Samson Agonistes
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Samson Agonistes is a tragic drama by John Milton. It originally appeared with the publication of Milton's Paradise Regained, A Poem In IV Books To Which Is Added Samson Agonistes. Samson Agonistes draws on the story of Samson from Judges 13-16 in the Old Testament. The drama starts in medias as Samson has been captured by the Philistines, had his hair, the container of his strength, cut off and his eyes cut out. Samson Agonistes combines Greek Tragedy with Hebrew Scripture. Milton believed that Bible was better in classical forms than those written by the Greeks and Romans.
John Milton
John Milton was a seventeenth-century English poet, polemicist, and civil servant in the government of Oliver Cromwell. Among Milton’s best-known works are the classic epic Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, considered one of the greatest accomplishments in English blank verse, and Samson Agonistes.
Writing during a period of tremendous religious and political change, Milton’s theology and politics were considered radical under King Charles I, found acceptance during the Commonwealth period, and were again out of fashion after the Restoration, when his literary reputation became a subject for debate due to his unrepentant republicanism. T.S. Eliot remarked that Milton’s poetry was the hardest to reflect upon without one’s own political and theological beliefs intruding.
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