BOTH AS A DRAMA AND AN ILLUSTRATION
OF THE POET'S LIFE.

AN INAUGURAL DISSERTATION

FOR OBTAINING

THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

IN THE

UNIVERSITY OF GETTINGEN.

BY

H. TH. WOLFF.

=

BERLIN.

PRINTED BY A. W. SCHADE (L. SCHALE

1871.

Samson Samson Agonistes is the only tragedy that Milton composed. The time when it was written is doubtful, and difficult to be fixed. For there is nothing to draw a conclusion from, except some slight allusions in the drama itself. The editors of Milton's Works and Life have attempted to discover from those allusions the time of its composition, but without having been able to produce a perfectly convincing result.

Bishop Newton conceives it to be the last of his poetical works. Hayley says that it probably flowed from the heart of the indignant poet soon after his spirit had been wounded by the calamitous fate of his friends, to which he alludes with so much energy and pathos, in the chorus ver. 652 etc. There is no doubt that Milton in the passage ver. 695/96:

„Or to the unjust tribunals, under the change of times, And condemnation of the ingrateful multitude“ reflected upon the trials and sufferings of his party after the Restoration, and probably had in mind the fate of Harry Vane, whose execution took place June 14th 1662. It appears, therefore, that the drama cannot have been written before that event, but it cannot be proved that the poet has composed it immediately after that time. Dunster takes another course to ascertain the time of its composition. He supposes the poet alludes in the passage beginning at ver. 75:

I dark in light, exposed

To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong" etc.

to his own fate and feelings, and observes that, as it appears, his third wife was particularly attentive to him, and treated his infirmities with much tenderness, this passage seems to restrict the time when this drama was written to a period previous to his last marriage, or at least nearly to that time, while the singular ill-treatment of his daughters was fresh in his memory. Milton married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshul, in 1665, at the age of fifty seven years. Consequently the composition of Samson Agonistes lies between 1662 and 1665. But if it be so, Samson Agonistes is not Milton's last poetical work, since we know the Paradise Regained" was not commenced till the summer of 1665. Our drama was published at the same time as the „Paradise Regained" in 1671, three years before his death. In regard to the choice of this particular subject, Milton seems to have been determined by the coincidence of his own circumstances and misfortunes with those of the blind Samson. What Dr. Warburton says of his having chosen it for the sake of the satire on bad wives, has been justly rejected as ridiculous by Jos. Warton. If this piece be a satire, the „Paradise Lost" is also a satire on had wives, because in this admirable poem a hero likewise falls by a woman. We may say, indeed, that there are few works having a moral tendency that could not be regarded as satires in such a sense. On the contrary, the whole subject is an outpouring of the poet's own feelings and sentiments, without any satirical tendencies. Milton, like Samson, was an indefatigable champion against his times, and a patient sufferer of the divine dispensations. It was this similitude, and nothing else that was undoubtedly the cause of the poem. What Milton's design was in composing this tragedy, he has expressed distinctly enough, both by the choice of the motto to the drama, and in the preface entitled

"Of that sort of dramatick poem which is called Tragedy". The former is taken from Aristotle, who says, Poet. cap. 6. Τραγωδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας κ. τ. λ. i. e. „Tragoedia est imitatio actionis seriae etc., per misericordiam et metum perficiens talium affectuum lustrationem." In the preface Milton expresses his design still more precisely by explaining that Aristotelic sentence: „Tragedy is said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated.“ As Milton himself did not intend the drama for the stage, he omitted the division into acts and scenes. Besides, as the kind of action has no particularly theatrical interest, being too didactic, and having too few incidents, it has never been acted, but was brought upon the stage by Handel in the form of an Oratorio. Samson Agonistes is not a piece for amusement or entertainment; it is a work to be read with great attention, to be studied with the deepest earnestness correspondent with its contents; it is a work that cannot be comprehended and enjoyed, unless the mind of the reader cooperate with that of the poet.

I.

There has been at different times, and there is still now a certain class of men who, in consequence of religious or moral principles, think tragical art to be of no moral worth, if not even pernicious to men. At the time of Milton the Puritans formed a class of this kind. Milton himself did not strictly belong to this party, but he had a great many friends among the Puritans, and a great inclination to Puritanism. He had, therefore,