I took a break from Samson Agonistes for a few days as I'd felt discouraged after struggling with the first five hundred lines (it's 1,578 lines altogether). However, I picked it up again today and it came much more easily, in part because I used a basic trick I used to learn poetry when I was younger: I read it aloud. SA is a closet drama, which means that it was written to be read rather than performed: it's for the closet (or as we might say study or private sitting room) rather than the stage. Nevertheless, I think that most poetry and drama becomes much easier to understand when you the words are actually said aloud.
SA was no exception and I'm finding that I'm rather enjoying it now. Samson has an initial scene wherein he bewails his fate to his father: blind, betrayed, and a prisoner of the Philistines. Then in comes Delilah (Dalila in the play) all dolled up and says, rather sassily, "It was your fault you ended up like this; you should know that women love to know secrets but can never keep them." She offers to speak to the Philistine lords on his behalf, provided that Sansom agrees to return to her as her husband and allows her to nurse him; naturally he refuses. She exhibits little regret, and gives him the following speech before leaving:
I will be named among the famousest
Of women, sung at solemn festivals,
Living and dead recorded, who to save
Her country from a fierce destroyer, chose
Above the faith of wedlock bands... (982-986)
This is doubly (perhaps even triply) interesting. First, it positions Samson as a "fierce destroyer"; here and elsewhere in the play it is made clear that to the Philistines, Samson is a dishonest thug who quite deserves to be taken down. Second, Dalila's speech (which is a great deal longer than the excerpt I quoted) stands as an unusual example at this time of a woman eloquently defending her controversial actions and, furthermore, describing how she will be treated as a hero. Her actions won't be seen as excusable in her country- they'll be laudable, and the public will treat her as they treat their male heroes.
After she leaves, the Philistine warrior Harapha visits Samson to taunt him (again, he describes Samson as "A murderer, a revolter, and a robber" (1180)) and Samson's response, in spite of his blindness, is to challenge him to a duel. Harapha replies:
With thee a man condemned, a slave enrolled,
Due by the law to capital punishment?
To fight with thee no man of arms will deign. (1224-1226)
This is the principle rule of the seventeenth-century duel in a nutshell. Harapha could have quite easily agreed to fight with Samson, and he certainly believes that he would win if they did fight. However, even though Harapha is officially a man of the Old Testament, he is for all other purposes a thoroughly modern post-Renaissance gentleman whom convention prevents duelling with someone of a lower social status. It is not even that he feels compassion for Samson's impoverished condition; rather, Samson is beneath his notice, and to duel with him would be to indicate to the rest of society that they could interact as equals, thus compromising Harapha's own social standing.
Anyway, I haven't finished reading the play yet but I'm very pleased with what I've got out of it so far. Looking forward to reading the rest tomorrow.
Just a quick one to excuse the gap in entries. In part it's due to a very bad case of 'flu that left me unable to do much in the way of anything. However, I did manage to meet with my supervisor last week and she told me that I'm going to have to read what I've always feared reading: Milton.
I read Samson Agonistes and sections of Paradise Lost during my undergraduate days but it never stuck with me and consequently much of what I'm reading now feels as though I'm reading it with fresh eyes. How does one read Milton for the first time? What's striking me most of all is Milton's devotion to the classical in his discussion of Biblical figures, which nicely reflects contemporary debates about classical vs. Biblical education. After all, could a Christian country rightly heroify classical figures? Even leaving aside issues regarding the non-Christian's soul, classical culture simply, and necessarily, had a different set of morals to seventeenth-century Christan culture.
Bearing this in mind, I think that Milton's framing of the Biblical story of Samson as a Greek tragedy is highly interesting. One is left with a feeling that Samson's life has been wasted, rather than filled with admiration for his defeat of the Philistines. His destruction of the temple is not a glorious victory but rather the last act of a man on the brink of defeat.
Reading Milton has also made me consider the inevitable "fatal flaw" of all heroes, the thing about them that makes them imperfect in some way and often leads to their downfall. Achilles had his heel; Lancelot had his love for Guinevere; Othello had his jealousy; Hamlet had his procrastinationary nature. Leading on from this, I was reminded of Charles I's conviction of the divine right of king's in the following lines from SA:
I might begin Israel's deliverance,
The work to which I was divinely called. (225-6)
I am not sure how intentional this was on Milton's part. Traditionally Samson's Achilles heel has been his inability to see the treachery of Delilah. In SA Samson's physical blindness has a direct parallel with his emotional blindness. However, less obviously, the theme of Samson's pride also runs throughout the play. God gave Samson his strength in his hair, he tells us, to remind him of the "lightness" of his power, and he is punished when he takes it for granted - but perhaps he is still not entirely cured of his vanity.
