but has, ultimately, offered him the chance to develop a different kind of heroism. By the end of the play, Samson is once again a hero for Israel, this time through self-sacrifice and a restored relationship with God.

Is Samson Agonistes a political text? Why or why not?

It is difficult to separate Milton's literary works from his history of political activism in England. Milton was a staunch critic of the English monarchy and the Church of England; he found both political and religious leaders to be corrupt and self-serving, uninterested in cultivating meaningful relationships with God. Many scholars have read Milton's epic Paradise Lost as an argument against absolutism and the divine right of kings. Samson Agonistes, too, can be interpreted as advancing political ideology, though with noticeably less fervor. For example, the play frequently refers to liberty as laborious or dangerous while bondage and servitude are more easily accepted by the masses. These references are also present in Milton's political writings that were circulated before the English Civil Wars and the execution of King Charles I. In this way, Samson Agonistes certainly expresses political ideas but comes to focus, as Milton himself likely did this late in his career, on the primacy of serving God above all else.

Why is the climactic action of the play—Samson destroying the Philistine amphitheater—merely reported rather than dramatized?

At the end of the play, both Manoa and the chorus wonder what is happening above them, leaving the reader stuck in the prison below the excitement of the amphitheater. It is only when a messenger comes to report what Samson did that readers learn what happened. This reporting is significant because it first and foremost continues the conventions of Greek tragedy (when major events were simply narrated rather than enacted) as well as closet drama, which had no concern for performance on the stage. Thematically, the reporting of Samson's deed is also significant, as it underscore the importance of Samson's sacrifice for Israel. It is the chorus who speaks last, vocalizing the grateful expressions of Samson's Israelite brethren who have been saved by Samson's sacrifice. In this way, the report at the end of play foreshadows, for contemporary Christian readers, the figure of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.