Play: Samson Agonistes

Overview
John Milton's Samson Agonistes (1671) is a tragic dramatic poem cast in the mold of Greek tragedy and drawn from the biblical story of Samson. The poem confines its action to a single dramatic setting and uses a chorus and messenger to shape the narrative. Milton concentrates on the psychological and spiritual crisis of Samson after his capture, blindness, and degradation among the Philistines.

Plot Summary
Samson, now a captive in Gaza, wrestles with despair, shame, and a sense of divine abandonment. Conversations with his father and a chorus of Danite elders probe his lost strength and perceived culpability. Dalila appears and taunts him for his betrayal and downfall, intensifying his inner torment. A Messenger reports Philistine celebrations and the arrival of Harapha, a Philistine champion who boasts of his people's triumph and injures Samson's reputation further. In the poem's climax Samson, after a final struggle of conscience and faith, prays for renewed strength and brings down the temple of Dagon, killing himself and a multitude of Philistines and thus effecting Israel's deliverance.

Characters and Dramatic Method
The central figure is Samson, depicted as a hero broken by captivity yet capable of profound moral and theological reflection. The chorus of Danites provides the classical counterpoint, voicing communal responses and moral commentary. Secondary figures, Samson's father and the mocking Dalila and Harapha, serve to externalize different pressures: filial love, personal betrayal, and public humiliation. Milton adopts mechanisms from Greek tragedy, strict unity of place, a restrained number of characters, choral odes, and an offstage report of certain violent actions, to concentrate the moral and spiritual intensity.

Themes
Blindness operates on multiple levels: physical loss of sight, moral blindness, and the paradox of inner vision. Strength is both literal and symbolic, representing bodily power, vocation, and the capacity to act for God's purposes. Fate and providence intersect with individual responsibility; Samson's failings are real, but so is a providential arc that transforms sacrifice into deliverance. Repentance becomes a central moral movement, moving from despair toward an acceptance of suffering as a means to redemption. The poem repeatedly interrogates how human weakness and divine purpose coexist.

Form, Language, and Tone
Milton writes in austere blank verse, favoring rhetorical intensity, classical diction, and scriptural resonance. The language is measured, often sermonic, and the drama advances through long speeches, lyrical choral passages, and sharp confrontations. The tone alternates between bitterness, introspection, and ultimately solemn exaltation. Milton's own blindness and theological commitments inform the poem's meditations on sight, silence, and prophetic vocation.

Significance and Interpretation
Samson Agonistes stands as a late masterpiece that fuses classical tragic form with biblical subject matter and Puritan moral seriousness. It has been read as a personal meditation on Milton's blindness and as a political allegory about liberty and tyranny, but it resists a single definitive reading by insisting on moral complexity and tragic irony. The final act reframes defeat as sacrificial victory, leaving readers to reckon with the uneasy union of human frailty and transcendent purpose.