Samson Agonistes

By John Milton

The Failure of English Republicanism and the Restoration

One critic has argued that Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes are part of Milton's interpretation of the failure of the godly reformation and the Cromwellian political regime, and the path for the godly to follow under the restored Stuart monarchy. This symbiotic interpretation, i.e. that a full understanding of Milton's intentions can only be discovered by considering both texts in comparison, serves for an interesting argument.

One of the major themes of Paradise Regained is Christ's repudiation of the military approach. His rejection of the role of 'military Messiah' who would forcefully liberate the Jews is of central importance to the story of Christ. But the issue remains: why would Milton write a poem celebrating the pacifism of Christ? Why focus on that aspect of the New Testament? What does this reveal about his attitude to the Civil Wars and republic? Most importantly for this discussion, how does this relate to the poet's portrait of Samson, the military hero?

Samson Agonistes is the companion poem, or pendant, to Paradise Regained; they were published in the same volume in 1671. The temptations of Christ recorded in the New Testament (i.e. the Gospels of St Matthew 4:1-11, and St Luke 4:1-13) do not record Satan offering military glory and conquest as part of 'all the kingdoms of the world'. Satan says 'All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them'. Milton's interpretation is crucial here - there is nothing in the Gospels to imply that the power and glory Satan offers Christ is to be achieved by military means; that is Milton's own interpretation of the temptation. Satan mocks Christ in book iii for his lack of achievement, drawing attention to great military heroes from history (Scipio, Alexander the Great, Pompey) and taunting Christ's 'under-achievement'.

Christ replies, 'They err who count it glorious to subdue | By conquest far and wide...' (iii.71-92; 400- 2). Christ's repudiation of war (reiterating book xi of Paradise Lost) marks Milton's pacifism, it has no origins in the New Testament. The Messenger's response to Manoa's question about Samson's fate, 'Inevitable cause | At once both to destroy and be destroyed' is poignant in this; Milton's point is that if you chose to destroy it will inevitably involve self-destruction. 'Destroy' is a word that Milton deployed for Satan, and its connotations are clear. Further moral evaluation is evident in Milton's language; Milton defines the 'glory' that Satan tempts Christ with as military glory. The Chorus praise Samson's glorious achievement, exalting the revenge he has enacted upon the Philistines:

'O dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious!
Living or dying thou has fulfilled
The work for which thou wast foretold
To Israel, and now li'st victorious
Among the slain self-killed
Not willingly, but tangled in the fold,
Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoined
Thee with thy slaughtered foes in number more
Than all thy life had slain before.' (ll.1660-68)

The Chorus evaluates Samson's success by the number of Philistines he has killed; they assess his life, and the 'dire necessity' of his death, in these terms. 'Necessity' is another word associated with Satan in Milton's oeuvre: hence in Paradise Lost after he has justified destroying Adam and Eve, the poet remarks of Satan - 'So spake the fiend, and with necessity / The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds'.

Milton's Samson is an old-style military hero; this, rather than whether Samson committed suicide or not, was Milton's concern. Samson is the warrior-hero, who deploys Satan's martial means, regardless of the sanctity of the objective. In this sense it is interesting to consider Samson Agonistes as a companion- piece to Paradise Regained; Samson is the old-style military hero who uses the old means in his attempt to save his people. It is Christ, and his approach to the salvation of his people in his duty as Messiah that captures Milton's attention.

Christ's method is that of patience and heroic martyrdom for the sake of truth. Where Samson offers only death, Christ promises life. Samson perceives himself as an instrument of God to be deployed to save his people, taking a public role as their 'deliverer'. It is this very role that Christ rejects. These are the values that Milton had come to uphold by the Restoration. His faith in the 'good old cause' had been shattered, and in his attempts to explain away the failure to safeguard the religious and civil liberties of the godly, Milton turned to emphasise the fundamental importance of purging the innermost spiritual tyranny before freedom from political tyranny could be addressed. Milton had made this point in the Second Defense of the English People (1654) and the last of his revolutionary prose tracts, The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660). It is reiterated in book ii of Paradise Regained:

'he who reigns within himself, and rules
Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king;
Which every wise and virtuous man attains;
And who attains not, ill aspires to rule
Cities of men, or headstrong multitudes,
Subject himself to anarchy within,
Or lawless passions in him which he serves.
But to guide nations in the way of truth
By saving doctrine, and from error lead
To know, and, knowing worship God aright,
Is yet more kingly, this attracts the soul.
Governs the inner man, the nobler part,
That other o'er the body only reigns.
And oft by force, which a generous mind
So reigning can be no sincere delight
Besides to give a kingdom hath been thought
Greater and nobler done, and to lay down
Far more magnanimous, than to assume.' (ii.466- 83)

The ending of the two poems are starkly contrasted. Christ returns to his mother's house 'unobserved / ... private returned', without pomp or celebration; whereas at the end of Samson Agonistes Manoa announces:

'Let us go find the body where it lies
Soaked in his enemies' blood, and from the stream
With lavers pure, and cleansing herbs wash off
The clotted gore. I with what speed the while
(Gaza is not in plight to say us nay)
Will send for all my kindred, all my friends
To fetch him hence and solemnly attend
With silent obsequy and funeral train
Home to his father's house.' (ll.1725-33)

Samson lies dead, and with him the old military values; Christ walks alone and unobserved. The 'new' Christian values of 'patience and heroic martyrdom' have superseded the old. With the two poems Milton established a contrast between the heroic ambitions of military glory and the idea of the Messiah as a military hero or conqueror and the values the Messiah actually brought. Above attempts to use Satanic violence and war for the purposes of God's will, Christ brought the ethic of private moral victories and the preparation of the individual soul for the Kingdom of Heaven. But what is Milton's purpose in this? The path that Christ takes in Paradise Regained is that which Milton advocates in The Readie and Easie Way; the poet, on the dawn of the collapse of republicanism and toleration in the church, had come to believe that the Cromwellian experiment, though its intentions were godly, was ineffective because it lacked the day- to-day spiritual victories within 'the people'. In Paradise Lost with the characterisation of Satan as the archetypal classical military hero the picture of this concept emerges more clearly. Dr Johnson observed of Milton in his Lives of the English Poets:

'He hated monarchs in the state and prelates in the church; for he hated all whom he was required to obey. It is to be suspected that his predominant desire was to destroy rather than establish, and that he felt not so much the love of liberty as repugnance to authority.'

While we may not agree with Dr Johnson on all of these points, particularly with regards to Milton's concern for republican form of government, the anti-authoritarian attitudes remained with him until the end of his life. Milton indeed was very concerned with safeguarding civil and spiritual liberty, and the creation of a new society of the godly. Later in his life he lost faith in the methods of the good old cause such as Cromwell's Major Generals, which attempted to forcibly change society, and many of the men who had come to power later in the regime. Milton was concerned for what would happen to the godly under the Restored Monarchy; he placed his belief not in the ability to overturn the state by military force, but in the daily battles of individuals with temptation and toils on the path to God.