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THES

“55 LIBRARY
Mlchigan State
900 \ Universlty

 

 

 

 

This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

Apotheosis of Revenge in the Epic Trilogy of John Milton:

Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes
presented by

Jin Sunwoo

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
of the requirements for

Ph .D . degree in English

 

2.9... \1\ Made

Major professor

 

Date May 22, 2001

 

MS U is an Afﬁrmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0- 12771

 

APOTHEOSIS OF REVENGE IN THE EPIC TRILOGY OF JOHN MILTON:
PARADISE LOST, PARADISE REGAINED, AND SAMSON AGONISTES

By

Jin Sunwoo

AN ABSTRACT OF A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Dept of English
2001

Professor Lister M. Matheson

ABSTRACT

APOTHEOSIS OF REVENGE IN THE EPIC TRILOGY OF JOHN MILTON:
PARADISE LOST, PARADISE REGAINED, AND SAMSON AGONISTES

By

Jin Sunwoo

This dissertation proposes that, despite the lack of scholarship on the
theme of revenge in Milton, revenge is integral to all three of his major poems,
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. A close reading of
. these poems not only reveals that the theme of revenge is pervasive in all three
works, but that Milton transforms the convention to create an apotheosis of
revenge. Milton achieves this apotheosis by modifying the traditional revenger,
who is marred by violence and hatred, into the sanctiﬁed revenger of God, who
achieves godly vengeance through patience and sufferance.

By examining the contrasting types of revenge as exempliﬁed by Satan on
the one hand and the Son and Samson on the other, this dissertation attempts to
show how Milton’s handling of the theme of revenge in his major poems is used
to contrast the failures of the Puritan Revolution with the original calling of the
Puritan party to'free the English nation from tyranny. This dissertation also
seeks to reveal that the theme of revenge raises larger issues such as
Providence, free will, and the role of humanity in providential history.

The dissertation begins by arguing against the traditional view that

revenge was condemned during the Renaissance. The ﬁrst chapter thus

 

 

examines the philosophical and theological justiﬁcation during the Renaissance
for Milton’s treatment of revenge as an instrument of divine justice in his three
major poetical works. The second chapter explores Milton’s treatment of Satan’s
revenge in Paradise Lost in relation to the problem of evil, which Milton sees as
arising from disobedience and the assertion of individual will over the will of God.
The third chapter examines Milton’s effort to create an apotheosis of revenge by
the Son in Paradise Regained, whose defeat of Satan serves as a deﬁnitive
answer to sin, inviting an imitative response from the reader. Chapter four is
devoted to the study of Milton’s efforts to offer Samson as a more human
example of sanctiﬁed revenge in Samson Agonistes. The dissertation closes
with an epilogue which examines how Milton’s epic trilogy as a whole projects

Milton’s hopeful vision of God’s providential design.

 

 

 

In Loving Memory of My Father

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The writing of this dissertation would not have been possible without the
assistance and guidance of many people, and I would like to acknowledge them
with heartfelt thanks.

I wish to begin by remembering Professor Donald M. Rosenberg, the
original chair of my committee, who passed away before the completion of this
dissertation. I am grateful to Professor Rosenberg for ﬁrst introducing me to the
study of Milton and for providing me with valuable assistance on my dissertation
inspite of his grave illness. I also wish to give special thanks to Professor Lister
M. Matheson for agreeing to step in as my dissertation director and for guiding
me safely through the completion of my dissertation. I am grateful as well to the
members of my committee, Professor James L. Hill, Victor N. Paananen and
Stephen C. Arch for their patient support.

Because no graduate student enters his studies without the wisdom and
guidance of those who have prepared him for the task, I also wish to give sincere
thanks to the teachers at Hong Ik University, Seoul, Korea, Professors Soo Hwan
Chae, Soon Kyoung Kang, Jung Sook Kim, Yang Soo Moon, and Hyou Yoon
Yoon, whose support and encouragement ﬁrst gave impetus to my studies.

A special mention is in order for my fellow student and friend, Mark Galik,
who has been a constant source of support and help. I am grateful to Mark for
generously taking the time to read my entire manuscript and offering many

valuable insights which have aided me greatly. I remember with particular

fondness the many conversations that have fueled our faith and interest in
literary studies.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge my debts closer to home. I offer my
humble thanks to my mother, Eun-Sil Kang, who never doubted that I would
succeed, and whose love and sacriﬁce have made this dissertation possible.
Many thanks also go out to my sister, Mikyoung, and my brother, Hyuk, for their
unquestioning support. A fatherly acknowledgement is also in order for my
daughter, Hae-Rhee, and my son, Hyun, who have been a source of joy and
laughter in the midst of trying times, giving me the courage and determination to
ﬁnish my studies. Lastly, I wish to express my love and affection to my wife,
Mee-Sook Kim, for her quiet love and support throughout the course of my

studies.

vi

 

Table of Contents

introduction .......................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1
Revenge as Just Retribution ....................... t ........................................... 34
Chapter 2
Satan’s Revenge, Structure of Evil and Free VWI in Paradise Lost .................. 72
Chapter 3
Apotheosis of Revenge in Paradise Regained .......................................... 123
Chapter 4
Rigorous Justice: Imperative of Divine Vengeance in Samson Agonistes ....... 161

Epilogue: Milton’s Providential View of History in Paradise Lost,
Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes ............................................. 223

List of Works Consulted ....................................................................... 232

vii

Introduction

An overlooked approach to Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and
Samson Agonistes is the relationship of these works to the theme of revenge.
While this theme has been discussed at some length in connection with Samson
Agonistes, there is a resounding silence regarding it in Paradise Lost and
Paradise Regained. Certainly, there is no scholarly study that discusses Milton’s
treatment of revenge in the course of his three major poetical works. This dearth
of critical studies on the theme of revenge in Milton’s major poetical works is
surprising, considering the fact that the word “revenge” is used twenty-one times
in Paradise Lost, four times in Samson Agonistes, while special emphasis is
given to the word “avenged” near the conclusion of Paradise Regained.
Numerous other derivatives of the word “revenge" appear throughout Milton's
three major poems.1 The following study will therefore not only attempt to
redress this past neglect of revenge in Milton’s three major poems but argue that
the concept of revenge is integral to their overall meaning.

A close examination of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson
Agonistes reveals that Milton is not only exploring the nature of revenge but
progressively modifying it for religious and political reasons. A comparative
study of the treatment of revenge in Milton’s three major poetical works will
reveal Milton’s transformation of revenge from a traditionally individualistic and
ungodly act into an act of divine retribution. By tracing the progressive

transformation of the theme of revenge in Milton’s three major works, this study

concerns itself with two largely interrelated issues of religion and politics.
Because as G. Wilson Knight points out, “there is to Milton no ﬁnal distinction
between politics and religion: each reinforces the other,”2 I will examine how the
theme of revenge in Milton’s poems contributes to the religious and political
debates of his day. In the following chapters, then, I hope to examine how
revenge in Milton’s works touches on religious concerns related to the question
of individual versus divine will, on the consequence of disobedience and the
hope of redemption through unconditional obedience. I also intend to show that
the progressive transformation of the concept of revenge in Milton’s works is
linked to his efforts to express contemporary social and political concerns
relating to the failure of the Puritan Revolution, a failure which led to the

Restoration.

Milton’s treatment of revenge in his three major poetical works centers
around two contrasting types of revenge, the satanic and the divine. Throughout
the course of his poem, Milton presents his contrasting kinds of revenge in such
a way that his readers are asked to choose between Satan’s individualistic
choice to act upon his “unconquerable wilI,l And study of revenge,” 3 and the
examples of the Son and Samson who exemplify the apotheosis of revenge by
elevating revenge as an instrument of divine justice. Because the term
“apotheosis” has several different meanings, I would ﬁrst like to clarify which
sense I will employ in the following discussion. By apotheosis of revenge, I do

not mean “deiﬁeation” or “canonization,” but strictly “an exaltation of a principle,

practice,” a gloriﬁed “ideal” (OED 1, 559). Viewed from this perspective, the role
Samson assumes in the fulﬁllment of providential justice functions as an exalted
or gloriﬁed example for redeemed Christians to follow. However, because
Samson is merely a type of Christ and thus at one remove from the perfection of
Christ, he is more human and more fallible. Before presenting the example of
Samson, therefore, Milton offers his readers the example of Christ’s revenge on
Satan in Paradise Regained. As Richard S. Ide points out, while it is Satan who
assumes the role of the “villain revenger” in Paradise Lost, it is mankind who,
through the Son, is destined to “have revenge against Satan’s villainy at the
Resurrection and at the end of time.“ The overthrow of Satan by the Son in
Paradise Regained thus fulﬁlls the promise extended in Paradise Lost that
“[Eve’s] seed [Christ] shall bruise [Satan’s] head” which “Would be revenge
indeed” (PL, X. 181, 1036). The Son in Paradise Regained, however, unlike
Samson, remains perfect and free of sin while undertaking the revenge on
Satan. The Son’s revenge in Paradise Regained is manifest in Satan’s
overthrow and in the Son’s undoing of the effects of Fall, which he achieves
through humility, faith, and obedience to the will of God.

The example of the Son in Paradise Regained also functions as an
emblem of the right relationship between God and man, a relationship that Milton
describes in his De Doctrine Christiana as involving the wisdom “WHEREBY WE
EARNESTLY SEARCH AFTER THE WILL OF GOD, LEARN IT WITH ALL
DILIGENCE, AND GOVERN ALL OUR ACTIONS ACCORDING TO ITS RULE.”5

Satan’s quest for revenge in Paradise Lost, by contrast, is motivated by his own

individualistic will rather than the will of God. As John Carey points out, Satan
makes a conscious choice to vent his revenge, against his better nature, upon
the human race. This makes his act of revenge that much more diabolical.‘5

In seeking revenge, Satan, in his individualistic tendencies, most closely
resembles the villain of Renaissance drama. While our own attitude towards
“individualism” is inﬂuenced by the modern practice of valorizing it as a “free and
independent individual action or thought” (OED 7, 880), the Renaissance held to
a more negative attitude towards individualism, especially when that
individualism works to undermine social and spiritual harmony. The
Renaissance antipathy towards individualism is noted by critics such as
Theodore Spencer, who uses the term “individualist” speciﬁcally to describe a
villain such as Iago who is “separated from ordinary human beings on both sides
of his nature” and who “has no capacity for seeing himself in relation to the state
or the universal order of things.”7 According to Spencer, an individualist is
another name for the Machiavellian “who enjoys evil...for its own sake" (Spencer,
131), and individualism as it is depicted in Shakespeare is viewed as “one of the
attributes of villainy” (Spencer, 212).8 Spencer’s depiction of the attributes of
villainy in Iago might just as easily be applied to Milton’s Satan. Like Iago, Satan
can be called an individualist who is spiritually alienated from God and from his
fellow creatures by his commitment to evil. That Milton was aware of the threat
posed by uninhibited individualism embodied by Satan is evident from his efforts
’ to deﬁne true individuality as being synonymous with harmony and union with the

will of God. As Mary Ann Radzinowicz points out, “Milton himself used the word

‘individual' to signify aggregation, not segregation, to mean non-dividual as in the
phrase ‘abide/ United as one individual soule’(V. 609-610)."9

Satan in Paradise Lost, then, is an individualistic character, analogous to
Machiavellian villains such as Macbeth, Richard III, and Iago in Renaissance
drama, who acknowledge no constraints on their behavior other than those of
self-interest. Though Barbara K. Lewalski does not include the darker
implications of individualism in her discussion, she nonetheless traces the
connection between Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost and the villains of
Elizabethan tragedy. By examining Satan’s soliloquies, Lewalski concludes that
Satan resembles Macbeth in his ambition, Richard III in his pursuit of power, and
Iago in his “sheer malignity.”‘° Satan, therefore, is an egotist who pursues his
own goals with single-minded drive. Furthermore, his compulsive pursuit of
revenge, undertaken in the vain hope of continuing his challenge to the divine
order, furthers his spiritual division from divine grace, a division that St.
Augustine deﬁnes as the very condition of evil. According to St. Augustine, evil
is a privation of the good that is God, noting that “no nature at all is evil, and this
is a name for nothing but the want of good.”" Milton like Augustine, emphasizes
in Paradise Lost that everything God created was good in its inception. That
Milton’s theory of evil in large part accords with that of Augustine becomes
evident from his argument in De Doctn'na Christiana, a useful gloss to the
reading of Paradise Lost,12 that all things created by God are good at their
outset. According to Milton, “the original matter of which we speak, is not to be

looked upon as an evil or trivial thing, but as intrinsically good” (Columbia XV,

23). Rather, as “[God] himself testiﬁes,” all “[m]atter, like the form and nature of
angels itself, proceeded incorruptible from God” (Columbia XV, 67, 23-25).
According to his Augustinian theory of evil, therefore, Milton attempts to show in
Paradise Lost that Satan, by choosing to disobey God, moves against his nature
which was created good. As good vanishes, so evil manifests itself. If God did
not create evil, then, Satan’s fall must be seen as a consequence of his own
volition. Like Augustine, Milton believes that the good, by being subjected to
choice and free will, can turn to evil. He argues that Matter, “having proceeded
from God, and become in the power of another party,” and “mutable”, has
nothing to prevent it “from contracting taint and contamination through the
enticements of the devil, or those which originated in man himself” (Columbia
XV, 25). Insomuch as “every act is in itself good; it is only its irregularity, or
deviation from the line of right, which, properly speaking, is evil” (Columbia XV,
199), Milton asserts that God is blameless for the evil in this world. Central,
then, to Milton’s defense of God is the Augustinian theory of evil.”

In his conscious choice to pursue the course of revenge, even after the
fact of his defeat in the war in Heaven, Satan embraces hate and despair instead
of submission and restoration to the grace of God. This is both an assertion of
his individualistic nature and a voluntary act of distancing himself from divine
providence. As noted by Arthur E. Barker, the thematic pattern of Paradise Lost
consists of man’s ﬁrst disobedience, his post-lapsarian woe, and his
restoration.“ Satan, likewise, experiences a disastrous fall resulting in “huge

afﬂiction and dismay" (PL, I. 57). Satan, however, unlike Adam and Eve, whose

fall is followed by submission and redemption, falls again by his quest for
revenge. Satan’s damnation therefore is a result of his own obdurate and
stubborn disobedience and not something that was predestined. As Milton tells
us in De Doctrina Christiana, “reprobation lies not so much in the divine will, as in
the obstinacy of their minds; nor is it the decree of God, but rather the reprobate
themselves, by their refusal to repent while it is in their power” (Columbia 14,
155).

Paradise Lost portrays the machinations of satanic revenge in order,
among other things, to identify Satan’s pride as the origin of sin and his revenge
as the fundamental element that “Mov’d our Grand Parents in that happy
state,/...to fall offl From their Creator and trangress his Will” (PL, I. 29-31). As
Radzinowicz points out, however, the poem’s conclusion also presages the two
themes that dominate Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes: “the example
of the ‘Redeemer ever blest’ (PL, Xll. 572-3)...and the addition of human deeds
of faith, virtue, patience, temperance.”15 While Satan’s revenge deﬁnes and
exempliﬁes the nature of sin, the examples of the Son in Paradise Regained and
Samson in Samson Agonistes attempt to show readers the means of overcoming
the effects of sin by imitating “actions exemplary for man” (Radzinowicz, 229).
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes thus are thematically
interlinked. The story of temptation and fall in Paradise Lost is followed by the
story of temptation and undoing of the Fall in Paradise Regained, followed by the
temptation and redemption in Samson Agonistes. Paradise Regained provides a

reworking of the concept of revenge by demonstrating that the “true ‘revenger”’ is

sometimes one who only “suffers patiently" (Ide 1983, 122). As Albert C.
Labriola points out, the image of the Son in Paradise Lost in his “meek aspect”
and “Filial obedience"16 contrasts with Satan’s “Ambition and Revenge,” and his
rebellion against God.17 Milton expands upon this contrast in Paradise
Regained, where the Son likewise takes on the role as the exemplar of Faith,
proving his Sonship by waiting patiently and obediently for the spirit to instruct
him in how to perform his ofﬁce. By doing so, he shows that true Sonship and
the “fairer Paradise” (PR, IV. 613) are attained by trust in God alone and not by
assertion of one’s individual will.

While Milton in Paradise Regained presents the Son as the New
Testament antitype and example of perfection as well as fulﬁllment, he writes
Samson Agonistes with Samson as a preﬁgurative type of Christ. The reason
Milton is able to view Samson as a type of Christ is, as Lynn Veach Sadler points
out, is because Milton “avoids a dichotomy between Old and New Testaments by
making the prophets a kind of old dispensation equivalent of Gospel typology.”
According to Sadler, because God, in his divinity, transcends the limitation of
linear chronology, so his dispensation is equally applicable to both the Old and
New Testaments (Sadler, 143-145). Because the Son is God-incarnate, he is
the ideal exemplar given to man for imitation. Man, however, because of his
fallen condition cannot hope to attain to the state of the Son’s perfection. It is not
surprising therefore that most of the examples that are given in the Bible are
human.19 For this reason, in Samson Agonistes, Milton portrays for the beneﬁt of

fallen man a human example, one who is as weak and sinful as the ordinary man

himself. This very fallen nature of Samson, which allows him to be more
accessible to the reader, however, is also responsible for the critical debate
between anti-regenerationist and regenerationist arguments in regard to how we
should view Samson’s ﬁnal act of revenge in Samson Agonistes. Critics such as
Irene Samuel and Joseph Wrttreich have argued that any regeneration is at odds
with Samson’s revenge in the temple of Dagon. 2° Vlﬁttreich, for example,
suggests that while Samson is no villain, he is deeply ﬂawed in his heroism, and
that his ﬁnal act of revenge bespeaks not his “regeneration" but a “second
fall”(Wrttreich 1981, 80). However, I agree with others such as Hugh MacCallum
and David Loewenstein who see Samson’s ﬁnal act of revenge not as “a
foolhardy embracing of self-destruction” (Wittreich 1981, 231) but a fulﬁllment of
divine vengeance in obedience to the Will of God. This view gains credence
when we recall the fact that St. Augustine justiﬁes Samson’s suicide in The City
of God because Samson was acting under the special inspiration of the Holy
Spirit (Augustine 1950, 27). MacCallum thus argues that, in carrying out his
revenge, “[Samson] acted not as a private person, but as one whose calling to
free his country came from heaven.”"’1 Loewenstein likewise views Samson as a
“radical saint moved by the Spirit to enact the dreadful vengeance of the Lord." 22
In order for Samson to transcend the limitations of a personal vendetta,
however, and truly become the instrument of divine retribution, Milton must
demonstrate that Samson overcomes the consequence of disobedience for
having “profaned/ The mystery of God given me under pledge/ Of vow, and have

betrayed it to a woman.”23 Reading Samson Agonistes from this perspective,

one can see better how the tragedy is largely about the hero’s recovery involving
patience and faith, conquering the weakness which led to his fall, and obeying
the call to further service.“ Milton thus presents Samson in the tragedy initially
as a betrayer of God, deprived of honor and integrity and subjected to various
temptations. Samson, however, regains patience, humility, and faith in God
through temptations and trials. It is only when Samson accepts full responsibility
for the consequences of his disobedience and puts unquestioning faith in the will
of God, that he claims to experience “Some rousing motions in me” (SA, 1382) to

become again the instrument of divine retribution on the Philistines.

While Milton’s treatment of revenge in his three major poems is revealing
in its dramatization of the religious theme of the Fall and Redemption, it is
equally helpful in illuminating some of thesociopolitical aspects of the Puritan
revolution. In Milton and the Experience of Defeat, Christopher Hill brings our
attention to Milton’s criticism of the revolutionary party in his three major poems
by correlating the Fall of Man with the failure of the revolution. According to Hill,
Milton’s “last three great poems deal with intensely topical problems set by the
defeat of God’s Cause” wherein “the sinfulness of fallen man became an

explanation of failure?”

What I propose to do then in the present study is to
examine how Milton’s treatment of revenge relates to and promotes such a
critique. While Satan’s persistence in his quest for revenge in Paradise Lost is a

perversion of God’s will and a reﬂection of Satan’s individualist nature, it is also

important for understanding the failures of the Puritan party. As indicated by

10

Marcia Landy, Milton’s depiction of Satan in Paradise Lost is a dramatization of
“the threat of rampant individualism" which represents “Milton’s political and
personal assessment of the dangers of individualism masked in revolutionary
zeal and the rhetoric of liberty.”26

Consumed by pride and ambition, both attributes of the “revengeful villain”
of Elizabethan drama, Satan in Paradise Lost, like the Machiavellian Iago, is
driven by “an overrnastering desire to justify his own egotistical principles by
seeing his own will and intellectual astuteness triumph over those who think
themselves and are regarded by others as good.”7 When we consider the fact
that, as Hill points out, the Puritan revolutionaries similarly allowed themselves to
be seduced by the allurements of power, wealth, and ambition, 2" it is reasonable
to draw an analogy between Satan and these revolutionaries. Just like Satan in
Paradise Lost, Puritan revolutionaries made the grave error of rebelling against
God by placing greater value on their individual will rather than the divine will.
Like Satan, they arrogated to themselves, especially in the case of Cromwell, a
king-like authority. While Hill stresses that Milton never actually condemned
Oliver Cromwell (Hill 1984, 314), others, such as A.S.P Woodhouse, ﬁnd Milton
implicitly criticizing Cromwell in his ﬁnal tracts, such as the Readie and Easy Way
(1660), which rejects “any form of single-person rule-such as the Protectorate.”29
What the Puritan revolutionaries did not realize, as Adam and Eve learned from
‘ Michael before their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, is that freedom does
not consist in the assertion of individual will, but the conformity of individual will

to the divine will through self-puriﬁcation and submission to God.30

11

If Paradise Lost symbolizes the failure of the Puritan revolutionaries
placed in the context of the Fall, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes
dramatize the extent to which they can learn the purpose of their calling. The
example of the Son in Paradise Regained is dedicated towards re-educating the
Puritan party of their purpose, which is to deliver and redeem the enslaved.
Elaine B. Safer, however, is at pains to emphasize that the crux of Paradise
Regained is “self-realization” rather than the “selﬂessness” of the Son and that
the “progression in Paradise Regained is toward man’s realization of his‘potential
sufﬁciency to rise above his fallen condition.”31 The work of deliverance may not
be always successful, as Samson Agonistes shows. Nevertheless, Milton’s
tragedy reminds the Puritan revolutionaries that their calling is not invalidated
because of momentary weakness or failure. As Samson Agonistes shows,
through faith and submission of his will to the will of God, Samson can again
become the instrument of God. A bent towards political activism in Samson
Agonistes has been argued by several critics, including Hill, who reads Samson
Agonistes as reafﬁrming Milton’s faith in the Puritan revolution, 32 and Jackie Di
Salvo, who notes “a central movement from passivity to activism, an activism
that ultimately takes the form of a violent struggle against a political oppressor."33
Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes thus function as exempla for the
Puritan revolutionaries in the teeth of their post-Restoration defeat. Their calling
is to deliver the nation. Because Milton is mindful of past failures, Samson
Agonistes ends with an admonition that opportunities yet remain for the Puritan

revolutionaries to accomplish this work.

12

Integral to Milton’s development of the theme of revenge in relation to his
religious and political concerns is the way in which his three major poetical works
are structured as an epic “trilogy.” Barker long ago observed the dependence of
Paradise Lost upon a “threefold” structural format, reminiscent of the Aeneid, of
loss, suffering, and recovery (Barker 1965, 142). Barker’s discovery of this
thematic structure in Paradise Lost, I would argue, is equally applicable to the
overall structure of Milton’s three major poetical works. According to Barker,
Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes offer contrasting renditions of the
theme of Adam’s Fall in Paradise Lost. the former is an example of “an
undeviating resistance to the Satanic temptation,” and the other is a
representation of “a more painful yet progressive resistance...to a repetition of
earlier temptations.” Barker therefore argues that Paradise Regained and
Samson Agonistes, together with Paradise Lost, comprise “a trilogy?“ Wrttreich
presents a similar argument, suggesting that Milton’s three poems are mutually
illuminating because Paradise Lost “serves as a gateway into the brief epic
[Paradise Regained] and the tragedy [Samson Agonistes]? 35 Wrttreich’s
conclusion regarding Samson Agonistes, however, differs radically from mine.
While Vthreich views Paradise Regained as “a formulation of a new system of
religion” which shows how “paradise within may be achieved,” he views Samson
Agonistes as an example of “how [paradise] may be lost, and the effects of its
being Iost” (Wrttreich 1979, 209). By contrast, I follow the line of argument by
regenerationist critics such as MacCallum and Loewenstein who view Samson

Agonistes as portraying a process of regeneration within the context of Christ's

13

example set out in Paradise Regained. Difference of interpretation aside, I
believe that Wrttreich makes an important and valid observation regarding
Milton’s three major works when he says that “Milton’s ﬁnal vision, composed of
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, is...tripartite in its
structure” (WIttreich 1979, 193).

I believe that the most compelling argument for reading Milton’s three
major poetical works together is propounded by Hill, who argues in Milton and
the English Revolution that “in all three poems Milton is grappling with problems
set by the failure of God’s cause in England” (Hill 1977, 345). That Milton was
intent on explaining the reasons for the failure of the godly cause in these three
major poems is hardly surprising when we consider that they were published
after the Restoration. However, as Hill points out, what is unique to Milton is the
way in which he turned to the biblical story of the Fall in order to explain the
failure of the Puritan revolution (Hill 1977, 352). Not only does Milton address
his concerns regarding the failure of the Puritan revolution in his three major
poetical works but, as Hill points out, he does so in such a way that they create a

thematic progression:

We can trace a progression in the three great poems. Paradise Lost
deals with Adam succumbing to temptation, with humanity, with
Everyman. In Paradise Regained the hero is a perfect man, withstanding
temptation and saving humanity by his example. In Samson Agonistes

there is no mention of Christ, of whom in the orthodox tradition Samson

14

was normally regarded as a type. Samson performs Christ-like actions,
bringing salvation to his people by his own death. But--even more than
Jesus in Paradise Regained—Samson is a man, a man acting, not merely
suffering. His individuality is not unique: he is what any fallen sinner can
become when he recovers and co-operates with Providence.

(Hill 1977, 446)

As noted by Hill, Milton’s epic trilogy reveals a thematic progression that begins
with the depiction of the Fall in Paradise Lost. Signiﬁcantly, however, Milton is
careful to balance his portrayal of Adam’s failure with the positive examples of
Christ and Samson in Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.

In Paradise Lost, Milton attempts to come to terms with the failure of the
Puritan revolution. Yet, just as Milton was at pains in Paradise Lost to
demonstrate that the Fall was not due to predestination but was a direct result of
one’s individual free will, so the godly cause failed because the English people
and their leaders had freely fallen. As Hill puts it, “Like the rebel angels, ‘ﬁrm
they might have stoodl Yet fell’ (Vl.911-12)” (Hill 1977, 348). Such failures,
nevertheless, are something that can be understood and corrected. The central
aim of Paradise Regained, then, is to present the Son as the perfect exemplar
whose actions are meant to show how “Man can be regenerate on earth” (Hill
1 977, 352).

Finally, I believe that there is an inherent signiﬁcance in the fact that,

despite publishing Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes together in 1671,

15

Milton placed the order of the text so that his epic trilogy concludes with Samson
Agonistes. I agree with Hill’s assessment that because Samson is a man, a type
of Christ who “performs Christ-like actions," he is more representative of fallen
man than even the Son in Paradise Regained. The Son shows how man may
transcend individual uniqueness to become an exemplum of universal
redemption. If a sinner like Samson can hope to be restored to the grace of

God, then so can any fallen man.

In reading Milton’s three major poems as a “trilogy,” I follow the traditional
order put forth by the majority of Milton scholars who read them in the order of
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. The chronology of
Milton’s trilogy, nevertheless, is a subject of contention that deserves some
elaboration. F irst, there are critics who argue that Milton’s works must be read
according to the traditional chronology of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and
Samson Agonistes (Ants Oras, Ernest Sirluck, Hill 1977: 481-486, Radzinowicz
1978:387-407). Others, though, challenge such a reading as ﬂawed and argue
that Samson Agonistes is an early work, putting the date of composition in the
1640s 0N.R. Parker 1949, John T. Shawcross 1961).

While the contention over chronology revolves around differences of
opinion concerning dates of composition using biographical details, prosody, and
metrics, perhaps the center of the debate is, in the words of Barker, “the
propriety of our being invited to pass from a poem representing the

imperturbable resistance of the young Christ...to a poem representing chiefly the

16

perturbingly painful experience of the defeated and enslaved Samson” (Barker
1973,13). Any conjecture about the proper sequence of Milton’s works, then,
must answer Barker’s question: “Should not Samson’s fallen, if ultimately, in
some sense, rescued, experience rather precede Christ’s making possible the
regaining of Paradise for all mankind, following mere historical or at any rate
testamentary chronology?” (Barker 1973,14). lnverting the chronology and
placing Samson Agonistes before Paradise Regained would seem to follow
Biblical chronology in which providential history progresses from the Fall of Man
to pre-Christian Samson to the New Testament Christ.

The fact, however, remains that Milton purposely published his epic trilogy
so that his three major poems would be read in the order of Paradise Lost,
Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. The rapid publication of Milton’s
major poetical works-Paradise Lost in .1667, Paradise Regained and Samson
Agonistes together in 1671—may suggest that some of Milton’s late work may
have been begun earlier. Nevertheless, as Vlﬁttreich Jr. observes, “even if they
[Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes] were not composed
sequentially, they were published that way” (Wittreich 1979,191). J. Max Patrick
makes the same argument, saying that what we as critics must be concerned
with is not the dates of composition but “the order in which Milton intended his
three last major works to be read.” According to Patrick, the order of publication
in which Samson Agonistes holds the terminal position is a good indication that it

is “Milton’s intention...to have them read in that order and to have Samson

17

regarded as the last work in what we may view as a trilogy of interrelated
masterpieces?“5

Date of publication aside, the best argument for reading Milton’s epic
trilogy in the order of its publication, according to Hill, is because it makes for a
most politically effective reading (Hill 1984, 314). As already noted by Hill, there
is a discernible progression in Milton’s epic trilogy. Paradise Lost lays out the
sins of pride and ambition as the causes of defeat while Paradise Regained
intimates that through the imitation of Christ’s faith and obedience, man can
achieve regeneration. And, Samson Agonistes balances the political realities of
the post-Restoration England and the failure of the Godly cause with the
idealistic hope that, like Samson who “Christ-like” fulﬁlls God’s purpose for him
by paying the ransom for his nation, the Puritan revolutionaries too will “Find
courage to lay hold this occasion” (SA, 1716).

Hill's interpretation of Samson as “Christ-like” is echoed by Sadler who
argues that Milton looked beyond the “evangelical and chronological view of
Christianity.” According to Sadler, Milton’s typology avoids creating a dichotomy
between Old and New Testaments by elevating the prophets into “a kind of old
dispensation equivalent of Gospel typology.”37 By emphasizing such continuity
between dispensations, “Regeneration is made available to those who live
before the Cruciﬁxion, with faith as the catalyst through all dispensations"
(Sadler, 145). Central to Sadler’s argument is the idea that God is not conﬁned
to linear time as we are. Providential history is already complete and whole, and

Christ is the crux (literally the “cross”) standing at the nexus of past and future.

18

His pattern and inﬂuence extend in both directions through typology. The same
typology allows man to imitate Christ and all his past and future types. Samson
therefore unknowingly follows the pattern of Christ before Christ revealed that
pattern to man. Samson is a “type of regenerative religious experience" (Sadler,
156) set before us by Milton as an exemplar.“3

Lastly, for those who might object that Samson is a poor choice as subject
for imitation because of his many weakness and failures, I would answer, what
better choice for fallen man to emulate than Samson who, having fallen, re-
enters into the grace of God through repentance, faith, and obedience to the will
of God? Imperfect types like Samson are more accessible to us because their
imperfections are closer to our own. This would have been painfully obvious to

Milton writing amid the realities of the Restoration.

Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained thus need to be read in conjunction
because Paradise Regained reveals the means to rectify the sin of pride and
disobedience committed in Paradise Lost. The effort to achieve revenge through
the assertion of “individualistic” will is replaced by the submission of free will to
the greater will of God in order to achieve one’s full instrumentality. This is what
the Son does in Paradise Regained as a model for imitation. Milton states in Of
Education that “The end of Learning is to repair the ruines of our ﬁrst Parents by
regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate
him, to be like him”(Columbia, 4. 277, my emphasis). It is for this reason that

Milton presents the Son in Paradise Regained as a powerful example of “noble

19

individuality.”39 The recognition of the Son as an exemplar is important to the
overall structure of the poems as an alternative or point of reference from which
to critique Satan’s ﬂawed individuality in Paradise Lost. Although the
dramatization of the Son’s “F ilial obedience” (PL, III. 269) in Paradise Lost
elevates Him as a model of imitation, I believe that the Son as exemplar
achieves his fullest exposition in Paradise Regained. Whereas the Son, as the
Son of God, vanquishes Satan by merit in Paradise Lost, the Son in Paradise
Regained is depicted not in his divinity but as a God-incamate, as a second
Adam, overcoming Satan. It is not surprising that Milton attempts to provide the
Son as an ideal model if we accept Sadler’s argument that Christ’s ministry in the
Gospels is intended as an “exempliﬁcation for our imitation” (Sadler, 143). This
in turn sets the stage for Samson Agonistes, in which Milton shows how the
fallible human agent may redeem himself and regain his faith through the
imitation of Christ (imitatio Christi) in response to speciﬁc temptations.

During the Renaissance, English Protestants were divided on the practice
of Imitatio Christi, depending on their conservative or reformist tendencies.“o
According to J. Sears MacGee, the reforrnists held a “radical view of human
depravity” which led them to reject the feasibility of imitating Christ. To them
man’s relationship with Christ was “often intimate, but seldom imitative.” The
conservatives, on the other hand, held a more optimistic view of human nature
which led them to believe that a “dynamic conception of the duty of imitating
Christ was tenable...because they believed that man was equipped to perform

it?“1 Despite being the source of contention during the Renaissance, the

20

practice of imitatio Christi is supported by Scripture. The biblical usage of the
term Imitatio or mime’tés, according to The Anchor Bible Dictionary, “calls
believers to imitate other believers, Christ, and God.” However, because
humans fall short of the ideal, Paul points to Christ in 1 Cor. 11:1 and 1 Thess.
1:6 as “the incarnate example of God for believers to emulate in their daily
experience.” ‘2 As The Anchor Bible Dictionary also points out, though imitation
of Christ does not by itself imply self-justiﬁcation, “participation in Christ’s cross
and resurrection...is constituted in the life of the believer here and now by
obedience to the imperatival call to imitation” (Anchor 3, 392). The Scriptural
basis of the theme of Imitatio Christi can account partly for the vast popularity of
the English edition of the book Imitatio Christi which was reprinted right up to the
early seventeenth-century (Hudson, 543). There is no way of knowing for certain
if Milton read Thomas Rogers’ translation, but this is largely immaterial. What we
can and do know is that Milton’s own words exhorting the Church to carry itself in
humility “in true imitation of Christ” (Columbia, III. 252) places him on the side of
the conservative Protestants in regard to the theme of Imitatio Christi.
Temptations will vary in accordance with one’s time and place in human
history, but as Samson shows, it is up to each individual, through the exercise of
free will and right reason, to decide which actions will most conform with the will
of God. It is only when Samson purges himself of his individual will and submits
himself wholly to the will of God through unconditional faith that he can become
an instrument of divine retribution. Once this occurs, his powers are restored to

him and he can take vengeance upon the Philistines, a vengeance that is no

21

longer personal, arising from anger or human fallibility, but an expression of

divine and impersonal Justice.

This dissertation proposes to discuss Milton’s treatment of revenge in his
three major poems and to argue that it constitutes an apotheosis of revenge.
The traditional treatment of revenge found in Elizabethan drama revolves around
tragic heroes such as Hamlet or individualistic villains such as Vindice and Iago
whose acts of revenge invite criticism because they are motivated by perSonal
vindictiveness. Milton, in contrast, begins with a traditional treatment of revenge
in Paradise Lost, only to transform revenge in Paradise Regained and Samson
Agonistes into an instrument of divine justice. An important criterion for
differentiating between the treatment of revenge in Elizabethan drama and the
apotheosis of revenge in Milton's epic cycle lies in the area of motivation. As
Harry Keyishian points out, a distinction needs to be made between “portrayals
of vindictiveness” and “authentic revenge,” the latter which can at times have
“potentially afﬁrmative and even heroic functions” despite frequent social and
religious prohibitions against revenge.“3

While the prevalent condemnation of revengers in Renaissance tragedies
such as The Spanish Tragedy, The Revenger’s Tragedy, and Hamlet conveys
the impression that revenge was universally condemned during the
Renaissance, Milton offers a radically different view on revenge. In De Doctrina
Christiana Milton argues that it is a “religious duty” to “hate the enemies of God

and of the church” and that “We are not forbidden to take or to wish to take

22

vengeance upon the enemies of the church?“ In chapter one, “Revenge as Just
Retribution,” therefore, I will examine the Renaissance attitudes toward revenge
in order to establish the link between the act of revenge and the operation of
justice. I believe that there were ample philosophical and theological
justiﬁcations during the Renaissance for Milton’s treatment of revenge as
instrument of divine justice in his three major poetical works. What stands out in
the Renaissance discussions of revenge is that there is a clear distinction
between acts of private revenge and the operations of public revenge carried out
for the common good, the latter of which is considered morally justiﬁable. To
discuss these issues I will use a variety of sixteenth and seventeenth century
sources both religious and secular as well as representative classical authors
such as Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, and Cicero who were available in English
translation at the time.

The second chapter, “Satan’s Revenge and the Problem of Evil in
Paradise Lost,” will explore how the theme of revenge is related to the religious
concern over the problem of evil, which Milton sees as arising from disobedience
and assertion of one’s individual will over the will of God. As C. S. Lewis deﬁnes
it, the Fall is simply and solely “Disobedience” resulting from pride?" In Paradise
Lost, Milton was interested in the problem of evil, not only in how it came about,
in how those who perpetrate it justify their actions, but also in how to respond to
it or overcome and purge it. By accentuating the elements of envy, pride, and
hatred that shape Satan’s revenge, therefore, Milton not only condemns Satan’s

revenge as being perverse and evil but attempts to promote a purgation of those

23

destructive passions in his readers by fostering a feeling of horror at Satan’s
malicious villainy. Another purpose behind Milton’s portrayal of Satan’s
individualistic revenge in Paradise Lost is the elucidation of his stated intention to
“assert eternal providence,/ And justify the ways of God to men” (PL, I. 25-26).

In depicting Satan’s unholy pursuit of revenge, Milton painstakingly emphasizes
Satan’s exercise of free will. In doing so, Milton shows that individual actions are
free, and not predetermined by divine will, necessity, or decree. While Satan
attempts to deﬂect blame away from his rebellion by charging that God “tempted
our attempt, and wrought our fall” (PL, I. 642), Milton makes it clear that blame
lies solely on Satan himself. Satan’s rebellion against God and his subsequent
decision to pursue the course of revenge on humanity is a result of his decision
to choose evil; a decision made with free choice. Satan’s damnation, therefore,
is a consequence of his stubborn disobedience and not something that was
predestined. Revenge in Paradise Lost, shown by Milton to be motivated by
individualistic inclinations, also reﬂects upon the causes that he saw as leading
to the failure of the Puritan revolution.

In chapter three, “Apotheosis of Revenge in Paradise Regained,” I will
discuss Milton’s attempt to dramatize the apotheosis of revenge by the Son in
Paradise Regained. That Paradise Regained is a dramatization of the Son’s
revenge on Satan is evident from its conclusion, telling us that “now thou [the
Son] hast avenged! Supplanted Adam, and, by vanquishing l Temptation, hast
regained lost Paradise”(PR, IV. 606—608). The Son’s revenge represents a step-

by-step reversal of the effects of the Fall, presenting in Paradise Regained an

24

alternate ending for Paradise Lost. In Book 12 of Paradise Lost, Michael
foretells that Christ “shall quell/ The adversary serpent, and bring backl Through
the world’s wilderness long wandered man/ Safe to eternal paradise of rest” (PL,
XII. 311-14). The Son's mission in Paradise Regained, then, is the fulﬁllment of
what God promised Adam and Eve through Michael in Paradise Lost the
achievement of divine vengeance upon Satan and the salvation of man. It has
been argued by David Mikics, however, that the Son in Paradise Regained
approaches the satanic in his desire “to realize prematurely his future status as
apocalyptic victor over Satan” which “represents the aspect of the Son that is too
close to the Satan who rebelled?"6 The best refutation of such a reading comes
from the text of Paradise Regained itself where the Son is portrayed as the very
epitome of faith as he overcomes Satan through humility, patience, and
obedience to the will of God. The Son serves as a deﬁnitive answer to sin, while
his moral and spiritual attributes in Paradise Regained, setting an example to
which man can also aspire, invite an imitative response from the reader. Integral
therefore to Milton’s efforts in Paradise Regained is the theme of Imitatio Christi.
In the words of CA. Patrides, the God-man in Paradise Regained “was
designated invariably as the most perfect exemplar of the conduct expected of
all men, ‘our patterne’, ‘a patterne to vs how we ought to walke...“7
Chapter four, “Rigorous Justice: Imperative of Divine Vengeance in
Samson Agonistes” is devoted to the study of Samson in Samson Agonistes as
a sanctiﬁed revenger. As John F. Andrews points out, the only kind of revenge

justiﬁable to Milton is that which is associated with divine vengeance.“8 The key

25

to understanding Samson’s revenge is the question whether it constitutes divine
vengeance or personal revenge. Samson has been variously interpreted as “a

tragic agent, a ﬂawed man,” (Samuel, 244) and as a “vengeful godly saint” who
is “moved by the spirit to carry out God’s militant work?“9 As Di Salvo points out,
however, Milton underscores in Samson Agonistes the “providential nature of
Samson’s actions” by reminding the readers of God’s direct intervention in
Samson’s revenge (Di Salvo, 48). As such, Samson takes on the role of
instrument of divine vengeance. Before he can fulﬁll his role as an instrument of
divine Providence, however, Samson must overcome the consequence of his
fallen state, a condition heavy with political connotations for the Puritan
revolutionaries after the Restoration. As Hill notes, Milton also holds out hope for
the revival of the Puritan cause in Samson Agonistes (Hill 1984, 311-17). Just
as Samson is restored into God’s grace by his suffering, patience, repentance,
and obedience to the will of God, so his redemption acts as a “stirring example”
for the faltering Puritan revolutionaries (Di Salvo, 60), challenging them to
recover their sense of election.

Lastly, in the epilogue, “Milton’s Providential View of History in Paradise
Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes,” I will examine how Milton's
epic trilogy as a whole attempts to depicts a paradigm of salvation and the
fulﬁllment of God’s providential design. While there are some suggestions that
Milton’s poems, particularly Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, reﬂect
his deepening pessimism and quietism following the Restoration,50 as Hill points

out, there is a clear thematic progression in Milton’s three poems depicting the

26

Scriptural pattern of the Fall, purgation, and restoration (Hill 1977, 446). Milton’s
portrayal of a progressive and transcendental view of history thus defeats the
idea that Milton was writing a “tragedy of defeat” (Hill 1984, 313). Indeed, as
indicated by Achsah Guibbory, Milton envisions in his poetry a hopeful ideal of
“growth, vision, the purgation of error” that constitutes the “providential pattern of

progress.”51

27

Notes

‘ The word “revenge” in Paradise Lost 1.35, 1.107, 1.604, 2.105, 2.107, 2.128,
2.337, 2.371, 2.1054, 3.85, 3.160, 4.123, 4.386, 4.390, 6.151, 6.905, 9.168.
9.171, 10.242, 10.1036; “revenge” in Samson Agonistes: 484, 1462,1591,1660;
the word “avenge” in Paradise Regained: 4.606. The word “revenged” also
appears in Paradise Lost 4.4 and Samson Agonistes 1468, 1712 while the word
“vengeance” is used in Paradise Lost 1.170, 1.220, 2.173, 3.399, 4.170, 6.279,
6.808, 12.541. The above listing of usage was taken from An Index to the
Columbia Edition of The Works of John Milton, Frank Allen Patterson and French
Rowe Fogel eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), vol. 2, pp. 1668-
1669.

2 G. Wilson Knight, Chariot of Wrath (London: Faber and Faber, 1942), p.134.
Steven Edward Jablonski similarly speaks of overcoming the tendency to
compartmentalize “Milton’s thought and writings into the categories of the
religious, the political, and the literary.” Evil Days: Providence and Politics in the
Thought of John Milton and his Age (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation:
Princeton University, 1994), p. 5.

3 All quotations from Milton's Paradise Lost are from John Milton: Paradise Lost,
ed. Alastair Fowler (London: Longman, 1971), I.106-7. Further quotations appear
parenthetically with volume and page numbers. Fowler’s notes will be cited as
“Fowler” with the page number on which the note appears.

“ Richard S.lde, “On the Uses of Elizabethan Drama: The Revaluation of Epic in
Paradise Lost,” Milton Studies 17 (1983), p.122.

5 The Works of John Milton, Frank Allen Patterson et.al.eds. (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1934), vol. XVII, p. 27. Upper-case letters are
Milton’s. All quotations from Milton’s prose are also from this edition and further
citations from prose works will appear parenthetically as Columbia with volume
and page numbering unless othenrvise noted. '

6 John Carey, “Milton’s Satan,” in The Cambridge Companion to Milton, Dennis
Danielson, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 139.

7 Theodore, Spencer, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man, 2nd ed. (New York:

Collier Books, 1966), p. 132. Spencer similarly refers to Richard III as an
individualist for whom “Order and society are nothing” and who refuses “to be

28

part of the order of nature and who refuses to see the interconnection between
the various spheres of Nature’s activity,” p.72.

8 In denoting individualism as an attribute of villainy, it is important to point out
that, while the current usage of the term “individualism” incorporates both the
negative aspect of “egoism” and the positive message of being “free and
independent,” the original usage of the term hardly used to be so inclusive. The
ﬁrst recorded use of the term individualist listed in OED is by William Ewart
Gladstone who in 1840 Church Principles considered in their results, 131 calls
the individualist in religion a worse danger than a catholic. Another example of
the negative connotations of individualist is by Kingsley who in 1856 Misc, Hours
w. Mystics l.351 equates the Pharisee with a selﬁsh individualist (OED, vol]:
880). ‘

9 Mary Ann Radzinowicz, “The Politics of Paradise Lost,” Politics of Discourse:
The Literature and History of Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Kevin Sharpe
and Steven N. Zwicker(Berkeley: University Of California Press, 1987), p.225.

1° Barbara K. Lewalski, ‘Paradise Lost’ and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 63-64.

“ St. Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: The Modern
Library, 1950), p.365.

‘2 It is generally accepted that Milton began work on De Doctrina Christiana and
Paradise Lost about the same time and thus critics such as Maurice Kelley ﬁnd
De Doctrina Christiana useful as a gloss on the doctrinal matter of Paradise Lost.
See This Great Argument: A Study of Milton ’3 De Doctrina Christiana as a Gloss
upon Paradise Lost (Princeton, 1941). For arguments supporting the view that
De Doctrina Christiana should be read as a gloss on Paradise Lost see also,
Arthur R. Charlesworth, Paradise Found (New York: Philosophical Library,

1973), and George McMurry Muldrow, Milton and the Drama of the Soul: A Study
of the Theme of the Restoration of Man in Milton’s Later Poetry (The Hague and
Paris: Mouton, 1970).

‘3 The notion of evil and good as the sum of choices is hardly unique to
Augustine or Milton and can be traced back to Aristotle who makes a similar
argument in his discussion of choices in Nicomachean Ethics. Noting that
“choice is distinguished rather as being good or bad” (lll.ii.10), Aristotle argues
that “Virtue...is a settled disposition of the mind determining the choice of actions
and emotions” (Il.vi.15).

29

“ Arthur E. Barker, “Structural Pattern in Paradise Lost,” in Milton: Modem
Essays in Criticism, Arthur E. Barker ed. (London, Oxford, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1965), p. 142.

‘5 Mary Ann Radzinowicz, Toward “Samson Agonistes”: The Growth of Milton ’3
Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 229.

‘6 Paradise Lost. Ill. 266.259-

" Albert C. Labriola, “‘Thy Humiliation shall Exalt’: The Christology of Paradise
Lost,” Milton Studies 15 (1981), p. 38.

1“ Lynn Veach Sadler, “Regeneration and Typology: Samson Agonistes and Its
Relation to De Doctrina Christiana, Paradise Lost, and Paradise Regained,”
Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 12 (1972): 141-156, p.143.

‘9 See The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol.3, p.392.

2" Joseph Anthony Wittreich Jr., Interpreting Samson Agonistes (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1981); Irene Samuels, “Samson Agonistes as
Tragedy,” in Calm of Mind, Joseph Wittreich ed. (Cleveland and London: Press
of Case Western Reserve University, 1971).

2' Hugh MacCallum, “Samson Agonistes: The Deliverer as Judge,” Milton
Studies 3 (1989), p.276.

22 David Loewenstein, “The Revenge of the Saint: Radical Religion and Politics
in Samson Agonistes,” Milton Studies 33 (1996), p.173. Also, French Fogle in
“The Action of Samson Agonistes” sees Samson moving from private despair to
public victory, while Wendy Furman in “Samson Agonistes as Christian Tragedy:
A Corrective View,” argues that Milton takes liberties with the book of Judges in
order to make Samson's vengeance more acceptable.

23 All quotations from Milton’s Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes are
from Milton: Camp/ate Shorter Poems, ed. John Carey (London and New York:
Longman, 1971), Samson Agonistes, 377-379. Further citations appear
parenthetically with line numbers. Carey’s notes will be cited as “Carey” with the
page number on which the note appears.

2‘ \Nilliam Riley Parker, Milton’s Debt to Greek Tragedy in “Samson Agonistes”
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1937), pp. 237-238.

25 Christopher Hill, The Experience of Defeat: Milton and Some Contemporaries
(London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1984), p.310.

30

’6 Marcia Landy, “‘Bounds Prescrib’d’: Milton’s Satan and the Politics of
Deviance,” Milton Studies 14 (1980), p. 117.

27 Clarence Boyer, The Villain as Hero in Elizabethan Tragedy (London: George
Routledge and Sons, 1914), p. 119.

2" Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (New York: The Viking
Press, 1977), pp. 347-348.

29 ASP. Woodhouse, The Heavenly Muse: A Preface to Milton (Toronto and
Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1972), p. 116. This sentiment was voiced
earlier by Don M. Wolfe who argues that, despite Milton’s support of the
Protector, his pamphlets of 1660, such as The Ready and Easy Way, rings with

“denunciations of rule by a ‘single person , including Cromwell’s. “Milton’s
Conception of the Ruler,” Studies in Philology 33 (1936), pp. 266-267.

3° In Book XII of Paradise Lost, Adam responds to Michael’s instruction by
concluding that “Henceforth, I learn, that to obey is best, IAnd love with fear the
only God, to walk/ As in his presence, ever to observe/ His providence, and on
him sole depend...worldly wise/ By simply meek; that suffering for truth’s sake /Is
fortitude to highest victory,/ And to the faithful death the gate of life” (561-564,
568-571).

3‘ Elaine B. Safer, “The Socratic Dialogue and ‘Knowledge in the Making’ in
Paradise Regained,” Milton Studies 6 (1975), p. 222.

32 See Hill, 1977, chapter 31.

33 Jackie, Di Salvo, “The Lord's Battels’: Samson Agonistes and the Puritan
Revolution,” Milton Studies 4 (1972), p. 40.

3“ Arthur E. Barker, “Calm Regained Through Passion Spent: The Conclusion of
the Miltonic Effort,” in The Prison and the Pinnacle, Balachandra Rajan ed.
(Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1973), pp. 14, 16. Mary Ann
Radzinowicz similarly argues that “the fullest response to Milton’s poetry...comes
from interpreting its meaning in relation to its evolution within the corpus of his
works” (Radzinowicz 1978, p. xix).

3" Joseph Anthony Wittreich Jr., Visionary Poetics: Milton ’3 Tradition and His
Legacy (San Marino, Calif: Huntington Library, 1979), p. 208.

35 J. Max Patrick, “Milton’s Revolution against Rime, and Some of Its
Implications,” in Milton and the Art of Sacred Song, J.Max Patrick and Roger H.

31

Sundell eds. (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), p.
1 15.

37 Lynn Veach Sadler, “Regeneration and Typology: Samson Agonistes and Its
Relation to De Doctrina Christiana, Paradise Lost, and Paradise Regained,”
Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 (1972), p. 143.

3“ Sadler argues that a Miltonic type takes on the role of an exemplar. Sadler,
p.144.

39 James A. Freeman, “Milton and Heroic Literature,” The Cambridge
Companion to Milton, Dennis Danielson ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981), p. 61. While the phrase “noble individuality” is used by Freeman to
describe the Son in Paradise Lost, I believe that it is an equally appropriate
description for the Son in Paradise Regained. Marcia Landy similarly argues that
Christ in Paradise Lost is an example of “proper individualism” (130).

‘° Elizabeth K. Hudson, “English Protestants and the imitatio Christi, 1580-
1620,” Sixteenth Century Journal 19:4 (1988), p. 542.

“ J. Sears McGee, The Godly Man in Stuart England (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1976), pp. 107, 111. Quoted in Hudson, pp.542-543.

“2 Quoted in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol.3, p.392.

‘3 Harry Keyishian, The Shapes of Revenge: Victimization, Vengeance, and
Vindictiveness in Shakespeare (New Jersey: Humanities Pres, 1995), pp. 1-2.
Marvin Daniels also provides a similar classiﬁcation between what he views as
“normal” and “pathological” Vindictiveness, p.169-170.

“ Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Don M. Wolfe ed., (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1973), vol. VI, p.743, 755. Quoted in Hill 1984, p.
315.

‘5 CS. Lewis, A‘Preface to “Paradise Lost" (London: Oxford University Press,
1942, rpt. 1961); p.70.

“5 David Mikics, The Limits of Moralizing: Pathos and Subjectivity in Spenser and
Milton (Lewisburg, N.J.: Bucknell University Press, 1994), p. 163.

‘7 C.A. Patrides, Milton and the Christian Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1966), p. 146.

32

‘8 John F. Andrews, “‘Dearly Bought Revenge’: Samson Agonistes, Hamlet, and
Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy,” Milton Studies 13 (1979), pp. 93-94.

‘9 David Loewenstein, “The Revenge of the Saint: Radical Religion and Politics
in Samson Agonistes,” Milton Studies 33 (1996), pp. 174-175.

5° For quietist readings of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, see n. 34
of Chapter 3 and n. 62 of Chapter 4.

5’ Achsah Guibbory, “John Milton: Providential Progress or Cyclical Decay,” The
Map of Time:Seventeenth-Century English Literature and Ideas of Pattern in
History (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 169-211, pp.
174-77. ‘

33

Chapter One: Revenge as Just Retribution

Milton’s treatment of the theme of revenge in Paradise Lost, Paradise
Regained, and Samson Agonistes has been largely overlooked. The question
that needs to be addressed is how does the theme of revenge in Milton’s major
poems help to promote the concept of retributive justice and produce an
apotheosis of revenge? As noted in the introduction, Milton’s view of revenge,
as laid out in his De Doctrina Christiana, is that the execution of revenge against
the enemies of God and the Church is just retribution and should be lauded as a
“religious duty” that is incumbent upon the Christian faithful.1

However, it must be noted that the modern critical approach to the theme
of revenge has generally been moralistic and can be distinguished by its efforts
to separate revenge from the operation of justice.2 As Susan Jacoby points out,
“[justice] is a legitimate concept in the modern code of civilized code of behavior.
Vengeance is not.”3 The modern critic who condemns revenge, therefore, would
agree with Arthur Schopenhauer’s view that revenge rarely brings satisfaction,
but torment and anguish brought about by a guilty conscience.“ Readers who
are schooled in the modern aversion to revenge, therefore, would be more likely
to recoil in horror from Samson’s act of revenge in Samson Agonistes. They
would ﬁnd the picture of the indiscriminate massacre of men, women and
children repulsive and difﬁcult to reconcile with justice. The modern aversion to
revenge partly explains why critics such as Irene Samuel and Joseph Anthony

Vlﬁttreich Jr. have condemned Samson’s revenge as a second fall and proof of

34

his continuing degeneracy. It also explains why critics such as Lily B. Campbell
and Eleanor Prosser, who base their studies of the theme of revenge in
Renaissance drama, argue that the act of revenge was condemned during the
Renaissance.5 As I hope to show, however, Renaissance attitudes were not as
uniform in their condemnation of revenge as these critics would have us believe.
For instance, the condemnation of Samson’s revenge does not take into account
the fact that, in Milton’s biblical source the book of Judges and in Samson
Agonistes, Samson is an instrument of God’s vengeance. In order to better
understand that revenge in literary texts such as Samson Agonistes is used to
describe the operation of heavenly justice, we need to know that during the
Renaissance, revenge is inseparable from the execution of justice. What is
needed, then, is the process of the reader “adjusting his views to Milton’s than...
having Milton retailored'“5 to satisfy our modern sensibilities about revenge.

In this chapter, then, I will attempt to provide a survey of the attitudes
toward revenge expressed by various authors of the Renaissance period in order
to establish the link between the act of revenge and the operation of justice.
Moreover, I hope to show that there was ample philosophical and theological
support for Milton’s attempt in his major poems to elevate revenge as an
indispensable instrument of divine justice. To do this, I will examine a variety of
different sources: sermons, essays, and religious pamphlets of the period. The
writers I will examine are Martin Luther (1483-1546), John Calvin (1509-1564),
Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), and Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) among others.7

I will also examine the discussions of revenge by classical authors such as

35

Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, and Cicero whose works were available during the
Renaissance.“ My decision to include classical authors in my discussion is
based on the fact that books such as Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics and
Cicero’s Ofﬁces were inﬂuential sources of morals and ethics in Renaissance
England. According to Curtis B. Watson, “the use of Cicero’s Ofﬁces as the
standard textbook on ethics in the Elizabethan grammar schools” was greatly
responsible for classical moral concepts becoming “the cultural values of the
ruling class of Elizabethan society.”9 Before examining Renaissance attitudes
towards revenge, however, I will explore the meaning of the word “revenge” and
its usage during that period. This should help in revealing the origin of the

negative attitude towards revenge in modern thought.

The Word “Revenge”

During the Renaissance, the word “revenge” was frequently associated
with the operation of justice. The twentieth century use of the word revenge,
however, has strong negative overtones; so much so that the concept of justice
has became separated from the concept of revenge. The instance Susan
Jacoby gives in her book IMld Justice of the deportation hearing in 1972 of
Hermine Ryan, a Nazi ofﬁcer of the Maidanek death camp, provides a good
example of the modern assumption that revenge and justice are mutually
exclusive. When Maidanek survivors were asked whether “they were 'out for

revenge’; all replied in controlled, dispassionate tones that they only wanted

36

justice.” Jacoby argues that this illustrates “the cultural convention that makes it
unacceptable to acknowledge any form of vengeance as a motivation” (Jacoby,
2). Disapproval of revenge can also be discerned from the fact that the deﬁnition
of “avenge” in the OED is painstakingly distinguished from “revenge,” which it

deﬁnes as “malicious retaliation”:

Neither in earlier, nor even in modern, usage is the restriction of avenge
and its derivatives to the idea of just retribution, as distinguished from the
malicious retaliation of revenge, absolutely observed, although it largely
prevails.

(OED, 815)

According to Jacoby, we have become so comfortable with the notion of
forgiving and forgetting that “[the] very word ‘revenge’ has pejorative
connotations” (Jacoby, 1, 4). Noting, however, that only the negative meaning of
revenge has survived in our current usage, Linda Anderson points out that,
during the Elizabethan period, revenge could also mean “punishment” or
“chastisement.”1o Ronald Broud corroborates Anderson’s observation by
pointing out that the word revenge was used during the Renaissance to signify
not only personal retaliation, but the Operation of justice, including both “legal
justice and God’s judgments.” "

The current practice of restricting the meaning of revenge only to its

negative aspect can be ascribed to a lengthy historical process of condemnation

37

by political and religious authorities that stems partly from the Tudor attempt
towards centralization of justice. As S.F.C. Milson points out, the medieval
judicial system, centered around trial by ordeal, had by the sixteenth century
been progressively centralized in the hands of the sovereign.” Vendettas by
powerful nobles came to be perceived as “a threat to the hard-won authority of
monarchs” and became an object of control by civil and religious authorities
(Jacoby, 34). Condemnation of revenge thus cannot be understood fully without
taking into consideration the state’s movement toward consolidation of power.
The modern propensity to condemn revenge can be illustrated by the
examples that the OED chooses to help deﬁne the uses of the word. What is
interesting is that, of the twenty-one examples provided for the ﬁrst two
deﬁnitions of “revenge" in the OED, only one example offers the possibility of a
positive meaning. Taken from Kyd’s Murther l. Brewen Wks (1592) the passage
reads, “The blood of the just Abel cried..for vengeance and reuenge on the
murderer.” For the most part, however, the examples explicitly condemn private
revenge as an unlawful or evil act. Norris in Beatitudes (1694) says “Private
Revenge therefore is universally to be condemned, as utterly unlawful.” Shelley
in Hellas (1821) derides revenge saying “Revenge and Wrong bring forth their
kind. The foul cubs like their parents are.” In the examples for the second
deﬁnition, Sidney in the Arcadia (1588) associates revenge with irrational
conduct: “Fury in his eyes and revenge in his heart.” Burkitt On N. T. Luke vi.29
(1703) writes, “Revenge is a very troublesome and vexatious passion.” Cogan in

Passions Il.ii. (1802) is more explicit and emphatic: “Revenge is an insatiable

38

desire to sacriﬁce every consideration of pity and humanity to the principle of
vindictive justice.”

The record of the examples condemning revenge in the OED clearly
reveals a modern bias against it. This in turn negatively inﬂuences our attempt
to understand the treatment of the theme of revenge found in Renaissance
literature. In his Studies of Words, C. S. Lewis points out that historical changes

in the meaning of words have an impact on our understanding of literary works:

If we read an old poem with insufﬁcient regard for change in the
overtones, and even the dictionary meanings, of words since its date-if, in
fact, we are content with whatever effect the words accidentally produce
in our modern mindsnthen of course we do not read what theold writer

intended.13

It is important to note that the distinction in OED between revenge as
“malicious retaliation” and avenge as “just retribution” does not reﬂect the
common attitude during the Renaissance. Rather, as Philip J. Ayres points out,
a large number of revengers in Elizabethan narrative literature who engage in
acts of revenge are portrayed not as villains, but as heroic and praiseworthy. “
Also, an examination of the contexts In which revenge occurs in the drama of the
period will reveal instances where justice and revenge are used interchangeably.
' For example, Hieronimo in The Spanish Tragedy laments that his sighs will “Beat

at the windows of the brightest heavens,/ Soliciting for justice and revenge." ‘5

39

Also, Constance in King John says of Arthur’s tears that, “Ay, with these crystal
beads heaven shall be bribed/ To do him justice and revenge on you.”16 Such
associations between justice and revenge in literary usage during the period
should alert us to the strong possibility that revenge was held in a more positive
light during the Renaissance. They also suggest that Renaissance opinion of
revenge was more ﬂexible than has been generally recognized and that, under
certain circumstances, revenge in the Renaissance was deemed justiﬁable. In
the following discussion, I will attempt to highlight these points. beginning with
the classical authors because the Renaissance notion of revenge as a socially
sanctioned act of justice ultimately derives from classical authors whose works

were available and widely taught during the period.

Classical Perspectives on Revenge

A close reading of representative classical authors writing on the subject
of revenge reveals a conscientious effort to come to terms with the tension
between the impulse towards vengeance carried out in anger, which was
generally viewed as unethical, and the necessity of punishment, which was
widely acknowledged as a rationally justifiable deterrent. According to Harry
Keyishian, however, discussions of revenge by classical authors such as
Aristotle are generally marked by a pragmatism that favors revenge, privileging

“social and interpersonal concerns over questions of abstract virtue” (Keyishian,

40

19). This pragmatic attitude towards revenge in Aristotle can be traced back to

Plato. Writing on the nature of punishment, Plato notes that,

he who desires to inﬂict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past
wrong which cannot be undone; he has regard to the future, and is
desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished,

may be deterred from doing wrong again.17

In advocating the usefulness of retaliation as deterrence, Plato recognizes
the social function of revenge. Plato, however, is not alone in recognizing the
social aspect of revenge. It also provides the basis of Aristotle’s attitude towards
revenge. While noting that a “good-tempered” man is generally magnanimous
and “is not revengeful, but rather tends to make allowances,”18 Aristotle argues
that even for a good-tempered man, there are special circumstances in which
endurance of insults is base. He makes it clear that there are situations in which
being “angry at the right things and with the right people" and “as he ought, when
he ought” should be praised. He also recognizes that there are times when

enduring insults to oneself and one’s friends is base and slavish:

For those who are not angry at the things they should be angry at are
thought to be fools, and so are those who are not angry in the right way,
at the right time, or with the right persons; for such a man is thought not to

feel things nor to be pained by them, and, since he does not get angry, he

41

is thought unlikely to defend himself; and to endure being insulted and put
up with insult to one’s friends is slavish.

(Ethica, 9:1125b-11263).

When faced with unjustiﬁable injuries, Aristotle argues that one should feel the
urge to retaliate against those who injure us in some way appropriate to the
injury. One must act in these instances or suffer a loss of reputation or further

injuries as well. In such situations, Aristotle urges that,

It is noble to avenge oneself on one's enemies and not to come to terms

with them; for requital is just, and the just is noble; and not to surrender is

a sign of courage.19

Keyishian comments that “Aristotle’s is a social view of revenge” in which he
demonstrates his understanding that'“how one is perceived affects how one is
treated and regarded” (Keyishian, 19).

The pragmatic view of revenge voiced by Plato and Aristotle is echoed by
Seneca. Although Seneca, like Aristotle, has deﬁnite reservations about anger
and vengeance, to the all-important question of whether anger and vengeful
impulses should necessitate the toleration of every sort of evil action, the answer
nevertheless is an emphatic no. To the question “is not correction sometimes
necessary?” he answers, “Of course it is.”20 While a wise man is not by nature

vengeful (De Ira, l. VI .5), in obvious cases of injustice and injury where means of

42

“milder sort” (De Ira, l. VI. 3) are proven ineffective, Seneca asserts that it is

one’s duty to avenge a wrong:

“What then?” you ask; “will the good man not be angry if his father is
murdered, his mother outraged before his eyes?” No, he will not be angry,
but he will avenge them, will protect them. Why, moreover, are you afraid
that ﬁlial affection, even without anger, may not prove a sufﬁciently strong
incentive for him? Or you might as well say: “What then? if a good man
should see his father or his son under the knife, will he not weep, will he
not faint?” But this is the way we see women act whenever they are upset
by the slightest suggestion of danger. The good man will perform his
duties undisturbed and unafraid; and he will in such a way do all that is
worthy of a good man as to do nothing that is unworthy of a man. My
father is being murdered-4 will defend him; he is slain-I will avenge him,
not because I grieve, but because it is my duty.

(De Ira, l. XII. 1-3, italics mine)

In the administration of retributive justice Seneca advocates that it be carried out
with “discretion, not with anger” (De Ira, l. VI. 1). Nevertheless, Seneca
concedes that in cases of extreme crime, the wise man needs to administer
extreme punishments so that “they may prove a warning to all” (De Ira, I. VI.

3-4).

43

Cicero’s attitude towards revenge and retribution as shown in his De
Officiis reﬂects that of Aristotle and Seneca in its pragmatism. While noting that
there is nothing more commendable than “courtesy and forbearance," Cicero is
careful to point out that “gentleness of spirit and forbearance are to be
commended only with the understanding that strictness may be exercised for the
good of the state” (De Ofﬁciis, I. XXV. 88, my emphasis). Thus Cicero maintains
that there are times when retribution and punishment is necessary and that “the
aggressor should be brought to repent of his wrong-doing, in order that he may
not repeat the offense and that others may be deterred from doing wrong” (De
Oﬁiciis, I. XI. 33). Asserting that justice is “the crowning glory of the virtues and
on the basis of which men are called ‘good men’” (De Ofﬁciis, l. VII. 20), he
argues that he who does not take action to prevent wrong from taking place is

equally guilty of an injustice:

There are...two kinds of injustice—the one, on the part of those who inﬂict
wrong, the other on the part of those who, when they can, do not shield
from wrong those upon whom it is being inﬂicted. For he who, under the
inﬂuence of anger or some other passion, wrongfully assaults another
seems, as it were, to be laying violent hands upon a comrade; but he who
does not prevent or oppose wrong, if he can, is just as guilty of wrongs as
if he deserted his parents or his friends or his country.”

(De Oﬂiciis, I. VII. 23)

44

Renaissance Attitudes Toward Revenge

While the attitude towards revenge among classical authors was generally
marked by a pragmatism that privileged the act of revenge, the task of
determining the Renaissance attitude towards revenge is a more difﬁcult
endeavor. This is due to a cacophony of voices during the Renaissance, ranging
from absolute condemnation to exhortation of revenge that makes it difﬁcult to
reach a consensus on the Renaissance attitude towards revenge.21 What is
signiﬁcant for the purpose of this study, however, is the fact that there existed a
strong tradition during the period that looked favorably upon retribution and
revenge as a vehicle of justice. This was particularly true among Protestants
divines who looked favorably upon “public” revenge against non-Christians and
enemies of God as an extension of God’s justice, and therefore considered this
form of revenge as “a universally sacred duty.”22 As David N. Beauregard
notes, recent scholarship has demonstrated the fact that punishment, correction,
and divine retribution were morally acceptable motives for acts of revenge during
the period.23

It is true that condemnation of revenge can be found in some writings of
the period, and this seems to support arguments by Campbell and Prosser that
revenge was condemned in Renaissance England. What Campbell and others
overlook, however, is that there were conventions and codes in the Renaissance
which supported the practice of revenge under certain special circumstances

especially when formal channelsuprovidence or the Iaw--proved inadequate.“

45

More importantly, as Campbell herself acknowledges, religious condemnations
of revenge during the Renaissance did not necessarily rule out all forms of
retaliation. In her discussion of the “threefold aspect of revenge,” Campbell
distinguishes between “private revenge” and “public revenge,” the latter of which
she places in the same category as “God’s revenge,” thereby making it justiﬁable
(Campbell, 290). Religious attitudes towards revenge during the Renaissance
were marked by what Susan Jacoby views as paradoxical: rejecting human
revenge as usurpation of God’s prerogative even as “vengeance thought to
serve God’s purposes and conducted by his agents” was simultaneously given
approval (Jacoby, 67-8). The issue for traditional Christian morality was thus not
so much the “rejection of the idea of repaying evil for evil” as the question of
“who may legitimately dispense it [punishment]” (Wallace, 373). Finally, there
were those among the Protestant clergy during the Renaissance who lay special
emphasis on the practice of public revenge that it was not only justiﬁable, but a
positive duty, a tendency that William Lamont calls “the need for a coerced
virtue.”25
As already noted, one approach, exempliﬁed by Campbell, uses writings
from the periodwhich condemn revenge to support a theory of a strong anti-
revenge ethic in the Renaissance audience. According to Campbell, “there was
a persistent condemnation of revenge in the ethical teachings of Shakespeare’s
England, a condemnation which was logically posited and logically defended”
(Campbell, 281). Eleanor Prosser likewise argues that there was an “orthodox

code of the Elizabethan Establishment” upheld by both Church and State, by

46

preachers and philosophers who were in “almost unanimous agreement” in their
condemnation of private revenge (Prosser, 4,13)?6 According to Prosser, while
the act of revenge was a familiar stage practice in the tragedies of the period, it
was nevertheless regarded as morally damning.27

While critics such as Campbell and Prosser argue that revenge was
condemned during the Renaissance, others such as Fredson Bowers, however,
attempt to refute Campbell’s argument that revenge was condemned during the
Renaissance by submitting that it was justiﬁable to the audience of

Shakespeare’s England in some special circumstances:

There can be little question that many an Elizabethan gentleman
disregarded without a qualm the ethical and religious opinion of his day
which condemned private revenge, and felt obliged by the more powerful
code of honor to revenge personally any injury offered him.

(Bowers, 37)

Indeed, there were those who supported the practice of revenge during
the Renaissance in order to uphold one’s honor or prevent further harm, a social
View of revenge that echoes that of Aristotle in its pragmatism?8 Niccolo
Machiavelli, for instance, whose view of vengeance was based on “pragmatic
rather than moralistic considerations” (Jacoby, 97) accuses Christianity in The
Discourses of encouraging moral sloth by endorsing humility, lowliness and a

Contempt for worldly objects, arguing that it has,

47

made the world weak and turned it over as prey to wicked men, who can
in security control it, since the generality of men, in order to go to Heaven,

think more about enduring injuries than about avenging them.” 29

Machiavelli further underscores the virtue of swift retribution in The Prince where
he argues that a ruler who practices “wise cruelty” will in the end prove to be
more merciful than a weak one who, through too much mercy, invites the evils of

rebellion and civil disobedience on his subjects:

A wise prince, then, is not troubled about a reproach for cruelty by which
he keeps his subjects united and loyal because, giving a very few
examples of cruelty, he is more merciful than those who, through too
much mercy, let evils continue, from which result murders or plunder,
because the latter commonly harm a whole group, but those executions

that come from the prince harm individuals only.30

Machiavelli’s sentiment is echoed by Francesco Guicciardini, a
contemporary of Machievelli and a Florentine statesman. Guicciardini notes in

his Maxims the connection between revenge and impersonal justice saying,

Revenge does not always stem from hate or from an evil nature.

Sometimes it is necessary so that people will learn not to offend you. It is

48

perfectly all right to avenge yourself though you feel no deep rancor

against the person who is the object of your revenge.31

In an argument reminiscent of the classical authors, Guicciardini argues that
revenge is justiﬁable when motivated, not by hatred or rancor, but a desire to
prevent further injury or loss of honor. The only reservation Guicciardini poses is
that the offended party carry out the act of revenge openly to emphasize the

impartial nature of the act:

If you avenge yourself in such a manner that the injured party does not
know whence the injury comes, you cannot be said to have done it for any
reason but hatred or rancor. It is more honest to do it openly and in such
a manner that everyone knows who did the deed. For then you can be
said to have acted not so much out of hatred or the desire for revenge, as
for the sake of honor. That is to say, you have done it so that others will
know you are the sort of person who does not take insults.

(Guicciardini, 93)

In England, we can ﬁnd echoes of Machiavelli and Guicciardini in the
works of Edward Reynolds, Thomas Hobbes and Sir Francis Bacon. Like the
Italian humanists, they approach revenge from a practical point of view.
Reynolds, for instance, urges that a victim of injury needs to retaliate to show

“that there is in him more courage, power and worth than deserves so to be

49

neglected.” 32 Hobbes, likewise, places a high value on the usefulness of
revenge to effect future behavior. While admitting that revenge “glorying in the
hurt of another, tending to no end" is “contrary to reason,” he nevertheless states

that it is a natural law that,

in Revenges, (that is, retribution of Evil for Evil.) Men look not at the
greatnesse of the evil] past, but the greatnesse of the good to follow.
Whereby we are forbidden to inﬂict punishment with any other designe,

than for correction of the offender, or direction of others.33

Hobbes thus recognizes that revenge is an evil but argues that its
usefulness as deterrence justiﬁes it. Even Bacon, who generally opposes the
practice of revenge in his essay, “Of Revenge,” condones revenge in some
instances. For instance, Bacon concedes that revenge is acceptable in
situations where the law fails to provide justice: “The most tolerable sort of
revenge is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy: but then let a man
take heed the revenge be such as there is no law to punish?“ In carrying out
the act of revenge, however, Bacon, like Guicciardini, urges in De Augmentis
Scientiarum that it should be carried out openly in order to emphasize the

corrective nature of revenge:

Some, when they take revenge, are desirous the party should know

whence it cometh. This is the more generous, for the delight seemeth to

50

be not so much in doing the hurts as in making the party repent. (my

italic)35

Bacon further states his support of revenge by likening the act of revenge to “a
kind of wild justice.” Because the law too often fails, Bacon argues that revenge

is a useful thing since the threat of revenge can prevent future wrongdoing:

Revenge is a kind of wild justice. He who requites violence with violence,
sins against the law but not against the man. The fear of private revenge

is a useful thing; for laws too often sleep.36

Not only can revenge be useful as a tool of deterrence, but Bacon goes so far as
to extol the virtue of “just revenge,” arguing that “whosoever either relieves or
avenges by war the calamities and injuries of men” have just and honorable
cause (De Augmentis Scientiamm, 449).

While Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Reynolds, Hobbes, and Bacon supported
the practice of revenge out of pragmatic concerns, Elizabethans and Jacobeans
were also aware of religious precedents in which certain forms of retaliation were
viewed as “acceptable acts of revenge” (Anderson, 14-15). Karen Robertson
argues that modern condemnations of revenge are based on the false
presumption that Renaissance attitudes were deﬁned exclusively by homiletic

and political injunctions against it. Rather, Robertson notes that there also

51

“existed powerful theological support for individual participation in the execution
of justice.”37

The foremost authority in support of the practice of revenge,
paradoxically, is the Scripture. The Pauline injunction against revenge which the
moral philosophers and theologians of the Elizabethan/Jacobean period based
their arguments on “cannot be understood as ruling out all retaliations.” On the
contrary, according to Wallace, “with the exception of paciﬁsts, Christians
acknowledged a right to self-defence; indeed the inﬂuential doctrine of just war
relies on such a right” (Wallace, 365). Indeed, St. Paul does leave the door open

for revenge, warning that evil will be avenged by the “minister of God”:

For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is
evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of

God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that does evil (Rom. 13, 4).

The deﬁnition of Paul’s “the minister of God” was a point of contention during the
Renaissance. While the religious and political establishment of the Renaissance
took this passage as referring to civil magistrates and governors, some
Protestant theologians such as Jeremy Taylor provide a much broader
interpretation, suggesting all “godly” or “wise” men have the power to inﬂict
Punishment.38 What is important, however, is the fact that the Scripture does not
forbid the act of revenge per se. Instead, as Skulsky puts it, “the Christian God

isn’t so much interested in abolishing revenge as monopolizing it.”39

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The strongest sanction for the personal execution of revenge is found in
the Old Testament.40 In the book of Exodus, for example, the Lord directs Moses
that “Thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot
for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Exodus 21, 24-
25).“1 Also, the book of Deuteronomy tells us that one who commits deliberate
murders must be delivered without pity “into the hand of the avenger of blood,
that he may die” (Deut. 19, 12). The explicit command that the murderer to be
delivered to an avenger of blood, who is deﬁned as “kinsman (brother, son) of a
slain man who, as his redeemer, was duty bound to claim back his life from the
slayer by killing him” (The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, 1, 321 ),
underscores the Scriptural sanction of individual acts of revenge. In fact, the
book of Deuteronomy emphatically says that revenge is not only justiﬁed, but
when “the crye of innocent blood” demands it, revenge becomes necessary for

the welfare of the nation:

Then the elders of his citie shall send

and set him thence, and deliver him into the hands
of the avenger of blood, that he may die.

Thine eye shall not spare him, but thou shalt

put away the crye of innocent blood from

Israel, that it may go well with thee.

(Deut. 19, 12-13)

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That revenge is seen as an instrument of divine justice becomes clear
from the admonition that “whosoever pardoneth murder, offendeth against the
worde of God.” This point is also restated in Numbers, where the law of murder
and the duties of the revenger of blood are deﬁned: if one slays another in
enmity and hatred “The revenger of the blood him selfe shall slay the murtherer:
when he meteth him, he shal slay him” (Numbers 35, 19). Both passages make
it clear that it is the duty of the offended party to execute justice against those
responsible for murder. This, then, is the “powerful theological support” for?
revenge alluded to by Robertson. The Scripture itself, especially the Old
Testament, provides ample authority for those advocating the virtue of revenge
as instrument of justice.

That revenge was viewed as a legitimate form of justice during the
Renaissance is evident from the works of theologians of the period such as
William Perkins, William Ames and Jeremy Taylor who saw revenge as
necessary to prevent further evil. Perkins, for example, observes that “In some
Cases, [a private man] may lawfully defend himselfe by force” against injuries
and offences committed against him because the “Gospel doth not abolish the
Law of nature, not the positive lawes of all countries?“2 According to Perkins,
individual acts of violent retribution are justiﬁable in situations where “there is no
other way to rescue ourselves, than by striking or killing.” Also, in cases where
there is no recourse to law, the magistrate being absent, Perkins states
emphatically that “God puts the sword into the private mans hands” (Perkins,

293). Perkins even advocates that one must approach divine justice with a zeal

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saying: “just and Iawfull anger must bee kindled and stirred up by good and holy
affections, and namely, by desire to maintaine the honour and prayse of God, by
the love ofjustice and vertue, by hatred and detestation of vice, and of all that is
evill”(Perkins, 297).

Ames, a Calvinist theologian and a contemporary of Milton, also argues
that revenge or vengeance is “in some sort an act of Commutative justice,” the
responsibility for the execution of which is “sometimes taken for the Act of the
judge” and “sometimes for the Act of a private man, whereby he himselfe
punisheth his enemy?“3 According to Ames, revenge is morally justiﬁed when
the individual is motivated by a desire to promote the common good, preserve
himself from future injuries, reform the offender, or preserve his “credit” or his
honor (Ames, 115). Ames argues that occasions exist when such revenge

becomes a necessity:

Yet there is something like revenge, which by way of Medicine, and as it
may be necessary, either to prevent future crimes, or encourage Vertue,
may be exercised, though no singular crime proceed. For as wee cut a
Veine for the health and safeguard of the heart, so some certaine
externall conveniences are to be denyed to some private men, as
occasion shall serve, either for the prevention of greater inconveniences,
or the procuring of some greater good.

(Ames, 1 16)

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Ames deﬁnes such an act of retribution as “public revenge.” Only when the
individual seeking revenge is motivated by viciousness and malice does revenge

degenerate into private revenge:

Publike Revenge, whether it be exercised by a Magistrate, or sought by a
private man, if it proceed out of Envy, Hatred, Thirst of blood, or Cruelty,
or if by any. other meanes it be tainted in the impulsive, formall or ﬁnall
cause, doth in that respect become private and unlawfull.

(Ames, 116)

Similar arguments linking revenge with public justice can be found in
another theologian of the period, Jeremy Taylor. Though Taylor advises in
Ductor Dubitantium or The Rule of Conscience that it is generally best to leave
vengeance in the hands of princes because “when a man is in pain and grief he
strikes unjustly and unequally” (Taylor, 132), he recognizes that there are times
when individual acts of revenge are necessary to implement divine justice. He
suggests that the instances of Old Testament ﬁgures such as Phineas (Numbers
xxv.7-15) and Mattathias (1 Maccabees, ii. 23—5, NEB), who killed those who
committed sins against God in order to divert God’s anger from their people,
exemplify how the personal execution of revenge becomes retributive justice.

Revealing a pragmatism that is reminiscent of the classical authors, Taylor
notes that “in some cases God permitted private persons to be executioners"

(Taylor, 133) and that Christianity allows for the “punishment of reprehension, of

56

which every wise and good man may be judge and minister" (Taylor, 134).
Indeed, Taylor, quoting Cicero, intimates that revenge is not only allowed, but is
sometimes a necessary duty, “[for] ‘a wise man is never a private man’” (Taylor
134). Examples of special circumstances in which a private act of revenge is
lawful include instances involving “a cause of blood” in which case Taylor argues
“the next of kin might kill the manslayer if he overtook him before he took
sanctuary" (Taylor, 133). Individuals are also morally justiﬁed in executing
justice and administering punishment in situations where there is no recourse to

law:

In the sea, and in desert places, where there can be no appeals to judges,
every man is executioner of the sentence of the law of nations. Thus we
ﬁnd that Julius Caesar pursued the pirates in the Mediterranean and
Adriatic seas; and because the proconsul would not, he gathered a
sudden navy and overtook them, and hanged them upon the man-yards
of their own vessels. Thus the wild Arabs and Circassian thieves that live
in vast places, and under no government, being public enemies of
mankind, and under no laws, no treaties or communications of peace,
may be killed by every one that is injured and spoiled by them, when he
can do it... ’he that kills a thief and a robber with his hand, or by
command, or by consent, is innocent;’ But this is to be understood of the
permission in the law of nature.

(Taylor, 1 33—134)

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Another instance in which the Injured person may avenge an injury to
himself is when revenge is needed “for the prevention of future mischiefs.”
Cases that fall under this category include the precept of Justinian, who gave
leave to every man to kill those who are bent on plunder, “for in that case there
was no staying for solemnities of law” (Taylor, 135). Personal acts of revenge
are justiﬁed in such instances because, “[this] which the law calls a revenge is
but a mere defence, it is a taking the mischief before it be intolerable...for
certainly if some punishments are lawful, all necessary defences are much more”
(Taylor, 135).

Both Ames and Taylor, then, believed that on occasion, revenge by
individuals against evildoers is necessary as an act of retributive justice.
However, while Taylor is careful to stipulate that revenge must be undertaken
under “unavoidable necessity” (Taylor, 134), and for the purpose of preventing
further evil that may occur, there were others who held a more proactive and
militant view towards retribution, advocating the “ideal of the godly magistrate?“
Protestant divines such as Martin Luther, William Perkins, and Thomas Beard,
for example, argue that it is a duty of godly society to mete out God’s justice
against non-Christians and to those who break God’s law."5 As pointed out by
Kinney, the idea that “justice was thought to be the responsibility of all citizens”
(Kinney, 45) was strong during the period, and this is especially so among
Protestants.

Evidence for the belief in the need for “coerced virtue” alluded to by

Kinney can be traced back to Martin Luther. In his attempt to address the

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question of whether “a Christian too may bear the temporal sword and punish the
wicked,” Luther divides mankind into two classes, “Christians” and “non-
Christians,” a distinction that is later echoed by Milton. Among Christians, Luther
admonishes that “the sword can have no place.” In regard to non-Christians,
however, Luther is less charitable, arguing that it is every Christian’s duty to bear

a sword against them:

You have now two propositions. One is that the sword can have no place
among Christians; therefore, you cannot bear it among Christians or hold
it over them, for they do not need it. The question, therefore, must be
referred to the other group, the non-Christians, whether you may bear it
there in a Christian manner. Here the other proposition applies, that you
are under obligation to serve and assist the sword by whatever means

you can, with body, goods, honor, and soul.“5

Thomas Beard, like Luther, believes that the responsibility of executing
God’s revenge lies with all godly Christians. Drawing an analogy between
punishment of the sinner and “applying extreme and desperate medicines, as to

desperate diseases,” “7 Beard argues that:

it is necessary that wee assay by all means to bring these men (if it be
possible) to some modesty and feare of God; which if it cannot bee done

by willing and gentle means, force and violence must be used to plucke

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them out of the ﬁre of God’s wrath, to the end they be not consumed...For
even as when a Captaine hath not prevailed by summoning a city to yeeld
up it selfe, he by and by placeth his cannon against their walls, to put
them in feare; in like sort must we bring forth against the proud and high
minded men of this world, an army of Gods terrible judgements throwne
downe by his mighty and puissant hand on the wicked, more terrible and
fearefull than all the roaring or double canons in the World, whereby the
most proud are destroyed and consumed even in this life, all their pride
and power, how great soever it be, being not able to turne backe the
vengeance of God from lighting upon their heads, to their utter destruction
and confusion.

(Beard, I. iii. 5)

Such an admonition of one’s duty to carry out God’s punishment against sinners
gives us insight into the period’s ideas about individual responsibility and the

individual’s right to execute divine justice.

Milton on Revenge

Milton's own views on revenge mirror Luther’s and Beard’s in their
militancy. In his discussion of revenge, Milton, like Luther, makes a clear
"distinction between revenge against the children of God and revenge against

God’s enemies. In regard to revenge against God’s people, Milton makes clear

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in De Doctrina Christiana that the Scriptural injunction that “thou shalt not
avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people.” 4" Milton,
nevertheless, is quick to point out that it is not forbidden to take revenge against
the enemies of God and his holy Church. Milton argues that, “To avenge the
church...or to desire that she be avenged of her enemies, is not forbidden”
(Columbia17, 289). Not only is revenge against the enemies of God allowed but
Milton suggests it is sometimes a necessity by arguing that hatred of “the
enemies of God or the church” is “in some cases a religious duty” (Columbia17,
259) and that “[w]e are even commanded to call down curses publicly on the
enemies of God and the church” (Columbia 17, 99). “9 Milton’s uncompromising
and militant approach to godly vengeance can be further found in his
Eikonoklastes where he demands that the sword of justice be wielded in defense

of “Truth” which he equates with “Justice”:

For Truth is properly no more than Contemplation; and her utmost
efﬁciency is but teaching: but justice in her very essence is all strength
and activity; and hath a Sword put into her hand, to use against all
violence and oppression on the earth.

(Columbia V, 292)

According to Milton’s deﬁnition, the “enemies of the church” are all those
who are “partly heretics, and partly profane opponents” and he argues that “the

destruction of all is portended,” (Columbia16, 313). Milton, in particular, reserves

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a special place in his prose tracts for “Prelaty," and “Tyrants” as “enemies of
church” and therefore subjects of godly revenge. In The Reason of Church-
govemment urg’d against Prelaty, Milton exhorts the righteous that it is a duty to
take revenge against the prelaty when they are found to be destructive to the

holy reformed Church:

Though God for Iesse then ten just persons would not spare Sodom, yet if
you can ﬁnde after due search but only one good thing in prelaty, either to
religion, or civil government, to king or Parlament, to Prince or people, to
law, liberty, wealth or learning, spare her, let her live, let her spread
among ye, till with shadow, all your dignities and honours, and all the glory
of the land be darken’d and obscurd. But on the contrary if she be found
to be malignant, hostile, destructive to all these, as noting can be surer,
then let your severe and impartial doom imitate the divine vengeance.

(Columbia I", 278—279, my emphasis)

Milton argues that to be swayed by mercy while the prelaty is an afﬂiction to the
Church of Christ is not only a dereliction of duty but a pious presumption that
“strive to goe beyond God in mercy” (Columbia III, 278).

Also, in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, Milton asserts that to show
mercy to Tyrants responsible for the spilling of innocent blood is “the mercy of

wicked men” and is tantamount to “hazarding the welfare of a whole Nation”

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(Columbia V, 3-4). Milton further states that it is “lawfull” to execute revenge

against tyrants, saying:

be he King, or Tyrant, or Emperour, the Sword of Justice is above him; in
whose hand soever is found sufﬁcient power to avenge the effusion, and
so great a deluge of innocent blood. For if all human power to execute,
not accidentally but intendedly, the wrath of God upon evil doers without
exception, be of God; then that power, whether ordinary, or if that faile,
extraordinary so executing that intent of God, is Iawfull, and not to be
resisted.

(Columbia V, 7)

Milton further admonishes his readers that, in failing to satisfy the call ofjustice,
they may invite judgment upon themselves, as the voices of the many thousands
of Christians, slaughtered by the actions of the tyrant (Charles I), are “crying for
vengeance against the living that should have righted them” (Columbia V, 20-
21).

Milton’s view of retributive justice as expressed in his prose tracts not only
sanctions but demands godly vengeance against evil. As we have witnessed
above in the discussions of revenge by representative contemporaries of Milton,
however, Milton does not stand alone in his zeal for public revenge. According
to Skulsky, the fact that Milton reserves a special place for Christian vengeance

against the enemies of God’s people is not peculiarly Miltonic nor even

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Protestant, but “the standard Christian line in seventeenth-century moral
theology” (Skulsky, 60-61).

As I hope to show in the following chapters, nevertheless, what is uniquely
Miltonic is the poet’s treatment of the theme of revenge in his major poetical
works. Tragedies of the period such as The Revenger’s Tragedy and Othello
project a critique of revenge by accentuating the individualistic and diabolical
aspects of revengers such as Vindice and Iago. Milton, however, incorporates
the concept of retributive justice in his major poems, thereby elevating revenge
into an instrument of divine justice, a means whereby mankind may redeem itself
from sin and bondage. As Desmond M. Hamlet points out, justice in Paradise
Lost “must be understood as an indispensable instrument of the divine creative
purpose,” so that the punishment of Adam and Eve does not remain simply a
matter of punishment for the Fall but part of the process of their regeneration
(Hamlet 1975, 272-3). Writing after the collapse of the Puritan revolution, Milton
was also concerned in his three major poems about the inﬁltration of immoral
and ungodly motives behind acts of revenge. As noted by D. M. Rosenberg,
“heroism is illusory without moral virtue.”O Rosenberg, thus, argues that a
conception of heroic action that indulges in its ferocity, lust for revenge, and
egotistic desire for glory is satanic. What is wanted is Christian heroic virtue
deﬁned in terms of “the ideals of obedience, sanctity, and martyrdom"
(Rosenberg, 188). Milton’s depiction of the ethical superiority of patient fortitude
over physical violence as means of godly vengeance in the poems, however, is

not an Invalidation of revenge. Rather, it sanctions the violence of vengeance by

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reconciling it with a purity of motive, making it impersonal and public. In this
way, I will argue, Milton creates an apotheosis of revenge that is unique and

unparalleled in English literature.

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Notes

1 See note 17, p.22.

2 I must acknowledge that any attempt to designate a particular period such as
the modern as being anti-revenge is, at best, an imprecise generalization. No
time period is fully anti or pro revenge. However, I feel obliged to make this
distinction here because modern criticism has generally been dominated by
critics such as Fredson Bowers, Irving Ribner and Eleanor Prosser who,
following the footsteps of Campbell, have argued that revenge was condemned
during the Renaissance, primarily on religious grounds. It is only more recently
that critics such as Susan Jacoby, Gerry Wallace, and Karen Robertson have
attempted to counter the earlier view by pointing out that the act of revenge was
not only justiﬁed during the Renaissance but frequently associated with the
operation ofjustice.

3 Susan Jacoby, Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge (New York: Harper 8
Row, Publishers, 1983), p.1.

“ A. Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena vol 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1974), pp.588-589. Quoted in Gerry Wallace, “Wild Justice,” Philosophy 70
(1995), p. 370.

5 Campbell, Lily B., “Theories of Revenge in Renaissance England,” Modern
Philology 28 (1931): 281-296; Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet nd Revenge, 2nd ed.
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971). See also Charles and Elaine Hallett,
“Introduction,” The Revengefs Madness: A Study of Revenge Tragedy Motifs
(Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), 3-14.

6 John E. Seaman, The Moral Paradox of “Paradise Lost” (The Hague, 1971),
p.10. Quoted in Desmond M. Hamlet, “Recalcitrance, Damnation and the Justice
of God in Paradise Lost," Milton Studies 8 (1975), 267-291, p.269.

7 Other authors that will be discussed in relation to the theme of revenge are
William Perkins (1558-1602), William Ames(1576-1633), Thomas Beard
(d.1632), Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540), Edward Reynolds (1599-1676),
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), and Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626).

8 Guillaume Du Vair for example notes that most of the principal works of the
ancient Stoics such as Seneca and others were available in translation in the

66

beginning of the seventeenth century England. The Moral Philosophie of the
Stoicks, trans. Thomas James, ed. Rudolf Kirk (New Brunswick, NJ, 1951), p.3.

9 Curtis B. Watson, Shakespeare and the Renaissance Concept of Honor
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1960), p. 65-66.

1° Linda Anderson, A Kind of Wild Justice: Revenge in Shakespeare’s Comedies
(Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1987), p.14.

" Ronald Broude, “Revenge and Revenge Tragedy in Renaissance England,”
Renaissance Quarteriy 28 (1975), 39—40. Quoted in Linda Anderson, p.14.

‘2 S.F.C. Milson, Historical Foundation of the Common Law (London, 1969),
pp.3-22. Quoted by Catherine Belsey, “Tragedy, Justice and the Subject,” in
1642: Literature and Power in the Seventeenth Century (Colchester: University
of Essex, 1981), pp.170-171.

‘3 CS Lewis, Studies in Words (Cambridge: University Press, 1960), p.3.

“ Philip J. Ayres, “Degrees of Heresy: Justiﬁed Revenge and Elizabethan
Narratives,” Studies in Philology 69 (1972): 461 -474, p.465.

‘5 Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, in Four Revenge Tragedies, ed.
Katharine Eisaman Maus et.al (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
1995), 3713-14.

‘5 William Shakespeare, King John, in The Complete Works of Shakespeare,
ed. David Bevington (New York: HarperCoIIins Publishers Inc., 1992), 2.1.171-
172.

‘7 Plato, Protagoras, 324. In The Dialogues of Plato, trans. Benjamin Jowett, 2
vols. New York: Random House, 1937.

‘8 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, trans. W.D. Ross, in The Works of Aristotle, ed
W.D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), 9:1125b. All quotations from Ethica
are from this edition and further citations appear parenthetically

‘9 Aristotle, Rhetorica, trans. Rhys Roberts, in The Works of Aristotle, ed. W.D.
Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), 11:1367a. Quoted in Keyishian, p. 19.

2° All quotations from Seneca are from Seneca Moral Essays, trans. John W.

Basore, 3 vols, Loeb Classical Library (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1958),
De Ira, Book I. VI. 6. Further citations appear parenthetically.

67

2‘ According to Broud (1975), Elizabethan revenge plays reﬂect “a considerable
range” of atttitudes toward revenge, p.56. Quoted in Anderson, p.16.

2" Fredson Thayer Bowers. Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy 1587-1642
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940), p.39.

23 David N. Beauregard, O.M.V., Virtue’s Own Feature: Shakespeare and the
Virtue Ethics Tradition (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995), p.104.

2‘ Elinor Bevan argues that “dispasionate revenge,” as part of class code, was
acceptable. In “Revenge, Forgiveness, and the Gentleman,” Review of English
Literature 8, no.3: 55-69, 55. See also Broud (1975), 38-58; Philip J. Ayers,
“Degrees of Heresy: Justiﬁed Revenge and Elizabethan Narratives,” Studies in
Philology 69 (1972): 461-74; John Sibly, “The Duty of Revenge in Tudor and
Stuart Drama,” Review of English Literature 8 (1967), 46-54.

25 \Nilliam Lamont, Godly Rule: Politics and Religion, 1603-60 (London: St.
Martins Press, 1969), p.172. Quoted in Kinney, p.34.

2“ The basis for the condemnation of revenge can be traced to the biblical
injunction of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans forbidding revenge: “Recompense
to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men...Dearly
beloved avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written,
Vengeance is mine; I will repay saith the Lord” (Rom. 12:17-9). Not surprisingly,
condemnation of private revenge during the Renaissance all invariably invoke
the authority of Scripture on the subject. For example, the injunctions against
private revenge by the anonymous writer of Certain Sermons and Homilies 1547-
1571 ed. Ronald B. Bond (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), is based
upon Pauline admonitions against taking revenge: “We rede in the boke of
Deuteronomy that al punishement perteineth to God by this sentence:
vengeaunce is mine, and I will reward. But this sentence we must understand to
pertein also unto the magistrates, which do exercise Gods roume in judgement
and punishing by good and godly lawes here in yearth. And the places of
Scripture whiche seme to remove from emong all Christian men judgement.
punishment or kyllyng ought to be understand that no man, of his awne private
aucthoritie, may be judge over other, may punish, or may kil. But we must refer
al judgement to God, to kynges and rulers, and judges under them, which be
Gods ofﬁcers, to execute justice and by plain wordes of Scripture have their
aucthorite and use of the swourd graunted from God, as we are taught by S.
Paule” (163); John Calvin also warns us in his Commentaries vol.12 ed. Calvin
Translation Society (Grand Rapids: Wm.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1948) that
anyone taking revenge does so at the risk of ursuping the ofﬁce of God saying:

68

“Anyone who jumps at vengeance intrudes into what belongs to God, and does
not allow God to perform His own ofﬁce. It is with reference to this that Paul
says, ‘Give place to Wrath’ (Rom.12.19), meaning that the way is closed up
against God, so that He does not Himself judge, when we anticipate Him. He
conﬁrms what he had said by the testimony of Moses, ‘Vengeance is
mine’(Deut.32.35)” (277).

2’ Eleanor Prosser argues that the moral and religious implications against
revenge were clear to the original audience of Renaissance drama and that only
the orthodox view of the Church received sanction on the stage saying: “We
have not recognized the familiar ethical and religious foundations upon which the
plays were constructed because it is buried too deep. I would agree...that the
ethical question of revenge is rarely central in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama,
but is not central, I submit, precisely because it was not a “question” to the
average playwright or to most of his audience. The issue was settled. Revenge
was a sin against God, a deﬁance of the State, a cancer that could destroy mind,
body, and soul-and that was that...A character needed only to say “Vindicta
mihi” (and) the audience was to apply its familiar code of judgment. Hamlet and
Revenge, 2‘“1 ed.(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), p. 72.

2“ As discussed above, Aristotle demonstrates a pragmatic approach to the
question of revenge by favoring revenge for the sake of honor and preventing
funherhann.

2" Niccolo Machiavelli, Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, trans. Allan H.
Gilbert (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1965), I: 331. Quoted in Keyishian,
p.20.

3° Ibid. pp.61-62.

3‘ Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reﬂections of a Renaissance Statesman.
Trans. Mario Domandi (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 60. Quoted in
Keyishian , p.20.

32 Edward Reynolds, A Treatise of the Passions and Faculties of the Scale of
Man (1640), facsimile (Gainesville, FL: Scholars Facsimiles & Reprints, 1971),
p.318. Quoted in Keyishian, p.20.

33 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991),
p.106.

69

3“ Sir Francis Bacon, “Of Revenge,” Francis Bacon: Essays, ed. Michaell J.
Hawkins (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1992). All quotations from Bacon’s
Essays are from this edition.

35 Francis Bacon, De Augmentis Scientiarum, p.555. Quoted in Keyishian, p.21.
36 Ibid.

37 Karen Robertson, “Chastity and Justice in The Revenger’s Tragedy,” in
Sexuality and Politics in Renaissance Drama, Carole Levin and Karen Robertson
eds. (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd., 1991), pp.215—216.

3“ See Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium or The Rule of Conscience (London,
1660). Rpt in The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, D. D., 10 vols.
Alexander Taylor ed. (London: 1883), vol.10, p.133-5. All quotations from Taylor
are from this edition and will be indicated parenthetically.

3" Harold Skulsky, Justice in the Dock: Milton ’3 Experimental Tragedy (Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 1995), p.59.

‘° As Hill points out, “no scholar ransacking the Bible as the best guide to
Christian conduct could fail to notice passages in the Old Testament justifying
hatred of God’s enemies” (Hill, 1984, 315).

“ The Mosaic code, based on the belief that truest justice is one which precisely
requite the original injury or loss, can be traced back to the Code of Hammurabi.

‘2 William Perkins, The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience (London,
1651), p.293. All quotations from Perkins are from this edition and will be
indicated in parenthesis.

“3 Willam Ames, Conscience with the power and cases Thereof divided into Five
bookes (London: 1643), p.114. Some spelling modernized. All further quotations
from Ames will be indicated parenthetically.

“ Jane Meredith Kinney, “To God’s glory, and our owne reformation": The
cultural work of John Rynolds’ “The Triumphs of Gods Revenge. ” (Unpublished
Dissertation: Duke University, 1992), p.34. Further quotations from Kinney will be
indicated parenthetically.

‘5 Though William Tyndale limits the agents of retribution to civil magistrates, he

nevertheless reﬂects the militant attitude of the Renaissance towards revenge by
arguing that punishment of evil deeds is not only justiﬁable, but a sacred duty:

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“Christ here intended not to disannual the temporal regiment, and to forbid rulers
to punish evil doers.” Moreover, he states that “where thou art no private man,
but a person in respect of other, thou not only mayest, but also must,and art
bound under pain of damnation to execute thine ofﬁce.” Expositions and Notes
on Sundry Portions of the Holy Scriptures, Henry Walter ed. (Cambridge, 1849),
p.59, 61. Quoted in Frye, 30.

‘5 Martin Luther, “Temporal Authority: To what Extent it Should be
Obeyed,1523,” trans. J.J.Schindel in Luther's Works, “The Christian in Society, ”
Walther l. Brandt ed. (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1962), vol. 45, 95.

‘7 Thomas Beard, The Theatre of Gods Judgements (London, 1597), Book I,
Chapter iii., p.4. Spelling partly modernized. Further quotes will be indicated in
parenthesis.

“8 Deut. xxxii.35. Quoted in “De Doctrina Christiana,” Columbia, Vol.17, p.289.
Also quoted by Milton in connection with evidence of Scriptural injuction against
revenge on God’s people; Psal. xciv.l, Prov.xx.22, Rom.xii.19, IPet.iii.8,9.

“9 Austin Woolrych argues that Milton’s view that the slaughter of the Catholic
Irish who he saw as “a mixt Rabble, part Papist, part Fugitives, and part
Savages” (Observations upon the Articles of Peace (1649), CPW III, p.312) is
proper work for the Godly Englishmen was a common view of the period. Austin
Woolrych, “Milton and Cromwell: ‘A Short But Scandalous Night of Interruption?”
Ed. Lieb and Shawcross, Achievements of the Left Hand: Essays on the Prose
of John Milton (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1974), p. 188.

5° D. M. Rosenberg, Oaten Reeds and Tmmpets: Pastoral and Epic in Virgil,
Spenser, and Milton (Lewisburg, N.J.: Bucknell University Press, 1981), p. 190.

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Chapter Two: “unconquerable will,/ And study of revenge”: Revenge and the
Problem of Evil in Paradise Lost

While there very little scholarship dealing with the subject of revenge in
Paradise Lost, this dearth of criticism belies the importance of revenge to the
overall meaning of the poem. The importance of the theme of revenge in
Paradise Lost is underscored by the fact that Milton refers to revenge twenty-one
times compared to just four in Samson Agonistes, a work more recognized for its
treatment of revenge theme. Its importance has also been suggested by
Barbara Kiefer Lewalski who indicates the need to look at Elizabethan revenge
tragedy as one of the literary concepts and models behind Milton’s poem.
According to Lewalski, Satan takes on the role of a revenge hero when he
appeals to “Honor and Empire with revenge enlarg’d” as justiﬁcation for his
villainy (Lewalski 1985, 12-13, 63-64). Calling Satan a “pathological vindictive
character,” Marvin Daniels similarly stresses the need to understand revenge as
the underlying motivation behind Satan’s vengeful rebellion against God.1

Paradise Lost is, then, a story of revenge, Satan’s egoistic and
individualistic revenge against God and humanity for his defeat and expulsion
from Heaven. From his very ﬁrst introduction of Satan in Book I, Milton highlights
Satan’s stubborn attachment to pride, hate and revenge. In Book I we ﬁnd Satan
and his apostate angels awakening in Hell and beginning to realize the profound
consequences associated with their rebellion. They have been hurled down from

Heaven to the ﬁery pit of Hell, deprived of all hope, all joy, and even all light.

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The “darkness visible” of Hell serves only to reveal “sights of woe,l Regions of
sorrow, doleful shades, where peace/ And rest can never dwell, hope never
comes/ That comes to all” (PL, I. 63-67). Yet, as the narrator tells us, though
Satan is “in pain” and “racked with deep despair” (PL, I. 125-26) as he bemoans
the changes brought about by his fall from Heaven, his thoughts, instead of
seeking God’s mercy and forgiveness, are marked by an appetite for revenge.
Indeed, the ﬁrst image we have of Satan in Paradise Lost is as a fallen angel
rising from Hell’s desolate landscape ranting against God with words of

“revenge” and “immortal hate”:

What though the ﬁeld be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?

(PL, i. 105-109)

The emphasis during this scene on Satan’s ranting, immortal hate and
rashness is symptomatic of not only of his obduracy but also highlights the
dubious nature of his revenge. As P. A. Samuels points out, the passions of
wrath, ranting and rashness such as Satan engages in are indicative of the
impurities of the conventional revenge tradition? Milton’s depiction of Satan’s

disdain and hatred, therefore, calls our attention to the private and personal

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nature of Satan’s revenge that makes it so suspect. Instead of allowing us to
identify with Satan, therefore, the image of an arrogant, abrasive and prideful
revenger undermines his heroic pretensions, leading us to condemn his
destructive impulses. Even while Satan reluctantly acknowledges God’s
omnipotence, he refuses to “repent or change.” He lets his pride get in the way
of “[suing] for grace/ With suppliant knee” which he considers “an ignominy and
shame beneath/ This downfall” (PL, I. 96, 111-16). In the face of defeat and
banishment from heaven, Satan resolves to avenge his defeat, “[vaunting] aloud”
that he will “wage by force or guile eternal war/ lrreconcilable, to our grand foe”
(PL, I. 126, 121-22). Proceeding thus from despair and self-pity to anger and the
need for revenge, Satan makes a desperate decision that he will attempt to
perpetuate a never-ending war with God by carrying rebellion and damnation
from Hell to Earth, and seducing mankind to revolt against God. This decision is
one of a series of fateful choices Satan makes during several key episodes in
Paradise Lost which take him ever deeper into sin and ultimately seals his own
damnation.

Defeated in battle, Satan’s overriding passion is his hatred of God and
determination to get back at God at any cost. This much is evident from his own
“eyes/ That sparkling blazed” (PL, I. 193-94) that betray the ﬁre and rage burning
within him. We are told that under his brows sat “dauntless courage, and
considerate pridel Waiting revenge” (PL. l. 603-04). Thus, when he addresses
his troops for the ﬁrst time after the fall, we see Satan focusing on the alleged

injuries that he and his comrades have been forced to suffer when God “still his

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strength concealed” and “tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall” (PL, l. 641-
42). By attempting to shift the blame for their own rebellion and fall onto God by
claiming that God was the instigator who brought about their fall, Satan stresses
their need to exact revenge upon the enemy. It is in the context of revenge,
therefore, that Satan presents revenge as an alternative course of action to his
followers in his speech when he suggests they “work in close design, by fraud or

guile” (PL, I. 646) to resume their war with Heaven:

There went a fame in heaven that [God] ere long
Intended to create, and there plant

A generation, whom his choice regard

Should favour equal to the sons of heaven:
Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps

Our ﬁrst eruption, thither or elsewhere:

For this infernal pit shall never hold

Celestial spirits in bondage, nor the abyss

Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts
Full counsel must mature: peace is despaired,
For who can think submission? War then, war
Open or understood must be resolved.

(PL, l. 651-62)

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Satan’s plan of revenge, ﬁrst mentioned here in his speech to his
followers is deliberated at greater length at the “great consult” (PL, I. 798) in
Pandemonium. During the consult called by Satan to debate their future course
of action, after Moloch, Belial, and Mammon advance their proposals—open war,
passive endurance, or creation of a “nether Empire” (PL, H.296) in hell--
Beelzebub takes the ﬂoor to press Satan’s plan of revenge towards its insidious
conclusion. Beelzebub has heard of a newly created world, earth, and he
proposes its extermination or either the expulsion or the seduction of thei“new

race called Man” (PL, II. 348):

By sudden onset, either with hell ﬁre

To waste his whole creation, or possess

All as our own, and drive as we were driven,
The puny habitants, or if not drive,

Seduce them to our party, that their God
May prove their foe, and repenting hand
Abolish his own works. This would surpass
Common revenge,

(PL, II. 364-371)

Beelzebub’s plan (devised by Satan) is to gain a measure of revenge that comes
from frustrating the plans of God. His hope is that by seducing mankind, God in

h is fury might be prompted to destroy his creation, thus, giving the fallen angels

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the revenge they crave. Having gained the assent of the assembly, Beelzebub
sets the stage for Satan, who seizes and expands upon the opportunity by
volunteering for this “perilous attempt” in the name of “[d]eliverance” (PL, II. 420,
465).

If the inclusion of Moloch, Belial and Mammon in the discussion reveals
Satan’s mastery of parliamentary politics, what stands out in the end is Satan’s
impetus towards revenge which acts as a testimony to his obduracy. As
elaborated upon by Beelzebub, the scope of action open to them is severely
limited. They can neither pursue Moloch’s plan to seek “[d]esperate revenge” in
“open'war” (PL, II. 107, 51) for their strength is already found wanting against
God. Nor is Belial’s and Mammon’s plan to make a Heaven of Hell feasible for
as Beelzebub tells them, “[t]his place [is] our dungeon, not our safe retreat” (PL,
II. 317). It is a proof of Satan’s outrageous villainy, therefore, that, rather than
repenting and seeking forgiveness, he persists in plotting to achieve what he
deems to be some small amount of revenge by denying God the pleasure he
takes in his latest creation. Satan’s argument of revenge presented with stirring
words of courage and honor, however, cannot hide the fact that his revenge
springs from his hatred and pride rather than from concern for public good. To
instigate war and revenge against God and his creation that had done him no

wrong in the name of deliverance, therefore, is reprehensible and to be rejected.

In Milton’s portrayal of Satan’s unholy revenge in Paradise Lost, which is

in diametrical opposition to the examples of redemptive vengeance Milton later

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depicts in Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, two things stand out. First
is the fact that Milton is at pains to emphasize that Satan is motivated foremost
by his own pride and hatred in his rash decision to seek revenge against God.
This emphasis on the passions of pride, hatred, and revenge, the traditional
impurities of the revenge tradition alluded to by P. A. Samuels, not only draws
our attention to the apparent similarities between him and the villain revenger of
Elizabethan drama but is central to Milton’s tragic purpose. As Richard S. Ide
points out, “in Paradise Lost...Satan strikes the pose of villain revenger when
setting out to deceive man” (Ide 1983, 122). Like Iago, an example of the
“revengeful villain hero” (Boyer, 119), Satan is a willful egoist who pursues his
private revenge with malice and a single-minded purposefulness. Milton’s
depiction of the vice and passions associated with individualistic and destructive
villains of Elizabethan revenge tragedy thus serves as a moral example in the
poem; they are things that need to be purged as he warns his “ﬁt
audience...though few” (PL, VII. 31) of the self-destructive nature of violent
anger and hatred, that they are ugly and wicked. In formulating his idea of
tragedy, therefore, Milton follows the main tenets of Aristotle who in his Poetics
deﬁnes catharsis as a tragic purpose? According to Milton, “the gravest,
moralest, and most proﬁtable of all other poems: therefore said by Aristotle to be
of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such-
like passions.“ In short, the purpose of tragedy as Milton sees it is to purge from
his audience-reader such-like passions as relates to Satan’s revenge: envy,

hatred, malice, pride and arrogance. As Christopher Hill points out, writing after

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the failure of the Puritan Revolution, Milton was captivated with the problem of
moral failure that led to the failure of the revolution.5 Thus, though Milton goes
on to dramatize the patient examples of the Son and Samson in Paradise
Regained and Samson Agonistes as paradigms of public and redemptive
vengeance, Milton begins his epic cycle by portraying in Paradise Lost the willful
and destructive nature of Satan’s hate-ﬁlled revenge in order to bring about a
purgation of such passions in his audience.“

The second noteworthy element of Satan’s revenge is the emphasis on
his free will. As I hope to show in the following, there is a clear interconnection
between Satan’s revenge and his free will that serves Milton’s purpose of
dramatizing the problem of evil and “justify[ing] the ways of God to men” (PL, I.
26). One of the concerns for Milton in writing Paradise Lost is to resolve the
question whether Satan is evil by nature or as the result of free choice. Because
the God of the Bible is both omniscient and omnipotent, evil is a complex
problem for Milton. In attempting to write the story of humanity’s fall and
redemption, Milton must reconcile the omnipotence of God with the existence of
evil. He must answer two equally difﬁcult questions: Is God responsible for the
existence of evil or does evil exist outside of God? Since Milton as a Christian
poet cannot accept the Zoroastrian concept of the dualism of Good and Evil, he
must formulate an alternative explanation of evil and whence it derives. Milton
attempts to provide answers to these questions by blaming the evil of Satan’s
revenge not on his nature, but on negative choices.7 As Harold P. Maltz points

Out, Paradise Lost “exonerates God from responsibility for Lucifer’s actions” by

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pointing to the “principle of freewill.”“ Central then to Milton’s efforts to defend
the ways of God is to explain evil in terms of the doctrine of free will.“ According
to Diane Kelsey McCoIIey, “the success of [Milton’s] efforts to ‘justiﬁe the wayes
of God to men’ depends on the even scale of his characterization of Adam and
Eve as ‘Sufﬁcient to have stood, though free to fall’.“‘° While McColley conﬁnes
her discussion to the example of Adam and Eve, her argument that the success
of Paradise Lost depends on relating liberty with responsibility is equally
applicable to understanding Satan’s revenge in its truly evil perspective. A

In Paradise Lost, Milton goes out of his way to underscore the fact that
Satan is in no way constrained or predisposed by his nature, which originally is
created good, to seek the path of recrimination and ungodly revenge.11 This is
what makes his revenge so evil. The full ethical implication of this decision by
Satan to pursue revenge becomes apparent when we have knowledge of who
Satan once was and why he rebelled. According to Raphael Satan was “of the
ﬁrst,/ If not the ﬁrst archangel, great in power,/ In favour and pre-eminence” (PL,
V. 659-661). However, because of envy, hate, and self-love, Satan could not
accept God’s exaltation of the Son (PL, V. 601-615), leading him to initiate his

rash rebellion against God:

With envy against the Son of God, that day
Honoured by his great Father, and proclaimed
Messiah King anointed, could not bear

Through pride that sight, and thought himself

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impaired.
Deep malice thence conceiving and disdain...

(PL, V. 658-666)

The elevation of the Son, then, comprises the central issue in Satan’s prideful
rebellion, a rebellion that is founded on self-love. This penchant for self-love by
Satan is described by Regina Schwartz in terms of narcissism.12

That Milton portrays self-love as the root-cause of Satan’s rebellion is
hardly surprising, considering that Christian morality places stern injunctions
against the type of self-love evinced by Satan in Paradise Lost. Thomas Wright,
a sixteenth century theologian warns against the dangers of self-love by
admonishing that while “the love of God buildeth the city of the predestinate, self-
love [buildeth] the city of the reprobate.”13 In rejecting the Father’s decree as
“new Laws ...imposed” (PL, V. 679) and exploiting the topic of freedom and
equality to justify his revolt (PL, V. 787-802), Satan abuses his privilege of free
will in order to indulge in his own sense of self-worth. However, as Satan’s
subsequent descent into hell, pursuit of revenge, and progressive degeneration
indicates, Milton is at pains to demonstrate in Paradise Lost that “choices have
their consequences” (Samuel 1968, 245).“ Because of his obdurate revenge,
Satan, an angel ﬁrst in “favour and pre-eminence” becomes a “toad” and a
“snake.”15 This is why the story of Satan’s revenge is so terrifying. By placing
his self-love before the will of God, Satan persists in his willful pursuit of revenge

until he dooms himself to eternal damnation and becomes the very embodiment

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of evil. The responsibility for evil therefore rests with Satan and his voluntary act
of distancing himself from the will of God. This idea that evil derives from
negative choices proves important for Milton in writing Paradise Lost. If Milton
can demonstrate that the evil of Satan’s revenge is a result of Satan’s negative
choice, then, Milton will succeed in his attempt to “assert eternal providence,l

And justify the ways of God to men.”

The story of Satan’s obdurate revenge continues in Paradise Lost when,
following the contrived decision to pursue revenge as their course of action in the
“great consult,” Satan makes his solitary departure from Hell. Before he
completes his journey to Eden and executes his revenge, however, he is faced
on several occasions with vivid and persistent reminders of God’s benevolence
and mercy that provide him with opportunities to repent. One such reminder is
the gate of heaven that Satan encounters after struggling across Chaos, offering

him his ﬁrst of several opportunities to repent:

The stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw
Angels ascending and descending, bands
Of guardians bright, when he from Esau ﬂed
To Padan-Aram in the ﬁeld of Luz,

Dreaming by night under the open sky,

And waking cried, This is the gate of heaven.

(PL, Ill. 510-515)

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The allusion to the Jacob’s ladder illuminates the opportunity for repentance
open to Satan at this point. Noting that while “the relevance of the simile to
Satan’s situation is usually missed,” Alastair Fowler argues that “Satan like
Jacob...is at a parting of ways where he could still repent” (Fowler, 173, iii 510-
15 n). Keith W. F. Stavely likewise interprets the passage as a demonstration of
God’s benevolence and that “the archﬁend himself is being granted the
opportunity to choose repentance and faith?“ He argues that the signiﬁcance

of this passage lies in the drama of real choice Milton portrays in this episode:

If the passage depicts an escape from satanic intrigues and rages into the
clear air of God's open sky, this is so exhilaratingly accomplished that we
feel at least momentarily that all things are possible, and even the
archﬁend might wake up and cry, ‘This is the gate of heaven.’ ...In other
words, God continues to extend the most crucial spiritual invitation to
Satan despite Satan’s previous rejection and despising.

(Stavely, 131)

While some critics such as William Kerrigan ﬁnd the following lines, “[t]he
stairs were then let down, whether to dare/ The ﬁend by easy ascent, or
aggravate/ His sad exclusion from the doors of bliss” (PL, III. 523-525), not only
troubling, but proof that Satan is forever damned at this point,‘7 the signiﬁcance

0f the moment is hard to miss. As the narrator points out, this is a special

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occasion. The stairs need not have been lowered, nor are they always so
displayed: “Each stair mysteriously was meant, nor stoodl There always, but
drawn up to Heaven sometimes/ Viewless (PL, Ill. 516-518). It is a moment
punctuated by a possibility that all things, including redemption, are possible if
Satan would but seize the moment. Just as Jacob escaped into God’s mercy, so
too could Satan likewise (Stavely, 132) if he would but repent. Instead of being a
sadistic and unwarranted taunting of Satan, therefore, the incident is further
proof of God’s desire to bring good out of evil. The story of Satan in Paradise
Lost, however, is about repeated missed opportunities for repentance and their
consequences. Looking down from the “lower stair” (PL, III.540) of Heaven’s
gate, Satan ﬁnds the new world and is with “Such wonder seized...but much
more envy seized” (PL, III.552, 553). In another moment of decision, Satan,
instead of climbing up the stairs back to God, turns his back upon heaven’s
proffered grace in a downward spiral. Because of his envy, he cannot fall on his
knees in a leap of faith and throw himself at God’s mercy. The contrasting
images between the biblical story of Jacob who looks up to the sight of heaven’s
gate with repentance and Satan who becomes a prey to his envy by looking
downward on the lower stair is pregnant with symbolism. By underscoring the
immobilizing nature of hatred, pride and envy that prevents Satan from relenting,
prompting him ever further downward from God, Milton underscores Satan’s evil
and compels us to reject the vices and passions that characterize his egotistic

and destructive revenge.

84

With his decision not to repent, Satan immediately ﬂings himself “without
longer pausel Down right into the world’s ﬁrst region” in “ﬂight precipitant” (PL, “I.
561-563) past “[t]he golden sun” which “in splendor likest heaven/ Allured his
eye” (PL, III. 572-573) and lands on Earth, on Mt. Niphates. Here, despite his
previous rejection of God’s grace, with the sun on one side and Eden on the
other, Satan still ﬁnds ample evidence of God’s benign presence all around him,

urging voicelessly for his repentance:

Sometimes towards Eden which now in his view
Lay pleasant, his grieved look ﬁxes sad,

Sometimes towards heaven and the full-blazing sun,
Which now sat high in his meridian tower:

(PL, IV. 2730)

The beauty of God’s creation reminds Satan not only of his lost heaven
but also of God, so that despite “his dire attempt (pursuit of revenge)” that “boils
in his tumultuous breast” (PL, IV. 15-16), he is momentarily stopped from his
gruesome task by his conscience. We are told that “horror and doubt distract/
His troubled thoughts” as “now conscience wakes despair/ That slumbered,
wakes the bitter memory/ Of what he was, what is, and what must be" (PL, IV.
18-19, 23-25). As noted by Louis L. Martz, the fact that Satan still possesses the
power of conscience is signiﬁcant. Explicating that conscience is “the umpire

that God will place within man’s breast after the Fall, as a divinely given guide

85

that may lead man from light to light toward his salvation,” Martz indicates that its

presence in Satan denotes the possibility of grace for him:

...[Milton] reveals a Satan who still seems to possess the power of
choice,...lt even seems to Satan that a way out might still remain in
repentance:...Milton is boldly raising here another of his ultimate
questions: would not a just God prefer to see Satan repent, and give him
the chance to repent?...The effect of Satan’s whole soliloquy at the outset
of book 4 is this: Satan, like any mortal man, seals his own doom by
making a deliberate choice of evil. Milton leaves us with the feeling that
Satan somehow has the power, if he had only used it, to make a better

choice?“

The gravity of this occasion is not lost on Satan himself as, in a rare moment of
honesty and introspection, he responds by truthfully if reluctantly admitting his

guilt and loss:

O sun...how I hate thy beams

That bring to my remembrance from what state

I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere;

Till pride and worse ambition threw me down
Warring in heaven against heaven’s matchless king:

Ah wherefore! He deserved no such return

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From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.

(PL, IV. 3745)

The “conviction of sin,” that Satan displays here, the ﬁrst of four steps of
regeneration outlined in De Doctrina Christiana,19 presents a golden opportunity
for repentance if he would but act upon this knowledge and seek forgiveness?“
At this moment, Satan’s mood of self-recrimination should lead him back from
the path of revenge to the path of contrition and true repentance. Infact, Satan
does contemplate repentance, crying out to himself to “at last relent” (PL, IV. 79).
That he does consider the possibility of repentance shows that some of Satan
remains potentially redeemable. For an instant, everything hangs in the balance.
Despite his previous acts of disobedience, he might actually turn back from his
foolish pursuit of revenge. According to Stavely, “the psychic struggle” Satan
undergoes at this point “feels as authentic as Adam’s similar struggle in Book X"
(Stavely,135). Satan, however, unlike Adam and Eve who repent of their sin, in
a display of continuing degradation, again chooses to reject this occasion for

repentance:

0 then at last relent: is there no place
Left for repentance, none for pardon left?

None left but by submission; and that word

87

Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the spirits beneath, whom I seduced
With other promises and other vaunts

Than to submit, boasting I could subdue
The omnipotent.

(PL, IV. 79-86)

As the sequence of Satan’s rhetorical question and answer reveals
unequivocally, opportunity yet remains for his repentance and pardon if only he
submits himself to God. Just as his pride led to him to his original rebellion,
however, it again gets in the way of his repentance. Despite the inner tonnents
his foolish vanity has brought him (PL, IV. 86-88), therefore, he continues in the

path of obdurate rebellion by resorting to the numbing effect of rationalization:

But say I could repent and could obtain

By act of grace my former state; how soon

Would highth recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feigned submission swore; ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void.

For never can true reconcilement grow

Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep:
Which would lead me to a worse relapse

And heavier fall: so should I purchase clear

88

Short intermission bought with double smart.

(PL, IV. 93-102)

Satan, thus, is fully aware of his culpability. He is also cognizant of the
fact that there is a chance of forgiveness if he is willing to repent, a fact told to
him earlier in Heaven by Abdiel. According to Abdiel, Satan’s rebellion is not
irrevocable, since he urges Satan to repent in terms which indicate his time is not

yet expired:

Cease then this impious rage,
And tempt not these; but hasten to appease
The incensed Father, and the incensed Son,
While pardon may be found in time besought.

(PL, V. 845-848)

Satan, nevertheless, refuses to repent?1 His pride and self-love reject the
submission his deliverance requires. As Joan F. Gilliland points out, the
responsibility lies exclusively with Satan because “he chooses not to accept and
act upon the truth of his condition and his experience” (Gilliland, 30). Instead, in
an apparent death-wish, he willfully chooses to continue down the path of

destructive and repugnant revenge”:

Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;

89

Evil be thou my good; by thee at least

Divided empire with heaven’s king I hold

By thee, and more than half perhaps will raign;
As man ere long, and this new world shall know.

(PL, IV. 109-113)

Milton emphasizes the diabolical nature of Satan’s decision to choose evil and
revenge over repentance right after his admission of guilt by depicting the
physiological changes that overtake Satan. Immediately following his resolve,
his face becomes dimmed by the passions of “ire, envy and despair” that marred
his “borrowed visage.” By underscoring Satan’s “distempers foul” and “[dleep
malice” that “couched with revenge” (PL, W. 114-24), Milton asks us to be
repulsed by the malicious villainy of Satan’s tainted revenge that was instigated
under the banner of honor and public good.

Satan’s deepening degeneration following his deliberate choice of evil
over repentance becomes apparent when he encounters Adam and Eve for the
ﬁrst time. As Satan approaches Eden from Mount Niphates, he comes upon
Adam and Eve whose traces of “divine resemblance” (PL, IV. 364) evoke a
sense of envy and resentment against the creatures whom he perceives to have

usurped their place:

0 hell! What do mine eyes with grief behold,

Into our room of bliss thus high advanced

9O

Creatures of other mould, earth-born perhaps,
Not spirits, yet to heavenly spirits bright
Little inferior;

(PL, IV. 358-62)

Even as Satan looks on the beauty of God’s creation with tender feelings of
wonder, longing and almost love (PL, IV. 363-65), he already relishes the
moment of his revenge “when all these delights/ V\ﬁll vanish and deliver [Adam
and Eve] to woe” (PL, IV. 367-68). Though some good still left in him allows him
to entertain the thoughts of regret and pity (PL, IV. 374), he easily sheds his
moment of weakness and moves back to his vengeful intent with counterfeit
arguments of honor and public reason which Milton calls the “tyrant’s plea” (PL,

IV. 394):

hell shall unfold,
To entertain you two, her widest gates,
And send forth all her kings; there will be room,
Not like these narrow limits, to receive
Your numerous offspring; if no better place,
Thank him who puts me Ioth to this revenge
On you who wrong me not for him who wronged.
And should I at your harmless innocence

Melt, as I do, yet public reason just,

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Honour and empire with revenge enlarged,
By conquering this new world, compels me now
To do what else thought damned I should abhor.

(PL, IV. 385-392)

More than any outward signs of ranting, wrath and rage, this image of a callous
and sadistic creature who can simultaneously experience the feeling of
tenderness and love towards his innocent victims while contemplating their
destruction just so he can indulge his desire for revenge, fosters a sense of deep
repulsion at this grotesque depiction of Satan’s reprobation. The effect upon the
reader-audience at the sight of such perversion is one of horror which is intended
to promote purgation of such passions as envy, pride, and hatred that underlines
Satan’s revenge.

As if to underscore his belief that “God excludes no one from the pale of
repentance and eternal salvation...even to a late hour (Columbia, XIV. 153),
however, Milton indicates that even now not all is lost for Satan. An opportunity
yet remains for him to deviate from his suicidal path of revenge?“ Satan is given

this chance when he is rendered “self-forgetful”2‘ by the goodness in Eve:

Such pleasure took the serpent to behold
This ﬂowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve
Thus early, thus alone; her heavenly form

Angelic, but more soft, and feminine,

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Her graceful innocence, her every air

Of gesture or least action overawed

His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved
His ﬁerceness of the ﬁerce intent it brought:
That space the evil one abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remained
Stupid/y good, of enmity disarrned,

Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge;

(PL, IX. 455-466, my emphasis)

Standing “Stupidly good” Satan is offered his best and ﬁnal opportunity for
repentance. Unburdened of the evil of his guile, hate, envy and revenge by the
goodness of Eve, the road to submission, repentance and redemption is open
before him, if only he seize his chance. McColley suggests that the episode
showing Satan being abstracted from his diabolical revenge demonstrates God’s
grace being channeled through Eve, creating one last opportunity for Satan to
cease his attempts at revenge before he damns himself utterly (McColley 1983,
190). However, as Gilliland points out, “love and pity represents only possibility,
not actuality” (Gilliland, 29). Satan can make his opportunity a reality only if he
repents and desists from his evil intent to wreak revenge upon the innocent.

. While Satan may have chosen a different path, he nevertheless recollects
himself, rededicating himself to his mission of revenge: “Thoughts, whither have

ye led me, with what sweet/ Compulsion thus transported to forgetl What hither

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brought us, hate, not love, nor hope” (PL, IX. 471, 473-475)?5 By choosing the
path of hateful revenge, he loses his ﬁnal opportunity for redemption.

Milton’s statement in De Doctrina Christiana that no one is excluded from
salvation until after prolonged and persistent rejection of grace is signiﬁcant not
only for its emphasis on the opportunity for redemption but also for the
underlying threat of consequence if one does not ﬁnally relent and repent.
Milton’s argument when paraphrased reads, “those who are guilty of repeated,
obstinate rejection of grace even to the very late hour are deserving of
damnation.” Thus, Satan who is guilty of repeatedly despising and rejecting the
call to grace will not have another opportunity for redemption again. Instead,
what we witness in the last books of Paradise Lost is the terrible consequence of
Satan’s revenge where, ﬁnally devoid of grace and left to his evil volition, he
consummates his damning revenge by seducing mankind to sin against God.

In Book IX, the plan of revenge proposed by Satan in Pandaemonium is
put into effect as Satan uses deception and false rhetoric to seduce Eve to sin
against God. Having once been foiled in his attempt to “[slquat like a toad, close
at the ear of Eve” (PL, IV. 800) and sow the seeds of rebellion in Eve during her
sleep by the angelic guard in Book IV, Satan again strikes against Eve in the
form of a serpent. When he encounters Eve working alone in the garden, he ﬁrst
ingratiates himself into her trust with an exaggerated show of humility by oft
bowing “[h]is turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck,/ Fawning, and [licking] the

ground whereon she trod” (PL, IX, 524-26). Having gained Eve’s attention,

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Satan begins his “fraudulent temptation”(PL, IX. 531) with ﬂowering words of

praise for her beauty:

Fairest resemblance of thy maker fair,

Thee all things living gaze on, all things thine

By gift, and thy celestial beauty adore

VIﬁth ravishment beheld, there best beheld

Where universally admired; but here

In this enclosure wild, these beasts among,

Beholders rude, and shallow to discern

Half what in thee is fair, one man except,

Who sees thee? (And what is one?) Who shouldest
be seen

A goddess among gods, adored and served

By angels numberless, thy daily train.

(PL, IX. 538-48)

Even as Satan plays off Eve’s vanity through flattery, he begins his pernicious
work of revenge by intimidating that she was somehow being wronged to be
relegated to the garden of Eden. The inference of Satan’s suggestive praise is
that someone of such “celestial beauty” should, by the merit of that beauty, be in
heaven as a “goddess among gods, adored and served” rather than wallow in

obscurity. Just as Satan focused on the injuries and oppression that he and his

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comrades allegedly suffered to get them to support him in his quest for revenge,
he now uses the same argument of injured merit to plant the seed of rebellion
within the heart of Eve.

Having established that he has her interest at heart, Satan continues his
temptation of Eve by enticing her to the “tree/ Of prohibition” (PL, IX. 644-45)
with promises of indescribable pleasure and heightened powers of reasoning
(PL, IX. 576-601). Once he has led Eve to the tree, with a “show of zeal and
love/ To man, and indignation at his wrong” (PL, IX. 665-66), Satan tempts her to
disobey God’s commandment by seeking to discredit God. He begins by arguing
that there is no basis to the threats of death because he (the snake) ate of the
tree and lived (PL, IX. 685-88). Not only is the threat baseless but the very
prohibition is an act of injustice and tyranny meant “to keep ye low and ignorantl
[God’s] worshippers” for “in the day/ Ye eat thereof...ye shall be as gods." In
order to rationalize disobeying God, Satan further resorts to slander, insinuating
that the prohibition against eating the fruit springs from envy and the desire to
keep Adam and Eve low; “wherein lies! The offence...What can your knowledge
hurt him...Or is it envy, and can envy dwell/ In heavenly breasts?” (PL, IX, 725-7,
729-30). Satan sums up his argument by alleging that “these and many more/
Causes import your need of this fair fruit” (PL, IX, 730-31).

Satan's temptation proves dramatically effective as “his words replete with
guilel Into her [Eve’s] heart too easy entrance won” (PL, IX, 733-34). As Eve
gazes on the fruit, she considers that the fruit “[g]ave elocution to the mute” and

that the serpent “[i]rrational till then” now “knows, and speaks, and reasons, and

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discerns” (PL, IX. 748, 764-66). In light of this fact, Eve reasons wrongly that the
prohibition was unjust. Echoing Satan’s argument, Eve asks whether it was just
“to us deniedl This intellectual food, for beasts reserved” (PL, IX. 767-68).
Rationalizing that “[s]uch prohibitions bind not” (PL, IX. 760) and with her
thoughts on her impending “godhead” (PL, IX. 790), Eve plucks from the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge, eats and falls, a victim of Satan’s hatred and revenge.
The seduction of Eve ostensibly seems a successful execution of Satan’s
revenge against God. Satan’s revenge, however, proves costly, as it will
“rebound/ Upon his own rebellious head” (PL, Ill. 85-6) as foretold for from this
moment he is condemned in the eyes of both God and his audience. According
to McCoIIey, Satan’s temptation and precipitation of Eve’s fall is the deﬁning
moment which eliminates all hope of his redemption: “...[Satan] might have
continued to choose damnation. But his success with Eve ensures it. It cuts off
his opportunity not to sin by corrupting innocence” (McColley 1983, 191). Satan
has only himself to blame for his damnation, which is a direct result of his
disobedience and rejection of proffered grace. As Desmond M. Hamlet points
out, “Satan’s damnation in Paradise Lost is the direct result of both of his
obduracy and his moral degeneration” which are “consequences of his self-
imposed perversion?“ The success by which Milton dramatized the evil of
Satan’s revenge as deriving from his free choice, then, goes a long way towards

facilitating Milton’s theodicy.

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In Paradise Lost, Milton portrays the evil of Satan’s obdurate revenge as a
consequence of his negative choices rather than something that is preordained
or having substance of its own. By doing so, Milton achieves his purpose of
justifying “the ways of God to men.” A being created good by God, Satan is
damned in Paradise Lost by his obstinate pursuit of his revenge. Through
protracted pursuit of hatred and revenge, Satan falls ever deeper into a
tightening spiral leading down to damnation, until ﬁnally, he is sucked past the
point of no return and consigns himself to reprobation without hope of grace.

The drama of choice Satan undergoes, however, tells us that Satan’s
damnation need not have been so. This is what makes the story of Satan’s
revenge so tragic and so compelling. In De Doctrina Christiana, Milton argues
that God “created men and angels reasonable beings, and therefore free agents"
(Columbia XIV, 83). Furthermore, he insists on a broad deﬁnition of redemption
that allows equal access to grace and salvation for all, including Satan:
”[Scripture] themselves...prove that no one is excluded by any decree of God
from the pale of repentance and eternal salvation, unless it be, after the contempt
and rejection of grace, and that at a very late hour” (Columbia XIV, 157, my
italics). Only repeated, stubborn disobedience merits God’s ultimate
punishment. Even then, punishment is not so much externally imposed as it is
the direct and inevitable consequence of obdurate disobedience.

Milton’s belief that the responsibility for reprobation lies “not so much in
the divine will” but with the “reprobate themselves, by their refusal to repent while

it is in their power”(Columbia XIV, 155) has a direct bearing on his portrayal of

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Satan in Paradise Lost. Throughout the poem, Milton rejects the notion that
reprobation is the result of God’s arbitrary decree. Gilliland argues that in
Paradise Lost Milton’s approach to the doctrine of Apocatastasisuthe doctrine
that Satan will ultimately be restored to God—involves not only theological but
artistic considerations (Gilliland, 26-27). Thus, Gilliland is of the view that
repentance is theoretically still possible for Satan in Paradise Lost because “the
remote chance still remains that some external gesture might break in upon his
[Satan’s] evasions and denials” (Gilliland, 29). Satan is, therefore, damned, not
because he is “the archetypal Calvinist reprobate," but because he “fails to follow
the steps of regeneration which are outlined in the Christian Doctrine: ‘Conviction
of sin, contrition, confession, departure from evil, conversion to good’” (Gilliland,
27). C. A. Patrides also notes that “the dramatic context [of Paradise Lost]
demanded that Satan’s redemption should at least be entertained as a
possibility.”27 Stavely even goes as far as to attribute Milton’s refusal to accept
that “Satan must remain Satan” to his Arminianism (Stavely, 125). As Stavely
puts it, the “choice is [Satan’s]. He can continue to wage the war...or he can
abandon the contest and take his place at this radiant table of grace and peace”
(Stavely, 133)?“

The depiction of moments when Satan is confronted with the real element
of choice before he actually commits his act of revenge bears out the arguments
of Gilliland, Stavely and Patrides that Paradise Lost does not present us with a
Satan who is irredeemably damned. Depending on the direction Satan chooses

to move, he may yet achieve redemption or damnation. Milton is thus at pains to

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emphasize that it is Satan himself who epitomizes the problem of evil by
voluntarily distancing himself from divine grace and the hope of redemption by
his unyielding quest for revenge. For this purpose, Milton provides us, at the
beginning of the poem, with a Satan who is fallen but still free to choose between
good and evil, repentance and persistent disobedience, salvation and
damnation?“ By Satan’s own admission, it is by his own choice that he ended up
in hell: “in my choice/ To reign is worth ambition though in hellzl Better to reign in
hell, than serve in heaven” (PL, I. 261-263). By choosing hatred and revenge
over patience and repentance, he chooses evil. In this way, Milton attempts to
show in his poem that the difference between good and evil, virtue and sin,
derives from will and choice rather than predetermination. This is highlighted by
the contrasting examples of Adam and Eve versus Satan, where the drama of
contrition and restoration seen in Adam and Eve is juxtaposed against the evil of
Satan’s revenge.30 A major concern for Milton in his epic cycle is for fallen man
to recover that “happy state”(PL, V. 536), which he lost by rebelling against God,
thus, reestablishing the heavenly “concord” (PL, III. 371) with God. Milton tells
us in Paradise Lost that we can regain this union with God by exercising “right
reason” by which we can discover “the oneness of truth, the unity of God’s
nature.”31 It is for this-reason that the drama of Adam’s and Eve’s regeneration
in Paradise Lost involves the movement towards their decision to repent of their

sin in the hope of resurrecting their original state of union with God:

Before him reverent, and both confessed

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Humbly their faults. and pardon begged, with tears
Watering the ground, and with their sighs the air
Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign

Of sorrow unfeigned, and humiliation meek.

(PL, x. 1110-1114)

According to Milton, all who approach God in contrition, repentance and
humble heart can receive forgiveness. The choice is theirs. Adam, Eve and
Satan all suffer for their transgressions against the will of God. However, while
Satan’s dark determination towards evil, manifest in his vow to wage eternal war
and never-ending enmity against God, dooms him to eternal damnation, Adam
and Eve attain the hope of grace and redemption through their patient contrition
and repentance. This healing message of patience, ﬁrst mentioned in Paradise
Lost, is at the very heart of Milton’s effort to dramatize of a new approach to

revenge in Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.

While the dramatization of Satan’s revenge in Paradise Lost helps to
answer religious questions relating to the problem of evil and free will, it provides
an equally cogent commentary on the failure of the Puritan revolution. Critics
such as Stevie Davies, Joan S. Bennett and Herbert Zarov argue that Satan in
Paradise Lost represents the tyranny of Charles.32 Considering Milton’s
consistent opposition to all forms of tyranny, their attempt to draw a parallel

between Satan and Charles is valid to a point. However, considering that

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Paradise Lost was written amidst the collapse of the Puritan revolution, I believe
that Milton’s portrayal of Satan in Paradise Lost has an even more immediate
purpose of denouncing those who had betrayed the “Good Old Cause”33 and
explains typologically the failure of the Puritan revolution?“

As Christopher Hill points out, by the time Milton began writing Paradise
Lost around 1658, the failure of the Puritan revolutionaries must have been
manifest to him (Hill 1977, 347), a failure which he believed arose from moral
failure. Believing that the Restoration was brought about by the “avarice and
ambition” among the revolutionary leaders (Hill 1984, 282), Milton ﬁnds a strong
correlation between the failure of the revolution and the moral lapses of the
revolutionaries?“ The fall of Satan and his “associates and copartners” (PL, l.
265) in Paradise Lost can therefore be seen as paradigmatic of all those who
betrayed the ideals of the Puritan revolution. While Milton was critical of all those
who failed the revolution, in the following, I will examine how his portrayal of
Satan’s tyranny can be read as an implicit criticism of the Presbyterians and their
policy of “ecclesiastical despotism” (Columbia VII, 495) as well as the despotic
oppression of the Cromwellian Protectorate.

Milton’s criticism of the Presbyterians revolves mainly around “their failure
to keep faith, or covenant, and...their prelatelike oppression?“ For Milton, the
“presbyters” are not only guilty of betraying the “Godly cause” but are
responsible for persecuting the liberty of conscience of the Independents, the
true remnant, who held true to the Godly cause. In Sonnet XVI, for example,

Milton calls the Presbyterians “hireling wolves whose Gospell is their maw”

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(Columbia I, 65), an assertion that evokes the image of Satan as a “prowling
wolf” in Paradise Lost. Also, in “On the new forcers of Conscience under the
Long PARLIAMENT,” Milton charges that the “New Presbyter is but Old Priest
writ Large.” In imitation of the Prelaty whom they “envi’d, not abhor’d,” they have
refused to “adjure the Civill Swordl To force our Consciences” (Columbia l, 71).
Likewise in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, Milton vehemently denounces
the Presbyterians for having “blasphm’d the vengeance of God?“7 According to
Milton, the Presbyterians are not only guilty of placing “avarice and ambition”
before the will of God but, by making the Independents, the remnant of God’s
cause, the object of their revenge, they war against heaven’s matchless king?“
In the Articles of Peace Milton goes as far as to liken this penchant for revenge
by the Presbyterian government to the Inquisition” while in the Digression to the
History of Britain, Milton denounces the Presbyterian “divines" of engaging in
satanic revenge by relying on physical force over “evangellic perswasion.”“°

As his minor poems and prose works amply indicate, Milton accuses the
Presbyterians of “civil as well as ecclesiastical despotism” (Columbia VII, 495), a
charge Milton implicitly lays upon the Presbyters again in Paradise Lost through
his portrayal of Satan. The parallel between Milton’s portrayal of Satan and the
Presbyterians has been noted by Catherine Gimelli Martin who likens Satan to a
“good Calvinist?“ Like the false presbyters, whom Milton accuses of falling by
putting “avarice and ambition” before God“, the fall of Satan in Paradise Lost is
caused by pride, which denotes a heinous self-interest that alienates him from

God. Just as Milton accuses the Presbyterians in The Tenure of Kings and

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Magistrates of unwarranted vengefulness which “blasphem’d the vengeance of
God” (Columbia V, 45), so Satan is obsessed with hatred and revenge. Likewise,
as the Presbyterian have become consumed with “hatred,“3 so Satan’s quest
for revenge is motivated by his “immortal hate” (PL, l. 107). Read in the context
of Milton’s scathing denouncement of the Presbyterians in his prose, then,
Satan’s revenge on mankind in Paradise Lost can be read as a typological
rendering of the false presbyters and their persecution of the “sons of light” (PL,
V. 160) and their liberty of conscience.

In the epic itself, Satan is portrayed as a type of false cleric, “the ﬁrstl That
practised falsehood under saintly show” (PL, IV. 121). Milton continues to exploit
this parallel between Satan and the false presbyters by comparing him to a
prowling wolf in a sheepfold, an image which Milton had earlier used to
denounce church hirelings in “Lycidas” “ as well as a “thief" and “a comorant,” all

common images for false clergy“:

As when a prowling wolf,
Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,
Watching where shepherds pen their ﬂocks at eve
In hurdled cotes amid the ﬁeld secure,
Leaps o’er the fence with ease into the fold:
Or as a thief bent to unhoard the cash
Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors,

Cross-barred and bolted fast, fear no assault,

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In at the window climbs, or o’er the tiles;

So clomb this ﬁrst grand thief into God’s foldz’
So since into his church lewd hirelings climb.
Thence up he ﬂew, and on the tree of life
The middle tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a corrnorant;

(PL, IV. 183-196)

Satan’s ﬁrst acts on earth, therefore, can be viewed as a preﬁguration of
the wicked clergy, such as the prelates and the Presbyterians, who subvert the
liberty of the God’s chosen. Just as Satan and his fallen angels determine in
their Pandemonium debate to “drive as we were driven,/T he Puny habitants, or if
not drive, / Seduce them to our party,” (PL, Il. 367-9), so the Presbyterian party
also attempted revengefully “to drive as they were driven” those who remained
faithful to “God’s cause" thereby becoming guilty of warring against God. Thus,
Abdiel’s warning to Satan in Book V that he cease his “impious rage” and seek
forgiveness “While pardon may be found in time besought" can be read as a
ﬁgurative warning leveled at the Presbyterians to cease their impious
persecution of the “Godly.”

If Satan’s revenge in Paradise Lost can be read as typifying the
“ecclesiastical despotism” of the Presbyterians, it can also be read as
symbolizing the tyrannical oppression of the Protectorate. Just as Milton uses

Satan’s obsession with revenge to criticize the Presbyterians for their “prelatelike

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oppression,” so his depiction of Satan’s strategy of revenge in Paradise Lost can
be read as an indictment of the vindictive policies pursued by Cromwell’s
Protectorate.

Milton’s attitude toward the Protectorate has long been a subject of
debate. Robert T. Fallon, for example, does not see any break with the
Protectorate, saying that Milton’s faith in the Army and by implication Cromwell,
was unwavering?“ Merritt Y. Hughes also ﬁnds Milton impatient with the
Parliament rather than with the Lord Protector.“7 However, others such as Austin
Woolrych argue that Milton regarded Cromwell and his Protectorate as an
aberration from the principles of the Puritan revolution?“ Christopher Hill also
argues that, while Milton never attacked the Protectorate or Cromwell directly, he
was unhappy with Cromwell’s role in the dissolution of the Rump, the
reestablishment of a state church and the failure to eliminate the tithes. That he
mourned the dissolution of the Barebones Parliament in 1653 is evident from his
warning to Cromwell in the A Second Defence (1654) against usurping the liberty
of his fellow Englishmen (Hill 1977, 197, 189-90, 193). This begs the question,
what is Milton’s real view of Cromwell and his Protectorate? To ﬁnd out, it would
be useful to examine Milton’s A Second Defence of the English People (1654)
where its eulogy of Cromwell masks deep misgivings about the undemocratic
and despotic nature of the Protectorate.

Ostensibly, Milton’s purpose in A Second Defence is to defend the
Commonwealth and to extol the revolutionary government and its leader,

Cromwell. In A Second Defence, Milton advocates the notion of civil power that

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is deﬁned as a moral, philosophical superiority that both shuns personal gain and
serves as a moral exemplar to the English people. Milton also tell us that
Cromwell is just such an ideal leader who is “exercised in the knowledge of
himself,” but also an example of “divine virtue?“9 Despite all the ostensive praise
of Cromwell’s virtue and the exemplary inﬂuence it can have on the English
people, however, the fact remains that for Milton, who consistently argued
against the concentration of power in the hands of any one individual, the
investment of total power in Cromwell was a cause for alarm?0 Such
unrestricted power was repellant to Milton not only for its close resemblance to
the very monarchy that Cromwell supplants, but because of its potential of
abuse.

Often read as an unequivocal endorsement of the Protectorate
(established in 1654), A Second Defence contains strong indications of Milton’s
ambivalence towards the new form of government and his reservations
concerning Cromwell’s ability to withstand the temptations of power. Austin
Woolrych, for instance, argues that despite all its eloquence, what stands out in
Milton’s eulogy of Cromwell in A Second Defence is its impersonality. This is in
clear contrast to the warmer and more personal tones displayed towards other
leaders of the Commonwealth such as Overton and Bradshaw, both opponents
of Cromwell’s since the expulsion of the Rump (Woolrych, 192-193.) Milton’s
praising Bradshaw and Cromwell in the same breath is a contradiction that
underscores Milton’s misgivings about Cromwell and his Protectorate. In fact,

Woolrych argues that Milton’s criticism of the Protectorate in his ﬁnal tracts is

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proof that Milton regarded the Protectorate as “a grave aberration in the
Commonwealth’s development” and that he never mourned its demise
(Woolrych, 200). The anxiety Milton felt towards the unqualiﬁed authority of
Cromwell is evident from his call for power sharing between Cromwell and other
revolutionaries51 and his words of warning to Cromwell that those who engage in

tyranny in turn become slaves to their own tyranny:

Last of all, respect yourself, and suffer not that liberty, which you have
gained with so many hardships, so many dangers, to be violated by
yourself, or in any wise impaired by others. Indeed, without our freedom,
you yourself cannot be free: for such is the order of nature, that he who
forcibly seizes upon the liberty of others, is the ﬁrst to lose his own, is the
ﬁrst to become a slave...

(Columbia VIII, 227)

Events proved Milton right in fearing the abuse of unrestricted power
invested in the hands of one individual. Like Satan who patronizes his followers
with the use of ﬂattering titles in Paradise Lost, calling them “Princes,

‘ potentates,/ Warriors, the ﬂower of heaven” (PL, I. 315-16), Cromwell conferred
hereditary peerage, baronetcies and knighthood upon his favorites.52 The
depiction of a vain Satan sitting exalted, “[h]igh on a throne of a royal state" (PL,
II. 1-6) is also analogous to Cromwell’s own assumption of the pomp and dignity

of a king in all but name. More signiﬁcantly, just as Satan stirred his followers

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towards the path of revenge during the “great consult” in order to sustain his
power over his fellow angels, the Protectorate also followed a policy of
oppressive retribution as a means of securing and furthering its power. The
Protectorate’s vindictive approach to its critics and political opponents is
apparent from the fate of critics of Cromwell such as Vane and Bradshaw.
These men, who Milton held in high esteem for being true to the ideals of the
revolutionary principals, were either removed from ofﬁce or, in the case of
Overton, kept imprisoned without trial for the duration of the Protectorate
(Woolrych, 194). Yet others, such as the leaders of the Levellers, he imprisoned
and shot?“ A Second Defence, therefore, records what Milton and others, such
as the Levellers, regarded as Cromwell’s fall from the republican ideals of the
Good Old Cause, and reﬂects as well their withdrawal of support from the
autocracy of the Protectorate?“

To understand the ﬂow of Milton’s argument, therefore, the reader needs
to understand that in 1654, the difference between the titles of king and Lord
Protector is merely nominal rather than substantial. Since Cromwell has become
a de facto king, which is synonymous to Milton with tyranny, Milton’s portrayal of
Satan in Paradise Lost can be read as an implied critique of Cromwell himself or
of his tyranny and oppression. In the poem itself, the portrayal of Satan as a
tyrant is manifest in the opening lines of Book II where Satan presides over the

“great consult” dressed in the trappings of an oriental despot:

High on a throne of a royal state, which far

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Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,

Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised

To that bad eminence...

(PL, II. 1-6)

Despite Satan’s attempt to justify his kingship by claiming to be sitting in
“a safe unenvied thronel Yielded with full consent” (PL, II. 23-24) and his rhetoric
of “union, and ﬁrm faith, and ﬁrm accord, [More than can be in heaven” (PL, II.
36-37), what stands out is the image of him as the “archetypal tyrant?“ While
Hughes attempts to divorce Satan’s tyranny from its contemporary setting?“ the
characterization of Satan as a tyrant in the poem can be speciﬁcally related to
Cromwell and his despotic rule. As G. Wilson Knight, J.B. Broadbent and James
A. Freeman all point out, it is Cromwell who Satan most resembles in Paradise
Lost. Knight argues that the image of Satan inspecting his troops in Hell was
meant to recall that of “a Cromwell casting an “experienced eye’ over his ironside
warriors” (Knight, 127). Broadbent also suggests that Milton is satirizing
Cromwell when he presents Satan as the “devils’ Cromwell?“7 Freeman is more
emphatic in his argument that “If we look for a real-life counterpart to Satan...we
probably should point to Oliver Cromwell?“ Parallels abound in Paradise Lost
between Satan and Cromwell. Both are former generals who, under the guise of

statesmanship. assume the de facto powers, if not the form, of a monarch. In

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addition, both employ a strategy of revenge that goes hand in hand with their
political objective of consolidating power. Just as Cromwell used the policy of
retribution to suppress opposition and consolidate his power, so Satan’s quest
for revenge in Paradise Lost is motivated by desire to consolidate his place of
supremacy among his peers.

When we ﬁrst encounter Satan in Paradise Lost, we ﬁnd him unrepentant,
vowing revenge against God. By focusing on the alleged injuries he and his
comrades have suffered, Satan emphasizes the need to exact revenge against
their enemy, promising that by waging “by force or guile eternal war” (PL, l. 121 ),
they will “repossess their native seat” (PL, l. 634). Assuming the guise of a
benevolent leader seeking deliverance for his followers, then, Satan proposes to
undertake his quest for revenge against God’s “new worlds” and “A
generation...equal to the Sons of Heaven” (PL, I. 650, 654). The propagandist
nature of his rhetoric aside, however, what Satan really seeks in undertaking his
quest for revenge is the establishment of his dominance among the fallen angels
(PL, Il. 465-73). Milton’s depiction of Satan’s quest of revenge therefore reveals
a parallel between Satan and Cromwell in that both maintain the facade of an
unselﬁsh leader devoted to promoting the public good while in reality they are
motivated by ambition and self-interest?“ The analogy between Cromwell’s
vindictive policy of oppression against his critics and Satan’s quest of revenge
against mankind, thus, can be read as a criticism of Cromwell for betraying the

Puritan Revolution through excessive self-love.

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Composed during the waning years of the Puritan Revolution, Paradise
Lost grapples with the “experience of defeat” as perceived by Milton. As Hill
pointed out, writing during the Restoration, Milton was concerned about the
triumph of evil in the world which in turn called into question either God’s
goodness or his omnipotence (Hill: 1984, 307). Satan’s revenge in the poem,
therefore, goes beyond a portrayal of Satan’s villainy; it dramatizes the very
problem of evil. It also examines the failure of the Puritan Revolution placed in
the context of the fall of Satan, and, subsequently, of Adam and Eve.

The realization of failure, however, does not mean that Milton has
abandoned the ideals of the revolution. As Mary Ann Radzinowicz indicates,
Paradise Lost is neither a poem of “political disengagement or of political
encryption,” that “Paradise Lost has a public role to play,” and that Milton
expected it to “‘inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of vertu, and
publick civility’” (Radzinowics 1987, pp. 205-6). If the machination of Satan’s evil
In Paradise Lost serves the role as “a warning exemplar,”“° Milton goes on to
juxtapose the problem of evil with the steadfastness of the Son in Paradise
Regained and the example of Samson’s renewal in Samson Agonistes. The
work of deliverance will not be easy. However, Milton also demonstrates that all
is not lost because of momentary weakness or failure. Milton reminds the
Puritan revolutionaries that. even after the Fall, at the end of Paradise Lost, “The

world was all before them” (PL, XII. 646).“1

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Notes

‘ Marvin Daniels, “Pathological Vindictiveness and the Vindictive Character,”
Psychoanalytic Review 56 (1969): 169-196, pp. 170, 190-91.

2 P. A. Samuels, “Samson Agonistes and Renaissance Drama (Dissertation: City
University of New York, 1993), p. 139.

3 According to Aristotle, the purpose of tragedy is “a mimesis of an action—that
is, is [morallylserious and purposeful, having magnitude; uttered in heightened
language and...bringing about thorough [a process of] pity and fear [in the
events enacted] the puriﬁcation of those destructive or painful acts.” Aristotle,
Poetics, trans. George Whalley, Aristotle’s Poetics, ed. John Baxter and Patrick
Atherton (Montreal & Kingston, London and Buffalo: McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 1997), pp. 67-69.

‘ “Preface to Samson Agonistes,” Milton: Complete Shorter Poems, ed. John
Carey (London and New York: Longman, 1971), p. 341.

5 According to Hill, Milton believed that “political failure was ultimately moral
failure” (Hill 1977, 350).

“ As E. M. W. Tillyard points out, “for all [the Son’s] furious urge to activity,
contemplation, the purged and settled state of mind, is ever the condition on
which activity is legitimate.” E. M. W. Tillyard, “The Christ of Paradise Regained
and the Renaissance Heroic Tradition,” Studies in Philology, 36 (1939): 247-52,
p. 249.

7 By blaming Satan’s evil on his negative choice rather than his evil nature,
Milton’s theory of evil in large part accords with that of Augustine, namely privatio
boni or a lack, or a perversion, of good. This close afﬁnity between Milton’s
theory of evil and that of Augustine has been noted by Peter Fiore and Roland
Mushat Frye. Fiore, for example, argues that both Milton and Augustine see evil
as deriving from perverted will: “For Augustine and Milton, evil is the perversion
of a good nature by a will gone bad...Bad things are good things perverted, and
this perversion arises when a conscious creature becomes more interested in
himself than in God and wishes to exist on his own? Peter A. Fiore, Milton and
Augustine: Patterns of Augustinian Thought in Paradise Lost (University Park
and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981), pp. 18, 19. Frye,
likewise, argues that fundamental to Paradise Lost is the Augustinian concept of
evil as the perversion of good: “It is basic to Milton’s epic, and to Christianity in

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general, that the created order is good. Against this good in all its forms, as well
as against the divine source of all goodness, Satan reacts, when he declares the
creed of hell: ‘Evil be thou my good’ (IV, 110).” Roland Mushat Frye, God, Man,
and Satan: Patterns of Christian Thought and Life in Paradise Lost, Pilgrim’s
Progress, and the Great Theologians (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1960), pp. 21, 30. That Milton’s concept of evil in Paradise Lost follows
that of Augustine in depicting evil as a lack of good or a perversion thereof is
also noted by Molly Smith who argues that Milton’s Satan is “an extended
treatment of evil as lack of essence.” The Darker Worid Within (Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 1991), p. 165.

Augustine’s own views concerning the nature of evil can be found in his
Confessions. To the question of “Whence comes evil?” Augustine himself states
that, “I yet knew not how that evil was nothing else but a privation of good, next
indeed to that which has no being.” He further argues that evil is “not to be a
substance” but a perversion of will and choice: “And I inquired what iniquity
should be: but I found it not to be a substance, but a swerving merely of the will,
crooked quite away from thee, O God, (who art the supreme substance) towards
these lower things; casting away its inward parts, and puffed up outwardly.”
Augustine believes that all things are created good. It is when a creature, by the
exercise of free will, places greater value in “lower things” that a disorder is
effected. Evil, then, is a deprivation of the good brought about by the exercise of
wrong choices. St. Augustine’s Confessions, trans. William Watts (New York: G.
P. Putnam’s Sons, 1931), pp. 121, 383.

“ Harold P. Maltz, “Lucifer’s Fall: Freewill and the Aetiology of Evil in ‘Paradise
Lost’,” Theoria 72 (1988): 63-73, p. 63. For similar argument on the angel’s free
will see Joan F. Gilliland, “‘But Say I Could Repent’: Satan’s Decision,” Bulletin of
the West Virginia Association of College English Teachers 5 (1979): 26-32.

“ As Irene Samuel points out, the central thesis of Paradise Lost is the doctrine
of free will. “Paradise Lost,” in Critical Approaches to Six Major English Works,
ed. R.M. Lumiansky and Herschel Baker (Philadelphia: University Of
Pennsylvania Press, 1968), 209-253, p.244.

‘° Diane Kelsey McCoIIey, “Free Will and Obedience in the Separation Scene of
Paradise Lost, ” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 12 (1972): 103-20, p.
104.

1‘ In accordance with his idea stated in De Doctrina Christiana that everything
was created good at its inception (Columbia XV, 23), Milton initially portrays
Satan as having admirable and heroic qualities. This has led to charges that
Milton valorizes evil to the detriment of the good in the poem, resulting in a
“Satanic” controversy regarding the true purpose of Milton’s poem. William Blake

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for example claims in The Maniage of Heaven and Hell that “Milton wrote in
fetters” writing of Angels & God, and “at liberty” when writing of Devils & Hell,
and that he “was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it” (Blake,
150). Blake’s statement highlights a critical debate regarding the true intent of
the Paradise Lost, dividing critics between “ ‘Satanist’ or ‘anti-Satanist’ camps”
(Linda M. Lewis, 57). According to Linda Lewis, writers who belong to the
“Satanist” school include Joseph Addison, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and
VVilIiam Hazlitt while those advocating the “anti-Satanist” reading include Samuel
Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley (Lewis, 57-58). Among modern
critics, those who accentuate the appealing qualities of Satan in their reading of
Paradise Lost are VWlliam Empson and A.J.A. Waldock. Others such as CS.
Lewis and Peter Gregory Angelo, however, reject such a reading, arguing that
Satan is the very epitome of evil. A closer reading of Paradise Lost, however,
proves the satanic controversy a moot point. Milton’s depiction of Satan reveals
that he abuses his heroic qualities by choosing evil intentionally. God, having
“created men and angels reasonable beings, and therefore free agents”
(Columbia, XIV, 83), Satan was free to choose between good and evil. When
Satan chose to disobey the will of God, he was deviating from the right and
becoming the quintessence of evil.

‘2 According to Regina Schwartz, “Satan’s narcissism is most powerfully in
evidence in his refusal to acknowledge the Other, his Creator. His claim to be
self-begotten, his resistance to the Son, all bespeak a towering self-love. He
responds to the elevation of the Son with more than denial: he responds by
reproducing himself in his own image, conceiving Sin. With Sin his ‘perfect
'image,’ ‘Iikest to [him] in shape and cont’nance bright’(ll. 756), Satan’s love for
Sin is self-love.” Regina Schwartz, Remembering and Repeating: Biblical
Creation in Paradise Lost (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p.
100.

1“ Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Mind in General, ed. William Webster
Newbold (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1986), p. 98.

“ Balachandra Rajan likewise argues that free will and humanity's responsibility
for its own destiny stand at the center of Paradise Lost saying, “radical evil has
its place in the web of Paradise Lost but the web itself is perhaps better explored
by other guiding principles such as inﬁnite responsibility and the great
movements of meaning and consequence that are made to center round the gift
of freedom.” “Paradise Lost: The Web of Responsibility,” in Paradise Lost: A
Tercentenary Tribute, ed. Balachandra Rajan ([Toronto]: University of Toronto
Press, 1969), p. 108. '

115

‘5 C. S. Lewis notes that Satan progressively degenerates from “hero to general,
from general to politician, from politician to secret agent, and thence to a thing
that peers in at bedroom or bathroom windows, and thence to a toad, and ﬁnally
to a snake—such is the progress of Satan.” A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942;
New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 99.

‘“ Keith W. F. Stavely, “Satan and Arminianism in Paradise Lost,” Milton Studies
25 (1989): 125-139, p. 128.

‘7 \Nilliam Kerrigan argues that the episode of the lowered stairs is a “travesty of
free choice” created “for the purpose of mockery, like a school lesson repeated
with no intent to educate, only to humiliate.” He states that the whole episode as
a “false invitation” meant only to declare “the ﬁnality of damnation.” Kerrigan
found this whole scene so troubling he charges that “Maybe [Milton] intended to
convey through this cruel derision an aspect of his deity that creatures cannot
fully savor; maybe, with regard to this theme, one might concede something to
Empson and Waldock, for Milton cannot command our sympathies when he
makes the creator of the universe behave like a spoiled child.” The Sacred
Complex (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983), p.173, 172.

‘“ Louis L. Martz, Poet of Exile: A Study of Milton’s Poetry (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1980), p. 107.

‘9 Noted in Gilliland, p. 27 and William A McQueen, “The Hateful Siege of
Contraries”: Satan’s Interior Monologues in Paradise Lost,” Milton Quarterly 4
(1970): 60-65, p.62.

2° Stavely calls this moment Satan’s “most golden spiritual opportunity of all” and
that “what Satan has just experienced of the descrying of new lands has had an
impact on him after all” (Stavely, 132, 134-5).

2‘ Richard S. Ide describes Satan’s soliloquy in Book IV is “a tragic example of
impenitence.” Despite hearing God’s call and His invitation to salvation, Satan
call damnation upon himself by refusing to humble himself, turn from evil, and
turn to good (Ide 1983, 123).

“2 Harold Bloom argues that Satan’s refusal to repent in this episode represents
. his ﬁnal degradation saying, “[h]ere Satan makes his last choice, and ceases to
be what he was in the early books of the poem. All that the anti-Satanist say
about him is true after this point; all or almost all claimed for him by the Satanists
is true before it...Nothing that can be regenerated remains in Satan, and the rift
between his self-ruined spirit and his radically corrupted nature widens until he is
the hissing serpent of popular tradition, plucking greedily at the Dead Sea fruit of

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Hell in a fearful parody of Eve’s Fall.” “Introduction,” John Milton’s Paradise Lost:
Modem Critical Interpretations, ed. Harold Bloom (New York, New Haven and
Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987), p. 7. As the following scene
where Satan is made “Stupidly good” by the sight of Eve indicates, Satan, at this
juncture, is not completely damned.

2“ Stella Purce Revard, however, implies that Satan is beyond redemption by the
time he encounters Adam and Eve by asserting that he refuses “to regard Adam
and Eve as anything other than means to his revenge.” The War in Heaven
(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1980), p. 80.

2‘ Diane Kelsey McCoIIey, Milton’s Eve (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1983), p195.

2“ John Carey points to the fact that Satan was disarrned of his evil purposes at
the sight of Eve as proof that Satan’s “natural element” is love, not evil, and that
“hatred is an effort of his will.” Milton’s Satan,” The Cambridge Companion to
Milton, ed. Dennis Danielson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981),
p. 1 39.

2“ One Greater Man: Justice and Damnation in Paradise Lost (Lewisburg:
Bucknell University Press, 1976), p. 17. Carey similarly argues that Satan was
not created a “destructive automaton” and that his damnation is a result of his
choosing “to destroy the human race against the prompting of his better nature”
which makes his revenge that much more diabolical (John Carey 1981, 139).

27 CA. Patrides, Premises and Motifs in Renaissance Thought and Literature
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 208. For the origin and history
of the doctrine of apocatastasis, the term coined by the Greek theologian Origen
to denote the possibility of Satan’s restoration to grace at the end of time, see
Patrides, pp. 200-217.

2“ Unlike Milton who examines the possibility of Satan’s repentance and
salvation in Paradise Lost, an opportunity he willfully rejects, John Donne refuses
to entertain even the remote possibility of such an event arguing that “once fallen
from Heaven, they fell also into ‘an absolute incapacity of reconciliation,’ and so
will ‘never be forgiven,’ ‘never return to mercy’.” John Donne, Sermons, II, 139;
V, 78, V, 86. Quoted in Patrides (1982), pp. 208-209.

2“ Commenting on the scene where Satan is moved to tears by the sight of his
peers (Book I, 620), Fowler argues that “the hardening of Satan’s heart is not yet
complete” (Fowler, 80, i 620 n).

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3“ According to McQueen, Satan and his victims “in many ways parallel each
other, although the outcome differ” (McQueen, 62).

3‘ Joan S. Bennett, “ ‘Go’: Milton's Antinomianism and the Separation Scene in
Paradise Lost, Book 9,” PMLA 98 (1983): 388-404, p. 397. Milton states in The
Christian Doctrine that it is through “right reason or conscience” that “the
existence of God is further proved” (Columbia XIV, 29).

“2 Stevie Davies, Images of Kingship in Paradise Lost (Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 1983), p.11; Joan S. Bennett, “God, Satan, and King Charles:
Milton ‘s Royal Portraits,” PMLA 92 (1977): 441-57, pp. 442-44; Herbert Zarov,
“Milton and the Rhetoric of Rebellion,” Milton Quarteriy 7 (1973): 47-50.

“3 The term “Good Old Cause" is taken from Christopher Hill. Hill,1984, p. 54.

3" Milton’s criticism of the Puritan revolutionaries in Paradise Lost can be better
understood when we read the poem within its historical context. While the
Restoration in 1660 marked the ﬁnal failure of the Puritan revolution, evidences
of backsliding leading to the failure of the Puritan revolution were everywhere
long before that. Examples of revolutionaries backsliding include the failure by
the Barebones Parliament to abolish the tithes and the state church, the offer of
the crown to Cromwell, and Cromwell betraying the ideals of the revolution by
becoming the Lord Protector establishing “a virtual monarchy” (Hill 1977, p.198).

3“ See “Introduction,” Note no. 21.

3“ William B. Hunter, Jr. et. al eds., A Milton Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (Lewisburg:
Bucknell University Press, 1979), p.13.

“7 In his The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, Milton accuses the Presbyterians
of being atheists who “blasphm’d the vengeance of God,” oppressing the zeal of
the people because of their “ﬁlthy love of gaine”:

But if they [Presbyterians] be the Ministers of Mammon in stead of Christ,
and scandalize his Church with the ﬁlthy love of gaine, aspiring also to sit
the closest & the heaviest of all Tyurants, upon the conscience, and fall
notoriously into the same sinns, whereof so lately and so loud they
accurs’d the Prelates...more like Atheists they have blasphem’d the
vengeance of God, and traduc’d the zeale of his people. (Columbia V, 45)

3“ According to Milton, “Only those who are called Independents knew from ﬁrst
to last how to be true to their cause, and what use to make of their victory”
(Columbia VII, 497).

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3“ In the Article of Peace, Milton compares the Presbyterians ecclesiastical
courts to the Spanish Inquisition:

Nevertheless as we perceave it [Presbyteriall government] aspiring to be
a compulsive power upon all without exception...to require the ﬂeshly arm
of Magistracy in the execution of a spirituall Discipline, to punish and
amerce by any corporall inﬂiction those whose consciences cannot be
edif’d by what authority they are compell’d, we hold it no more to be the
hedg and bulwark of Religion, then the Popish and Prelaticall Courts, or
the Spanish Inquisition. (Columbia VI, 264).

‘° In his Digression to the History of Britain, Milton accuses the Presbyterian of
practicing ecclesiastical vengeance and charges that their very reliance on
retribution as tool of bodily compulsion exposes their tyranny:

And yet the main doctrin for which [Presbyterian divines] tooke such pay,
and insisted upon with more vehemence then gospel, was but to tell us in
effect that thir doctrin was worth nothing and the spiritual power of thir
ministrie less availeable then bodilie compulsion; perswading the
magistrate to use it as a stronger means to subdue & bring in conscience
then evangellic perswasion. But while they taught compulsion without
convincement (which not long before they so much complain’d of as
executed unchristianlie against themselves) thir intents were cleere to be
no other then to have set up a spiritual tyrannie by a secular power to the
advancing of thir owne authoritie above the magistrate.

(Columbia X, pp. 321-22)

‘" Catherine Gimelli Martin, “No Fortunate Fall, No ‘Unfeared Second Fate’:
Satan and the Critique of Meliorism, Paradise Lost, Book 2," Spokesperson
Milton: Voices in Contemporary Criticism, Charles W. Durham and Kristin Pruitt
McColgan eds. (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1994), p. 33.

“2 In The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, Milton denounces the Presbyterians
as "rav’nous Wolves" for their efforts to solicit the Parliament for “new setling of
thir Tithes an Oblations” and for “double Iin’d themselves with spiritual places of
commoditie beyond the possible discharge of thir duty” (Columbia V, 44).

“3 Arguing that the Presbyterians were motivated by more by “thir hatred to the

Army” than love to seek reconciliation with Charles I, (Columbia V, 37), Milton
accuses them of being “Ministers of sedition, nOt of Gospel” (Columbia V, 39).

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“’ In “Lycidas,” Milton denounces church hirelings as “grim wolf with privy paw”
who “for their bellies’ sake,/ Creep and intrude, and climb into the [sheep]fold”
(Lycidas, 114-29).

“5 The association of the corrnorant with false clergy is noted by Fowler who

points out that it “was especially often used of ‘hireling’ clergy” (Fowler, 203, iv
196 n).

‘“ Robert T. Fallon, “Milton in the Anarchy, 1659-1660: A Question of
Consistency.” Studies in English Literature 21 (1981): 123-46, p.134.

“7 Merritt Y. Hughes, Ten Perspectives on Milton (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1965), p.267.

‘“ Austin Woolrych, “Milton and Cromwell: ‘A Short But Scandalous Night of
Interruption?” Ed. Lieb and Shawcross, Achievements of the Left Hand: Essays
on the Prose of John Milton (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press,
1974), pp. 185, 194, 200.

‘9 In A Second Defence, Milton initially praised Cromwell as “a soldier, above all
others the most exercised in the knowledge of himself; he had either destroyed,
or reduced to his own control, all enemies within his own breast—vain hopes,
fears, desires. A commander ﬁrst over himself, the conqueror of himself, it was
over himself he had learnt most to triumph...To evince his extraordinary, his little
less than divine virtue, this mark will sufﬁce; that there lived in him an energy
whether of spirit and genius, or discipline, established not by military rule only,
but by the rule of Christ and of sanctity, that he drew all to his camp, as to the
best school both of military science, and of religion and piety—nay those who
were already good and brave from all parts, or made them such principally by his
own example” (Columbia Vlll, 215-7).

5“ Besides A Second Defence, Milton’s opposition to all forms of single person
rule can be found in Eikonoklastes where he argues that “It were a Nation
miserable indeed, not worth the name of a Nation, but a race of Idiots, whose
happiness and welfare depended upon one Man” (Columbia V, 254). Also, in “A
Letter to a Friend, Concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth,” Milton states
that the terms upon which the Senate needs to stand on are “Liberty of
Conscience to all professing Scripture to be the Rule of thir Faith and Worship;
and the Abjuration of a single Person” (Columbia VI, 104). In a similar line of
argument, Milton states in The readie and easie way to establish a free
Commonwealth that “Certainly then that people must needs be madd or
strangely infatuated, that build the chief hope of thir common happiness or
safetie on a single person...The happiness of a nation must needs be ﬁrrnest and

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certainest in a full and free Councel of thir own electing, where no single peron,
but reason only swaies” (Columbia VI, 121-122).

5‘ Milton attempted to persuade Cromwell to relinquish the absolute powers of
the Protectorate by involving other revolutionaries in the government: “All these
things and more, I doubt not, you frequently mediate, and revolve in your mind;
as likewise, by what means you may give effect to those momentous
considerations, and restore to us our liberty safe, and augmented. This, in my
judgement, you could in no way be more likely to accomplish, than by
associating those, as you do, among the ﬁrst, in your counsels, whom you ﬁrst
as companions of your labours and of your dangers—men distinguished alike for
their modesty, their integrity, and their courage” (Columbia VIII, 229).

“2 Wilbur C. Abbott, Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4 vols.
(Cambridge, Mass., 1937-47), IV, 952-53. Quoted in Woolrych, 195.

“3 The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, vol. 3 (Amherst: The University of
Massachusetts Press, 1986), p.72. The vindictive nature of the Protectorate is
again apparent from Christopher Hill’s observation that the “regicides’ judges
included many former Oliverians” and that “all the non-regicides who suffered
severe penalties—Vane, Lambert, Haslerig, Harrington—had been opponents of
kingship for Oliver” (Hill 1984, 323).

5‘ In his Introduction, Don M. Wolfe emphasizes the eight months (Dec. 12, 1653
to Sept. 1654) prior to the writing of A Second Defence that Cromwell and his
council ruled without a parliament. CPWIV.1, 234.

“5 Hughes argues that “In the world of the poem the archetypal tyrant is Satan"
(Hughes 1965, 166).

5“ “Satan and the ‘Myth’ of the Tyrant,” Ten Perspectives on Milton, pp. 165-
195.

“7 J.B. Broadbent, Some Graver Subject: An Essay on Paradise Lost (New York:
Schocken Books, 1960), p. 115.

5“ James A. Freeman, Milton and the Martial Muse: Paradise Lost and European
Traditions of War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p.143.

5“ John Steadman notes that while “Satan himself claims to have undertaken his
enterprise [of revenge] for the public good, the salus populi,” in Milton’s eyes “he
is a thief and a homocide.” “Satan as the Hero of Paradise Lost,” Proceedings of
the American Philosophical Society 120 (1976), 253-305, p. 281.

121

“° Laura Lunger Knoppers, ‘League with You I Seek’: Milton’s Concept of
Covenant (Unpublished Dissertation. Harvard University, 1986), pp. 3, 160.

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Chapter Three: Apotheosis of Revenge in Paradise Regained

A novel, yet meaningful way to approach Paradise Regained is to read it
as a drama of revenge. As Peggy Anne Samuels points out, Paradise
Regained is “the story of revenge, Christ’s revenge on Satan, prophesied in the
protevangelium” (P. A. Samuels 1993, 140). The fulﬁllment of this
protevangelical prophecy, which the OED deﬁnes with an allusion to God’s
judgment in Genesis 3:15 promising that a seed of a woman will avenge
mankind by crushing the head of the serpent, is an essential part of the poem’s
meaning. 3 Paradise Regained tells of a Second Adam, who “avenged!
Supplanted Adam”2 and began to reverse the effect of the Fall, offering the
possibility of redemption for Man in the process. As such the poem is linked to
Paradise Lost as a “companion poem” 3 with regard to the theme of revenge, the
Son’s revenge in Paradise Regained counteracting and undoing the effects of
the Fall brought about by Satan’s malevolent and destructive revenge in
Paradise Lost.

In Paradise Lost, Milton examines the problem of evil as it is manifested in
the revenge of a willful and self-serving Satan who seduces Adam to sin in order
to fulﬁll his fantasies Of vengeance against God. Expelled from Heaven because
of what Hugh Richmond called his “pathological egotism,” Satan rejects “the
[principle of love and creativity...a principle which is an intrinsic part of God?“
Choosing instead to follow his impulse towards revenge by sowing destruction

and damnation on Adam and Eve. Even as Milton’s Paradise Lost examines the

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causes and the consequences of man’s downfall, however, I would argue that he
looks forward to the “one greater man”(PL, l. 4) who will avenge Mankind.
According to Richard S. Ide, although it is Satan who poses as a “villain
revenger" in Paradise Lost as he sets out to deceive man, it is Adam, Eve and
their descendants who, “through the Son, the seed destined to bruise the head
of the serpent” will have the ﬁnal revenge against Satan’s villainy (Ide 1983,
122). lntimations of the Son’s revenge on Satan abound in Paradise Lost and
make ironic the machinations of Satan’s revenge. For instance, the Son in Book
III foretells the time when he will “rise victorious” and “lead hell captive maugre
hell, and showl The powers of darkness bound” (PL, III. 250, 255-6). Pointing to
such prophecy by the Son, Stephen Wigler argues that Book III and the opening
of Book IV “imaginatively recreate and celebrate the Son’s decision ‘to execute
ﬁerce vengeance on his foes’.”“ The theme of the Son’s forthcoming vengeance
on Satan is underscored in the last two books of Paradise Lost. There Michael
offers Adam a panoramic vision of the biblical history of man, culminating with
the “protevangelical promise” (Ide, 122) of “that destined seed” who shall “bruise/
The Serpent” and “achievel Mankind’s deliverance” (PL, XII. 233-235). As
Adam remarks, “to crush [Satan’s] headl Would be revenge indeed” (PL, X.
1035-6).

Paradise Regained appears to respond directly to the prophecy made
through Michael in Paradise Lost that “[a] son, the woman’s seed...foretold” (PL,
XII. 327) shall avenge Adam and “bruise/ The Serpent.” As Northrop Frye points

out, the “defeat of Satan as tempter” in Paradise Regained “fulﬁlls the prophecy

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in Genesis that the seed of Adam shall ‘bruise the serpent’s head?“ Similarly,
Samuel Smith argues that the poem presents a “dragon-killing,” and that in
Milton’s three temptation scenes, “Christ’s ﬁnal victory over the dragon is
typologically and prophetically present.”7 Indeed, Paradise Regained establishes
its link to the subject of the Son’s revenge at the very outset by stating that the
object of the “brief epic” “ is “Recovered Paradise” and of “the tempter foiled/ In
all his wiles, defeated and repulsed” by “one man’s ﬁrm obedience fully tried/
Through all temptation” (PR, l. 3-6). An even more direct indication that the
poem attempts to depict the fulﬁllment of the promise that the seed of Adam will
avenge mankind comes from “the adversary” (PR, I. 33), Satan himself, who

proclaims during the ﬁrst demonic council that,

And now too soon for us the circling hours
This dreaded time have compassed, wherein we
Must bide the stroke of that long-threatened wound

(PR, I. 57-59)

As Satan’s dread of the impending blow suggests, Paradise Regained is a story
about the Son’s revenge on Satan, the execution of that “fatal wound” Satan
had awaited with dread ever since he supplanted Adam and Eve with deception
(PR, I. 49-55). Milton’s treatment of the Son’s revenge on Satan, however, is
unlike any which those familiar with Satan’s revenge or the genre of revenge

tragedy would expect. It is, I would argue, an apotheosis of revenge.“

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One of the characteristics of the Son’s revenge, which make it an
apotheosis of the revenge topos, is its impersonal nature. The Son’s refusal to
submit to the temptation of pride or to the equally deadly temptation of personal
anger enables him to rise above the corrupting violence and wrath that
frequently characterize sinful revenge, allowing him instead to become the
instrument of divine justice. Not all critics, however, see it that way. In relation
to the Son’s demeanor in his battle with Satan, critics such as David Mikics, for
example, have suggested that the Son is too much like Satan in his “edgy
impatience, and too responsive to his angry stimulus” (Mikics, 163)?“ According
to P. A. Samuels, nevertheless, the Son’s revenge in Paradise Regained
transcends the moral ﬂaws of the revenge tradition such as “barbarism, violence,
wrath, ranting, striking wide, exultation...rashness.” Instead, the recurring
language of “due time, retiring, waiting, fulﬁlling”11 in the brief epic is proof of
Milton’s attempt to transform the traditional subject of revenge tragedy,
presenting us with his “version of a revenger who during the course of the work
remains innocent of sin” (P. A. Samuels, 139-141). Certainly, as the Father
informs Gabriel, though the Son will avenge mankind by driving Satan and his
apostate angels back to hell and restore Paradise to humanity, his vengeance

will be exclusively a spiritual victory,

[Satan] now shall know I can produce a man
Of female seed, far abler to resist

All his solicitations, and at length

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All his vast force, and drive him back to hell,
Winning by conquest, what the ﬁrst man lost
By fallacy surprised. But ﬁrst I mean

To exercise him in the wilderness,

There he shall ﬁrst lay down the rudiments

Of his great warfare, ere I send him forth

To conquer Sin and Death the two grand foes,
By humiliation and strong sufferance:

His weakness shall o’ercome Satanic strength

(PR, I. 150-161)

The spiritual qualities of humility and sufferance in the Son’s vengeance are in a
diametrical opposition to those of the adversary, who is “with envy fraught and
rage” (PR, I. 38) suggesting that the “true ‘revenger’ is sometimes one who
"suffers patiently” (Ide 1983, 122).

Another principal feature of Milton’s treatment of revenge in Paradise
Regained is the way in which the brief epic intertwines the story of revenge with
the story of restoration. Speaking mainly in reference to Paradise Lost,
Desmond M. Hamlet argues that, for Milton, God’s justice is “essentially creative
and restorative” in nature. Thus, the concept of the Son’s justice cannot be
restricted merely to retribution “as if the Son of God were a mere agent of God’s
law” whose role is punishing the wicked (Hamlet 1976, 166-7). Rather, in

accordance with the “essentially restorative and instrumental nature and function

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of God’s justice” (Hamlet 1976, 32), the focus of the Son’ revenge in Paradise
Regained is not merely the punishment of Satan, but the restoration of fallen
man. Richard S. Ide argues that justice and mercy are reconciled in the Son so
that “the merciful promise of redemption” is joined “to the administration of divine
justice” (Ide 1983, 125). Milton himself emphasizes this dual nature of the Son’s
“mediatorial ofﬁce” (Columbia XV, 285) in his De Doctrina Christiana: “The effect
and design of the whole ministry of mediation is, satisfaction of divine justice on
behalf of all men, and the conformation of the faithful to the image of Christ”
(Columbia XV, 315). Though Milton emphasizes that Christ “OVERCOMES AND
SUBDUES HIS ENEMIES” (Columbia XV, 301),12 divine justice cannot be
satisﬁed by punishment alone, but must incorporate the concept of recovery by
his own example. Closely tied up with the “restorative” aspect of the Son’s
revenge, then, is the theme of Imitatio Christi.

The underscoring of the restorative nature of the Son’s revenge in
Paradise Regained can be found at the very beginning of the brief epic where
the epic narrator, in his invocation, associates the “defeat” and “repulse” of the
tempter with “Recovered Paradise” (PR, l. 1-7). The Father, who informs Gabriel
that the ultimate purpose of the Son’s vengeance is the restoration of man,
further conﬁrms that the Son’s revenge in Paradise Regained manifests the

corrective as well as the punitive aspect of justice.

[Satan] now shall know I can produce a man

Of female seed, far abler to resist

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All his solicitations, and at length

All his vast force, and drive him back to hell,
Winning by conquest what the ﬁrst man lost
By fallacy surprised.

(PR, I. 150-155)

Two notable ideas are expressed in the Father’s speech to Gabriel. One
is the special calling of the Son of Man to fulﬁll the protevangelical prophecy of
revenge by crushing the head of the serpent and thereby “...earn salvation for
the sons-of men” (PR, I. 167). The other is the emphasis on overcoming
temptation (Satan’s “solicitations”) as the means of realizing that purpose?“ As
Gary D. Hamilton points out, “Milton uses the temptation episodes to foreshadow
Christ’s future victories over Satan and thus ‘incorporates the whole Christian
theology of redemption’.”“ Despite the objection that Paradise is regained
through the Passion and not his Temptation?“ the theological context which
allows Milton to use the episode of the Temptation in the VWderness as a
paradigm for salvation can be found in the works of other English Puritans of the
period such as Thomas Taylor and William Perkins. Thomas Taylor, for
instance, describes Christ’s Temptation in connection to brushing the serpent’s
head, destroying and dissolving the works of the Devil and as the means to
man’s spiritual “rescue.” ‘“ William Perkins also concludes that because Christ,
as the Second Adam, undertakes to recapitulate Adam’s trial, standing “in our

roome and stead,” the Son of God recovers for man his lost spiritual condition.17

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Paradise Regained, then, is about the unique nature of the Son's
revenge. Milton’s dramatization of the Son’s revenge overturns our generic
expectation that it will be marred by violence, rage and hatred. Rather, Milton
offers a new approach to revenge by presenting revenge as a tool for fulﬁlling
God’s providential design for man’s redemption. By resisting a series of
temptations which parallel the temptations of Adam and Eve, but with contrasting
results, the Son shows not only the fulﬁllment of his revenge on Satan but also
how the Fall may be reversed through imitation of his example. ‘“ The humanity
of the Son, as he fulﬁlls his protevangelical mission, is crucial to Milton’s purpose
of depicting the “restorative and instrumental nature” of the Son’s revenge. As
Jack W. Herring points out, “Christ must—as a man—defeat Satan" if that
example is to be “demonstrated to be viable.” Failure to do so would leave man
with “no model, no comfort, no inspiration, no lesson, no conﬁdence, no source
of strength in the example?” As such, the Son serves as “both an individual and
as an emblem?” According to Stella P. Revard, the trials of the Son in the poem
correspond to those of Adam in that both Adam and the Son face the
temptations to “sensual pleasure” and “desire for glory.” 2‘ By subjecting the Son
to trials that parallel those of Adam and Eve, the poem attempts a recapitulation
of the moment or the Fall in order to dramatize both the Son’s vengeance
against the source of that Fall and the recovery of Paradise. Thus, as Richard
Douglas Jordan points out, if the ﬁrst Adam involved all men in sin and enabled
Satan and his crew to rise from hell to reside in middle air, the triumph of Christ

not only dislodges Satan from that position but involves all men in the triumph of

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the Second Adam.” John M. Steadman similarly argues that the central action
of Paradise Regained involves “a simultaneous process of ceremonial divesture
and investure, ‘putting off‘ the garment of the First Adam and ‘putting on’ those of
the Second Adam.” Steadman, therefore, argues that the poem depicts “the
process of man’s gradual renewal in knowledge after the image of the
Creator...a paradigm of regeneration?” It is in this sense that the Son not only
avenges Adam but succeeds him. As the Second Adam, he rewrites divine
history, as the New Testament rewrote the Old. As this Second Adam, he
demonstrates the process of recovery through his own example, giving the sons

of Adam a second opportunity at Paradise if they but follow his example.

Toward the end of Paradise Regained, the Son, having resisted all the
temptations of the world, is whisked by Satan to the “highest Pinnacle” of the
Temple. There the adversary of mankind challenges the Son: “There stand, if
thou wilt stand; to stand upright! Will ask thee skill” (PR, IV. 551-552). Puriﬁed
through the trial of his temptations, however, the Son responds by putting his
faith in God saying, “[tjempt not the Lord thy God...” and stands while Satan,
“smitten with amazement” (PR, IV. 561-562) falls. As Ira Clark points out, the
Son’s stand during Satan’s fall is the central emblem of Paradise Regained. The
climactic scene on the pinnacle of the Temple portrays the fulﬁllment of the
protevangelical promise that the seed of man will avenge mankind as the Son,
the Second Adam, “supplants Satan” and “visually prophesies himself to be the

new king of the middle air,” regaining by conquest the Paradise that Satan

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usurped (Clark 1974, pp. 106-7). According to the Father’s prefatory speech,
however, the Son defeats Satan not for himself but for man’s salvation (PR, I.
140-67). In order for the Son’s vengeance to be complete, therefore, human
nature must be restored to its prelapsarian state. As Raphael points out in
Paradise Lost, “God made [Adam] perfect” but “not immutable” (PL, V. 524).
Because of sin, therefore, Adam and Eve suffer “a conscious degradation of
mind” and “the loss of divine grace” (Columbia XV, p. 205)?“ According to
Milton, the object of Christ’s miraculous incarnation was to “obviate [this] ‘
contamination consequent upon the sin of Adam” (Columbia XV, 281). The
drama of the Son’s revenge in Paradise Regained, thus, centers on the recovery
of “divine grace” lost through sin. This emerges in a sequence of temptation
scenes, which culminates not only in the Son’s vengeance on Satan, but also the
recovery of Paradise which was lost through Adam’s disobedience (PR, I. 1-7).

It is for this reason that the Son enters the wilderness, the traditional locus of lost
Paradise, in his role as the Second Adam and defeats Satan by overcoming
temptation. In the overall scheme of Paradise Regained, therefore, the Son’s
victory over each temptation in the poem can be viewed as instances of his
revenge against Satan. However, the temptations to stones-to-bread, of wealth,
glory and zeal as well as the pinnacle scene appear to have a more direct
bearing on the issue of revenge and clarify the manner in which the Son
transforms the traditional revenge. Thus, in the following, I will examine how the

“restorative” nature of the Son’s revenge is manifest in Paradise Regained.

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The dramatization of the “restorative” nature of the Son’s revenge in
Paradise Regained begins with the Son’s defeat of Satan’s stones-to-bread
temptation. Interestingly, this temptation contains no direct “allusions to the
Christ-Adam parallel” (Lewalski 1966, 193). However, according to Patrick
Grant, because it represents an assault on the Son’s faith which “is at the basis
of every temptation,” it offers a logical “prior temptation” subsuming and serving
to introduce all other following temptations (Grant, 37). Noticing the “glimpses of
his father’s glory” that “shine” in the face of the Son and sensing “danger on the
utmost edge,” Satan decides to tempt the Son with “well-couched fraud, well-
woven snares” (PR, I. 92-97). Since temptation succeeded so well with the ﬁrst
Adam, Satan decides to try “Temptation and all guile” to “subvert” this “man of
men, attested Son of God” whom he suspects is “ralsedl To end his reign on
earth so long enjoyed” (PR, I. 122-125). Thus, Satan begins his trial of the
young Jesus whom he ﬁnds alone after wandering forty days in the wilderness,
appearing disguised as “an aged man in rural weeds” (PR, I. 314) and

challenging him to turn stones into bread:

But if thou be the Son of God, command

That out of these hard stones be made thee bread;
So shalt thou save thyself and us relieve

\Nith food, whereof we wretched seldom taste.

(PR, I. 342-45)

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In Satan’s phrase, “if thou be Son of God,” there is a subtle temptation to
doubt and unbelief. Correctly seeing through Satan’s trap as a test of his faith in
God, however, the Son refuses to allow physical hunger to cause distrust in
God’s providence. Rather, asking whether there is any force in bread, the Son
refutes Satan’s temptation to rash and precipitous action by his unﬂinching
obedience to the Word of God, remarking that “[mlan lives not by bread only, but
each wordl Proceeding from the mouth of God” (PR, I. 347, 349-50). By
successfully thwarting Satan’s lure with his knowledge of and faith in theWord of
God, the Son not only begins the process of his unique revenge which will
culminate in the recovery of lost Paradise but demonstrates in his example “the
ability of every man who lives under the New Dispensation to defeat Satan in his

own life through the right use of the Scripture” (Elliott, 239).

The temptation that is even more helpful in explicating the issue of the
Son’s revenge against Satan for seducing Adam and Eve to sin in Paradise
Regained is the temptation to wealth, glory, and zeal. Having failed in his
temptation to doubt, Satan disappears, “[u]p to the middle region of the air" (PR,
II. 117) to contemplate his next attack. There “doubting” and fearing defeat and
“...expulsion down to hell” (PR, II. 147, 128), Satan next decides to try the Son’s
constancy with “manlier objects” that have “...more showl Of worth, of honour,
glory, and popular praise;l Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wrecked"
(PR, II. 225-28). Finding the Son’s faith to be steadfast, therefore, in this

temptation to wealth, glory, and zeal sequence, Satan follows up his attack on

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the Son with a more insidious strategy by trying him with the temptation to the sin
of impatience, preemptory action and violence and, in this display of self-
sufﬁciency, to deny his trust in God. As Samuels points out, however, Paradise
Regained attempts a “rewriting of the revenge tradition” by giving us “Milton’s
version of a revenger” who overcomes “the tremendous difﬁculty of balancing
patience and action” (P. A. Samuels, 141). By overcoming the temptation to
“ambition,” “war,” and “violence” (PR, Ill. 91), therefore, the Son valorizes
patience, temperance, and “strong sufference” as the best means of
accomplishing his vengeance on Satan.

Because, as noted by Charles A. Huttar, Satan is unable to “link
messiahship with suffering, Satan tempts Christ with immediate exaltation”
(Huttar, 251). After observing how the Son’s thoughts are set on “high designs,l
High actions,” Satan tempts the Son by suggesting that the best means of
fulﬁlling his high purpose is to seek worldly “wealth.” Because “[m]oney brings

honour, friends, conquest, and realms” (PR, II. 422), Satan urges the Son to,

Get riches ﬁrst, get wealth, and treasure heap,
Not difﬁcult, if thou hearken to me,

Riches are mine, fortune is in my hand;

They whom I favour thrive in wealth amain,
While virtue, valour, wisdom sit in want.

(PR, II. 427-31)

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Ascribing all worldly wealth to himself, thus, Satan insinuates that if the
Son is to ascend “Judah’s thronel (Thy throne)” (PR, II. 424-25), he must seek
Satan’s help. To Satan’s offer of wealth and patronage, however, the Son
replies “patiently” that without “virtue, valour, wisdom” (PR, II. 431), the worldly
riches as means to “[hjigh actions” are self-defeating. “Riches,” according to the
Son, are not the proper means to the sort of crown he is seeking: “...not for that
crown,l Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns” (PR, ll. 453-44). More in
keeping with his mission are the means of “virtue, valour, wisdom” with which Old
testament ﬁgures such as Gideon, Jephtha and David “have oft attainedl In
lowest poverty to highest deeds” (PR, II. 437-39). In essence, to accept Satan’s
offer of wealth as means to his kingdom would be tantamount to confusing the
ends with the means. For the Son to accept Satan’s help would be to become
subservient to those means. Moreover, to accept Satan’s offer of wealth and its
attendant “honour, friends, conquest, and realms” would be to commit the sin of
premature and vainglorious action resulting in the Son’s “immediate exaltation” at
the cost of anticipating God’s will?“ The Son’s solution to Satan’s temptation to
rash action is to balance impatience with patience, action with non-action
through a language of denial?“ It is with such patience and waiting on the will of
God instead of impatience and rash action that the Son achieves his revenge by
defeating Satan and regain “by conquest what the ﬁrst man lost” (PR, l. 154). It
is how Milton develops his apotheosis of revenge in Paradise Regained. As we
shall see, it is a message that is repeated over and over again in Paradise

Regained.

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When his temptation to worldly wealth fails to move the Son, Satan next
tempts the Son with ﬂattery, complimenting him on his intelligence, his
eloquence, and his demeanor (PR, Ill. 9-19). Flattery, however, is merely a

prelude to the next temptation as Satan suddenly urges the Son to glorify himself

with earthly fame and glory:

These godlike virtues wherefore dost thou hide?
Affecting private life, or more obscure

In savage wilderness, wherefore deprive

All earth her wonder at thy acts, thyself

The fame and glory...

(PR. III. 21-25)

Playing on the Son’s “godlike virtues,” Satan attempts to stroke the vanity
of the Son in order to goad him into the sin of pride and vainglorious action. To
further strengthen his argument, Satan holds up Alexander, Scipio, Pompey, and
Julius Caesar as examples of those “most erected spirits, most tempered pure”
(PR. III. 28) and urges he surpass them (PR, III. 38-42). Satan’s position,
however, is in direct opposition to “the pattern of heroic patience and better
fortitude of suffering and martyrdom” that the Son afﬁrms to be the true measure
of heroism throughout Paradise Regained.27 In response to Satan’s intemperate
prompting, therefore, the Son “rejects the notion that exaltation can be separated

from obedience” (Huttar, 251) and denounces the pursuit of glory as but “the

137

blaze of fame” (PR. Ill. 47). While Satan eagerly espouses examples of military
and political power to illustrate his deﬁnition of glory, the Son patiently counters
with Job and Socrates as examples of “true glory” (PR, Ill. 60). “True glory,”
according to the Son, is attained “without ambition, war, or violence;/ By deeds of
peace, by wisdom eminent,l By patience, temperance” (PR, Ill. 90-92)?“ The
Son’s assertion of a new conception of glory in this scene goes hand in hand
with Milton’s attempt to depict a new and passive approach to revenge in
Paradise Regained. Just as the Son rebuffs Satan’s temptation to fame and
glory by espousing patience and temperance over war and violence, so it will be
the power of his “humiliation and strong sufferance” that will avenge Adam and
Eve and drive Satan back to hell. It is by waiting, enduring, and watching for the
hand of providence that the Son will achieve his impersonal and godly
vengeance.

Though momentarily stricken dumb with guilt “for [Satan] himself/
Insatiable of glory had lost all” (PR, III. 146-8), Satan, nevertheless, again tempts
the Son into untimely action by appealing to his sense of zeal and duty. As
indicated by Stanley Fish, the basis for Satan’s attempts to “provoke the Son to
action” in this temptation is “the desire of the apostles [Andrew and Simon] for a
dramatic and imminent redress of their grievances” (Fish 1971, 30). It is also,
according to Joan S. Bennett, at the heart of “the ambiguity and heartache
experienced by the adherents of the Good Old Cause on the matter of reading
the providences?” Attempting to use prophecy against the Son, therefore,

Satan attempts to seduce the Son into taking on the role of a rash and

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impetuous revenger arguing that he is duty-bound to take up “arms” against the

“Roman yoke” (PR, III. 166, 158):

If kingdom move thee not, let move thee zeal,
And duty; zeal and duty are not slow;

But on occasion’s forelock watchful wait.

They themselves rather are occasion best,

Zeal of thy Father’s house, duty to free

They country from her heathen servitude;

So shalt thou fulﬁl, best verify

The prophets old, who sung thy endless reign,
The happier reign the sooner it begins,

Reign then; what canst thou better do the while?

(PR, Ill. 171-79)

This passage shows Satan at his most eloquent moment as he subverts
prophesy, zeal, and duty for the purpose of luring the Son into presumptuous
action. As Bennett points out, Satan’s argument is a close approximation of “a
Miltonic deﬁnition of public commitment,” close but “deadly in its error” (Bennett
1989, 179). The temptation appeals to a particular kind of vengeance involving
meeting violence with violence and tyranny with tyranny that had appealed to the
young Jesus but since renounced for “winning words” and “persuasion” (PR, I.

215-16, 222-23). Hence, we can see the guile of Satan here. It would be so

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tempting to act suddenly to avenge the violation of the Temple and the “foul
affronts” to the Law (PR, III. 160-61). As David Quint points out, however,
reliance upon military strength rather than upon God would be tantamount to
committing the sin of pride?“ Even worse, to take retribution against the Romans
in an impetuous manner would be to doubt God’s providence by anticipating
God’s will with his own. Realizing that Satan’s temptation revolves around timing
and means,31 therefore, the Son defeats Satan’s wiles by refusing violence and
premature action: “All things are best fulﬁlled in their due time,/ And time there is
for all things, Truth hath said” (PR, Ill. 182-83). In not acting, however, the Son
is providing his strongest afﬁrmation of his faith in God’s providence that the
Father will deliver his people in his own good time. Also, to Satan’s argument
that only means of achieving his kingdom is through the use of military might, the

Son responds with “humiliation and strong sufferance”:

What if he hath decreed that I shall ﬁrst

Be tried in humble state, and things adverse,

By tribulations, injuries, insults,

Contempts, and scorns, and snares, and violence,
Suffering, abstaining, quietly expecting

Without distrust or doubt, that he may know

What I can suffer, how obey? Who best

Can suffer, best can do; best reign, who ﬁrst

140

Well hath obeyed

(PR, III. 188-96)

David Loewenstein explains in connection with the above passage that the poem
emphasizes “the inner faith and quiet expectation” exempliﬁed by the Son as he
“perseveres, overcomes, and ultimately regains ‘lost Paradise?” Thus, having
presented a more humble and passive view of kingship and heroism, the Son
espouses patience, waiting, delayed action and faith as the best means of
achieving God’s will. This is how the Son achieves his revenge on Satan. It is
also how mankind can recover from the Fall, by slow increments rather than
sudden and revolutionary action. It is, I would argue, an apotheosis of revenge.
Satan’s reaction to the Son’s “non-action”(Fish 1971, 31) is implicitly to
accuse him of impiety for not actively seeking to accomplish God’s will. He asks,
“[w]hy move thy feet so slow to what is best,/ Happiest both to thyself and all the
world,l That thou who worthiest art shouldst be their king” (PR, III. 224-26)?
lmplying that perhaps the Son hesitates because his private life has left him
unprepared for his mission (PR, lll. 232-35), Satan offers to help: “...I will bring
thee where thou soon shalt quitl Those rudiments” (PR, lll. 244-45). Satan,
therefore, transports the Son up to a mountaintop and conjures up visions of
Parthia and Rome. In these two episodes, which are merely modiﬁcations of
Satan’s previous argument that attempts to lure the Son to untimely action
through its appeal to zeal and duty, Satan again endeavors to provoke the Son

into the posture of a rash and violent revenger.

141

In the ﬁrst instance, Satan offers the Son visions of the Parthians in all
their “military pride” (PR, III. 294- 315) so that the Son may ﬁnd out for himself
what it is that will “reinstall” him in “David’s royal seat,” and achieve
“[d]elieverance of [his] brethren” (PR, llI. 372-74). He claims that unless the
Son strives to act, the prophecy of his “messiahship” will not come to being:
“...prediction still/ In all things, and all men, supposes means,/ Without means
used, what it predicts revokes.” Thus, Satan invites the Son to “[elndeavour, as
thy father David did” (PR, III. 354-56, 353) offering the Son the military might of

the Parthians:

...it shall be my task
To render thee the Parthian at dispose;
Choose which thou wilt by conquest or by league.
By him thou shalt regain, without him not,
That which alone can truly reinstall thee
In David’s royal seat, his true successor,
Deliverance of thy brethren, those ten tribes
Whose offspring in his territory yet serve
In Habor, and among the Medes dispersed,

(PR, III. 368-76)

According to Bennett, the temptation the Son faces at this juncture is

analogous to the “dilemma of the English radical humanist” who is acutely aware

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of the need not to “either act precipitously or fail to act” and “to ﬁnd the right time
and way to act” (Bennett 1989, 185). Pointing to the ten tribes of Israel
languishing under servitude, Satan tries to tempt the Son to immediately act to
free the Israelites. The Son’s response, however, is an unequivocal rejection of
Satan’s methods for redressing their grievances. The Son argues that “fragile
arms” and “instrument of war” may be “[pllausible to the world” but that to him
they “are worth naught.” He maintains that these means are “argumentl Of
human weakness rather than of strength” (PR, III. 388, 393, 401-02). More
importantly, to Satan’s attempt to lure the Son into premature and aggrandizing
action by deliberately misrepresenting the Son’s “messiahship” as a temporal
kingship that is meant to effect an immediate deliverance of the Israelites from
political oppression, the Son responds with a rationale for inaction, for waiting.
Thus, the Son refuses to deliver the Israelites from their political servitude

“precipitously” while they choose to remain in spiritual servitude:

Should I of these the liberty regard,

Who freed, as to their ancient patrimony,
Unhumbled, unrepentant, unreforrned,

Headlong would follow; and to their gods perhaps
Of Bethel and of Dan? No, let them serve

Their enemies, who serve idols with God.

(PR, III. 427-32)

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Lest we overlook the subtlety of the Son’s argument, it must be
emphasized that he never categorically denies the Israelites all hope of
deliverance. What he does do is refuse them deliverance while they persist to
“wrought their own captivity” by worshipping idols rather than God (PR, III. 415-
18). To restore this nation in its current “[u]nhumbled, unrepentant, unreformed”
state would not only be futile but would to anticipate God’s will, His “time and
providence” (PR, lll.440). By tempting the Son to seek redress for the Israelites
against the tyranny of the Romans through violent and untimely action, Satan
wished to lure the Son to the sin of self-exaltation. Under such condition,
revenge becomes a temptation to sin. Included among those who work against
the will of God, according to Samuels, are revengers “who misconceive the
nature of action and therefore work too precipitously, too violently, too rashly”
(Samuels, 151-52). Thus, Fish argues that “the prerequisite for real action” that
is in accordance to the will of God, “is the disposition to withhold action even in
the face of situations which seem to call for it” (Fish 1971, 44-45). By resisting
the lure of power, glory and violent means, therefore, the Son elevates his
revenge so that it becomes the catalyst of obedience and an instrument of man’s
spiritual salvation.

As indicated by the narrator in the prologue to Book IV of Paradise
Regained, though the battle between the Son and Satan, for all practical
purpose, is over at this point, Satan “for very spitel Still will be tempting him” (PR,
IV. 12-13). Thus, following the Son’s rejection of Parthian military might, Satan

continues in desperation to seduce the Son with “glorious Rome, queen of the

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earth” (PR, IV. 45). Noting that the emperor Tiberius is now “[o]ld and Iascivious,
and from Rome retiredl To Capreae an island small” in order to enjoy in private
“[h]is horrid lusts,” and ruling through “a wicked favourite,” “[h]ated of all, and
hating” (PR, IV. 90-97), Satan tempts the Son with his offer of Rome by
appealing to his sense of justice and moral duty implying that to evict the evil

Tiberius from his throne would be a ﬁtting revenge for his sins:

with what ease
Endued with regal virtues as thou art,
Appearing, and beginning noble deeds,
Might’st thou expel this monster from his throne
Now made a sty, and in his place ascending
A victor people free from servile yoke!

(PR, IV. 97-102)

Central to Satan’s temptation is an attempt to lure the Son into
misconstruing the nature of his role as the protevangelical revenger by
insinuation that he, as reformer, should act instantly to avenge the people of
Rome. Just as the Son reacts to Satan’s argument that he free the Israelites
from the oppression of Rome with the praise of “[s]uffering, abstaining, quietly
expecting“ (PR, III. 192), so the Son responds to the temptation of Rome with the
same refusal to act prematurely to take revenge upon a depraved emperor or

impose freedom upon a people who have willingly become “vile and base”

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asking “could of inward slave make outward free”(PR, IV. 132, 145)? Rather, as
the Son informs Satan, it is to “[elxpel a devil who ﬁrst made him such” (PR, IV.
129), thereby warning Satan of his own impending retribution. When, in an act
of desperation revealing of his depravation and lack of understanding, Satan
makes one last offer of the kingdoms of the world if but the Son “fall down,l And
worship me as thy superior lord” (PR, IV. 166-67), the Son commands: “Get thee
behind me; plain thou now appear’stl That Evil One, Satan for ever damned”

(PR, IV. 193-94).

The narrator tells us that with the Son’s rejection of Satan’s last effort to
snare the Son into the bondage of sin, Satan is left “Quite at a loss, for all his
darts were spent” (PR, IV. 366). Unlike Adam and Eve, Satan’s temptations
have fallen on deaf ears. Using Perkins’ analogy, the Son’s repudiation of glory,
power and premature action symbolizes that the Son has stood “in our roome
and stead.” That is, he symbolically recovers for man his original spiritual
condition. The only weapon left in Satan’s arsenal, therefore, is the threat of
physical violence which comprises the action of his ﬁnal temptation. After failing
in his attempt to terrify the Son with the device of a tempestuous storm and
infernal ghosts which, according to Grant is a means by which Satan hopes to
move the Son to the sin of “unjust anger, or rage” (Grant, 42), Satan, “swoll’n
with rage” (PR, IV. 499), transports the Son to the pinnacle of the Temple and

challenges him to “stand”:

146

There stand, if thou wilt stand; to stand upright

Will ask thee skill; Ito thy Father’s house

Have brought thee, and highest placed, highest is best,
Now show thy progeny; if not to stand,

Cast thyself down; safely if Son of God:

For it is written, He will give command

Concerning thee to his angels, in their hands

They shall uplift thee, lest at any time

Thou chance to dash thy foot against a stone.

(PR, IV. 551-59)

Lewalski. has called Satan’s action during the tower episode “an attempted
murder of Christ” (Lewalski, 306). Samuel Smith concurs, saying Satan commits
an act of “tyrannic violence” and that the Son is “in peril of his life” (S. Smith, 78).
By placing the Son under such dire situation, Satan believes he is forcing the
Son to reﬂect upon whether the Father will catch him or let him dash his foot
against a stone. In this ﬁnal temptation, Satan believes he is forcing the Son to
obey his demand that he either stand or throw himself into the arms of God’s
ministering angels. If the Son were to act, either by presuming his divinity and
choosing to stand, or by despairing of God’s help in trying to leap to safety, he
would both lose his battle with Satan and fail in his task to redeem mankind. The
Son’s trial at the pinnacle, however, shows the Son successfully defeating Satan

and demonstrating the fulﬁllment of himself as the perfect man who awaits God’s

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will. In this scene, Milton replaces Satan’s violence and “rage” with the Son’s
patience and sufferance. Instead of following Satan’s logic of either/or, the Son
demonstrates, in his non-action, the right way to defeat Satan’s rage and guile is

through the Word of God:

...Also it is written,
Tempt not the Lord thy God, he said and stood.
But Satan smitten with amazement fall

(PR, IV. 560-62)

The result of the Son’s response is immediate and dramatic as it strikes Satan
like a thunderbolt prompting his literal and ﬁgurative fall which according to
Samuel Smith evokes “the image of the fall of the dragon in Revelation, chapter
xii” (S. Smith, 78). Understanding the Pinnacle scene, as Samuel Smith does, in
the apocalyptic context is useful in exemplifying the “restorative” nature of the
Son’s revenge in Paradise Regained. Just as the Revelation depicts the theme
of man’s eternal salvation following Christ’s vengeance on Satan,33 so the Son’s
stand on the pinnacle is symbolic not only of the ﬁnal defeat of Satan but the
redemption of humanity. In this way the Son’s revenge in Paradise Regained
represents, symbolically, not only the restoration of mankind, but also serves as
a model, teaching man how he may also participate in the Son‘s revenge by

following the Son’s example.

148

The symbolism of Satan’s fall is hard to miss, illustrating the ﬁnality of
Satan’s defeat. Comparing the Son to Hercules who had strangled Antaeus, the
poem tells us that Satan has been ﬁtly “[t]hrottled at length in the air,” falling from
“when he stood to see his victor fall” (PR, IV. 562-71). This, we are told by the

heavenly angels, is the fulﬁllment of God’s foretold revenge:

...now thou hast avenged
Supplanted Adam, and, by vanquishing
Temptation, hast regained lost Paradise

(PR, IV, 606-608)

Paradise Regained, then, is about the Son’s revenge on Satan, of the
fulﬁllment of divine justice on Satan for occasioning Adam and Eve’s fall. Since
the Fall, Satan has occupied the “middle region of the air.” However, by making
the series of right choices, the Son has not only displaced Satan from the airy
kingdom he has been unlawfully usurping but also shown fallen man the way
back to Paradise. It is in this sense that he has “avengedl Supplanted Adam.”
The “snares” with which Satan has seduced mankind “are broke” and his “seat of
earthly bliss” in man is now “failed” (PR, IV. 611-12). Though, in an allusion to
the Cross he still has to bear, the angels tells us the Son must “[n]ow enter” upon
his vocation “to save mankind” (PR, IV. 635), the Son’s status as the “[q]ueller of
Satan” (PR, IV. 634) is irresistible at this point. As Huttar phrases it, “the victory

over Satan in the wilderness was the key conquest after which all else was

149

‘inevitable’” (Huttar, 250). The battle between the Son and Satan in the
Wilderness, thus, preﬁgures the ﬁnal defeat of Satan at the end of time.
Paradise Regained, therefore, concludes with the angels’ praise of the Son’s
accomplishment and the warning to Satan that his days are numbered: “But

thou, infernal serpent, shalt not long! Rule in the clouds” (PR, IV. 618-19).

As we have seen, in Paradise Regained, Milton exploits the restorative
and instrumental nature of the Son’s revenge in order to dramatize his idea of a
paradigm of recovery and redemption. The same paradigm, however, is latent
with a political vision for the post-Restoration Puritan revolutionaries. In
Paradise Lost, Milton explores the reasons for the failure of the Puritan
Revolution, which, he believes, derives from the moral failures of its leaders and
the nation. As Christopher Hill points out in his Milton and the English
Revolution, however, the recognition of failure does not mean that Milton’s early
revolutionary zeal is displaced by a denial of God’s providence or that Milton’s
later poems such as Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes become the
railing of a defeated political outcast. Rather, I agree with Hill that Milton
attempts to show the Puritan revolutionaries in Paradise Regained that by
following Jesus’s example, not only can the Fall be reversed but they can
“recover the lost internal Paradise and themselves become Sons of God” (Hill
1977, 350, 423).

While some critics such as Andrew Milner and William Kolbrener attempt

to read Paradise Regained as an apolitical text that espouses Quaker

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“quietism,”3‘ more recent criticism has tended to concur with Hill that Paradise
Regained, together with Samson Agonistes, are charged with political intent for
the defeated Puritan revolutionaries. Hill, for example, argues that despite the
apparent defeat of his cause, Milton never reneged on his “total political
commitment.” Rather, he stresses that, in renouncing political action, the Son in
Paradise Regained is not rejecting action per se but merely the causes “which
led the English revolutionaries astray—avarice and ambition, the false politics of
compromise with evil...the urge for instant solutions” and not his “determination
to change this world” (Hill 1977, 421, 459-60). Elizabeth Sauer likewise states
that though the Son “renounces temporal force...his verbal criticism of an
absolute and centralized governmental power and his prophesied destruction of
all monarchies are not the expressions of a quietist attitude?” Joan S. Bennett
similarly emphasizes the need to understand that bound to the Son’s “interior
experience” in Paradise Regained is “a need for action in the world.” Because,
for Milton, the “cultivation of inner light” is tied to “a commitment to social and
political activism,” Bennett argues that the portrayal of the Son’s obedience in
Paradise Regained is intended as “both the source and model for the readers’
own spiritual liberation and public action” (Bennett 1989, 161-62, 169)?“

From a Worldly“ perspective, Paradise Regained may indeed end
unsatisfactorily. At the conclusion of the poem, we do not witness the Messiah
lead Israel out of bondage. This is projected into the future. Although the angels

inform us that “A fairer Paradise is founded now/ For Adam and his chosen sons'

(PR, IV. 613-4), we are also reminded that it is not yet the time to live without

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fear of “Tempter and temptation” (PR, IV. 616-7). Though the angels urge the
Son to “[n]ow enter, and begin to save mankind” (PR, IV. 635), we are told that
the Son “...unobserved/ Home to his mother’s house private returned” (PR, IV.
638-39). In the end, the Son’s defeat of Satan’s temptation does not lead to the
kind of action that would allay the “heartache” Bennett argues the adherents of
the Good Old Cause are experiencing after the Restoration.37 Especially
troubling for readers who see Paradise Regained as a poetry of disillusionment
and withdrawal from politics is the Son’s perceived negative attitude, his scathing
renunciation of immediate action as he berates “the people” as “a herd confused,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extoll Things vulgar" (PR, III. 49-51). The
implication is that only a poet who had little hope for success in political action
could espouse such a stance.

As Hill is quick to point out, however, it would be wrong to attribute the
Son’s renunciation of violence and premature action to “Milton’s spleen or
disappointment.” On the contrary, because “political failure was ultimately moral
failure,” Hill argues that, in Paradise Regained, it is “the Son of God’s duty to
disregard the wishes of those whose standards have been hopelessly vitiated
by...avarice and ambition of this world” (Hill 1977, 350, 426). It is for this reason
that the poem places greater emphasis on rectifying the soul, of moving one to
love and serve God rather than the imperative to action. The Son’s critique of
the Israelites and the Romans, therefore, is not an unequivocal denunciation.
Instead, it is a carefully prescribed qualiﬁcation intended to deﬁne for the Puritan

revolutionaries more appropriate means and goals as well as providing a heroic

152

paradigm suitable for their imitation. As such, Paradise Regained represents a
further attempt by Milton to instruct the Puritan revolutionaries with respect to
their calling as “Sons of God.”

In Paradise Regained, Milton provides his readers with the perfect
example of the Son who avenges Adam and Eve by overcoming every
temptation through humility and obedience to the will of God. In so doing, the
Son addresses the demands of God’s justice with the fulﬁllment of God’s grace.
However, if the Son’s “stand” on the pinnacle of the tower in Paradise Regained
is indicative of the recovery of Paradise from the grasp of Satan, in the words of
Burton Kurth, the Son’s “victory over Satan was meant to represent an
essentially human kind of victory, or at least one which, within human limitations,
the Christian hero could imitate?” Hill likewise stresses the humanity of the Son
in Paradise Regained saying, “Jesus’ refusal, his rejection of the miraculous,
stresses his humanity: where Adam and Eve fell by aspiring to be gods, the Son
of God triumphs by staying human. The ‘perfect man’ remains man” (Hill 1977,
414). 3“ This emphasis on the humanity of the Son is latent with political
overtones for, by portraying the Son who defeats all temptations and assaults by
Satan as a Second Adam, “Milton created a compelling model for radical saints
in Restoration England” (Loewenstein 1994, 82). The merging of the Son’s
humanity and his exemplary role as Milton depicts the drama of the Son’s
revenge in Paradise Regained provides the Puritan revolutionaries with an

example they can relate to, thereby suggesting hopeful possibilities that they too

153

can rediscover their vocation to free England from the bondage of sin and
spiritual servitude.

Paradise Regained, therefore, is not so bleak in its outlook as some critics
would have us believe. Instead of being apparent repudiation of all politics after
his disappointments over the failure of the Puritan Revolution, Paradise
Regained carries a voice of faith and hope. As Loewenstein points out, the
notion of “‘due time,’ of waiting and ‘quietly expecting',” suggest “a prophetic
sense of expectation particularly resonant in the culture of radical Puritanism”
(Loewenstein 1994, 78-79). Thus, despite the Son’s refusal to bring about
instant solutions to Israel’s problems in Paradise Regained, the poem is
remarkably hopeful in its posture of expectancy. Because of the “restorative and
instrumental” nature of the Son’s vengeance, man is able to choose to walk the
path of the righteous. We may follow the example of the Son’s obedience or we
may harden our hearts against him and fall further from God. The choice, Milton
seems to imply, is ours to make. Writing with the knowledge of revolutionary
failure, Milton knows that not all will make the right choice. However, depending
on our choice, he holds out hope that the “ﬁt audience, though few” (PL, VII. 31)

will achieve redemption.

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Notes

‘ OED, XII. The New Catholic Encyclopedia also notes that the term,
traditionally applied to God’s judgment in Genesis 3.15 (“I will put enmity
between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed; He shall crush
your head, and you shall lie in wait for his heel), as indicative of the “triumph over
the serpent’s evil power” (NCE, vol. 11).

2 All quotations from Milton’s Paradise Regained are from Milton: Complete
Shorter Poems, ed. John Carey (London and New York: Longman, 1971), IV.
606-607. Further quotations from Milton’s Paradise Regained appear
parenthetically with volume and line numbers.

3 Barbara K. Lewalski argues that Paradise Regained is a “companion poem” to
Paradise Lost with its own distinct subject and focus. Milton ’3 Brief Epic: The
Genre, Meaning, and Art of Paradise Regained (Providence: Boston University
Press, 1966), p. 325. Stella P. Revard also notes the close link between the two
poems in their subject matter. Arguing that Paradise Regained is a “sequel” to
the Paradise Lost, Revard argues that the two poems need to tie read together
because the latter was born out of Milton’s effort to provide an alternate ending
to the failure of Adam in the former. Revard Stellar P, “Visions and Revision: A
Study of Paradise Lost 11 and Paradise Regained,” Papers on Language and
Literature 10 (1974): 353-62, pp. 354-5.

‘ Hugh Richmond, The Christian Revolutionary: John Milton (Berkeley, Los
Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1974), p. 134-5.

5 Stephen Wigler, “The Poet and Satan Before the Light: A Suggestion about
Book III and the Opening of Book IV of Paradise Lost,” Milton Quarterly 59
(1978): 59-64, p.62.

“ Northrop Frye, “The Typology of Paradise Regained,” Modem Philology 53
(1956): 227-38, p. 227.

7 Samuel Smith, “ ‘Christs Victorie over the Dragon’: The Apocalypse in Paradise
Regained,” Milton Studies 29 (1992): 59-82, p. 60.

3 In deﬁning Paradise Regained a “brief epic,” I follow Barbara K. Lewalski’s
assessment that the poem is a biblical epic modeled on the Book of Job
(Lewalski 1966, pp. 7-8).

155

“ The tendency of Milton to make use of generic expectations for his own
purpose has been noted by Lewalski who argues that, in Milton’s works,
“conventions of genre go far to control our approaches to and our expectations
from a literary work” (Lewalski 1966, 5). Samuels, likewise, notes that Milton
uses “generic conventions as a springboard from which he could launch his own
artistic inventions” (Samuels, 3).

‘° See also A.E. Dyson who argues that Christ’s victory is marked by “pride,”
even “insolence” rather than compassion and moral insight.” “The Meaning of
Paradise Regained,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 3 (1961): 197-
211, pp. 202ff.

“ Sanford Budick, The Dividing Muse (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1985), p.124. Quoted in Samuels, p. 140.

‘2 Upper-case letters are Milton’s.

‘3 Milton’s theology of the fall and recovery as dramatized in Paradise Lost and
Paradise Regained supports this understanding of man’s original nature lost by
the process of the Fall, and recovered by the process of temptation of the Son.

“ Gary D. Hamilton, “Creating the Garden Anew: The Dynamics of Paradise
Regained,” Philological Quarterly 50 (1971): 567-81, p. 568. See also Emory
Elliott, “Milton’s Biblical Style in Paradise Regained,” Milton Studies 6 (1974):
227-41. Elliott also argues that we need to see the temptations in context, as
part of the Son’s mission of salvation. Charles A. Huttar, while conceding that
temptation is not redemptive, argues that “Milton contrived by literary means to
encompass Redemption proleptically.” “The Passion of Christ in Paradise
Regained,” ELN 19 (1982): 236-60, p. 237.

‘5 For discussions on the theological objection to Milton’s choice of the
temptation motif, see Charles A. Huttar, p. 236.

3“ Thomas Taylor, An exposition of Christ’s temptation, or, Christ’s combate and
conquest: being the lyon of the tribe of Judah vanquishing the roaring lyon,
assaulting him in three most ﬁerce and hellish temptations (London: Printed by
Cantrell Legge, For Leonard Greene, 1659), pp.1- 2.

‘7 William Perkins, “The Combat Betweene Christ and the Diuell Displayed: OrA
Commentarie vpon the Temptations of Christ,” in The Workes of that famous and
worthy minister of Christ in the Universitie of Cambridge, M. W. Perkins, Vol.2
(London: Printed by John Haviland, for James Boler, 1631), p.376.

156

3“ According to Irene Samuels, Milton chose the temptation as the basis of
Paradise Regained because “it was regularly taken as the ground for the imitatio
Christi and therefore offered itself as that action...which might be ampliﬁed and
explored as deﬁning the right way for every man..” “The Regaining of Paradise,”
in The Prison and the Pinnacle, ed. Balachandra Rajan (Toronto and Buffalo:
University of Toronto Press, 1973), p.122.

‘9 Jack W. Herring, “Christ on the Pinnacle in Paradise Regained,” MiltonQ 15:3
(1981), p. 98.

2“ Ira Clark, “Christ on the Tower in Paradise Regained,” MiltonQ 8 (1974): 104-
07, p. 104. Emory Elliott, likewise, argues that the brief epic emphasizes “the
humanity of the young Christ...and his role as an example” (Elliott, 225)..

2‘ Revard, p. 354. See also Patrick Grant who, identifying the three sins of man
as “concupiscence, curiosity, and pride,” argues that these sins “typify the
original temptations of Adam which are, in the fullness of time, endured again by
the second Adam.” “Time and Temptations in Paradise Regained,” University of
Toronto Quarterly 43 (1973): 32-47, p. 36.

” Richard Douglas Jordan, “Paradise Regained and the Second Adam,” Milton
Studies 9 (1976): 261-75, p.268.

” John M. Steadman, Milton and the Paradoxes of Renaissance Heroism
(Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), p.212. See
also Patrick Grant, p.36 and Lewalski 1966, p. 222-23. Grant states that “just as
the sin of Adam introduced time the destroyer in Paradise Lost, the prudence
and good judgment of Christ, similarly tempted in Paradise Regained, revalidates
for man the perspectives of time the revealer.” Pointing to several references of
Second Adam in Paradise Regained, Lewalski similarly argues that the poem
“presents Christ’s temptation as a reprise and reversal of Adam’s temptation
expenence?

2“ The psychological changes of Adam and Eve portrayed in Paradise Lost
closely follows the ﬁrst two stages of the “four several degrees of death” outlined
by Milton in De Doctrina Christiana as punishment for Adam’s sin. The ﬁrst is
“ALL THOSE EVILS WHICH LEAD TO DEATH, AND WHICH IT IS AGREED
CAME INTO THE WORLD IMMEDIATELY UPON THE FALL OF MAN” including
“guiltiness” followed by “terrors of conscience” and attended by “a diminution of
the majesty of the human countenance, and a conscious degradation of mind.”
The second is “SPIRITUAL DEATH” which signiﬁes “the loss of divine grace, and
that of innate righteousness, wherein man in the beginning lived with God.” This
also involves “the loss, or at least in the obscuration to a great extent of that right

157

reason which enabled man to discern the chief good,” and the “deprivation of
righteousness and liberty to do good...which constitutes, as it were, the death of
the will.” This if followed by the “DEATH OF THE BODY” and “DEATH
ETERNAL, THE PUNISHMENT OF THE DAMNED” (Columbia XV, pp.203-251.
Upper case letters Milton’s).

2“ As Ashraf H. A. Rushdy points out, the temptation to “premature action” is the
“leitmotif of all temptations” in Paradise Regained. “Standing Alone on the
Pinnacle: Milton in 1752,” Milton Studies 26 (1990): 193-218, p.198. Quoted in
Samuels, 141.

2“ As Stanley Fish indicates, the Son’s reaction to all temptations is a stubborn
reafﬁrrnation of the resolution “to do nothing at all.” “lnaction and Silence: The
Reader in Paradise Regained,” in Calm of Mind, ed. Joseph A. Wittreich, Jr.
(Cleveland: Case Western University Press, 1971), 25-47, p.30.

“7 John M. Steadman, Milton and the Renaissance Hero (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1967), p. 33.

2“ As Paul Baumgartner points out, Milton’s message of patience runs through
his three major poems and that it is “recommended and praised without
qualiﬁcation as the ‘truest fortitude,’ the ‘exercise’ and ‘crown’ of saints.” “Milton
and Patience,” Studies in Philology 60 (1963): 203-13, p. 205.

2“ Joan S. Bennett, Reviving Liberty: Radical Christian Humanism in Milton ’3
Great Poems (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard University
Press, 1989), p.178.

3“ David Quint, “David’s census: Milton’s politics and Paradise Regained,” in Re-
membering Milton: Essays on the Texts and Traditions, eds. Mary Nyquist and
Margaret W. Ferguson (New York and London: Methuen, 1987), p.131.

3‘ According to Rushdy, every temptation in Paradise Regained “has been to
forego God’s time in favor of human expediency and to forego God’s means in
favor of human. means” (Rushdy, 208-09).

32 David Loewenstein, “The Kingdom Within: Radical Religious Culture and the
Politics of Paradise Regained,” Literature 8. History 3:2 (1994): 63-89, p. 66.

33 According to J. Barton Payne, the Revelation is closely tied up with the theme

'of “Apocalypse,” which is designed to emphasize the elements of “divine wrath,
cataclysm, and judgment,” and is important in establishing God’s ﬁnal word and

158

providing for His solution to the evils of the world. Encyclopedia of Biblical
Prophecy (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1973), pp.590-92.

3‘ D. Saurat, for instance, suggests that the general mood of the poem is one of
fatigue. D. Saurat, Milton : Man and Thinker(London: 1924), p.235. Quoted in
Andrew Milner, John Milton and The English Revolution (London and
Basingstoke: The MacMiIlan Press Ltd., 1981), p. 168. Andrew Milner concurs
with Saurat, arguing that the “theme of quietism” that dominates Paradise
Regained is a reﬂection of the “social ‘fatigue”’ precipitated by the collapse of the
Commonwealth. Thus, Milner argues that the central intellectual meaning of the
poem is contained in “the doctrine of quietism” and the “renunciation of the world,
of political action” (Milner, pp. 168, 178-79). More recently, William Kolbrener,
arguing that “inaction accompanied by silence...do little to ‘justify the ways of
God to men’," also reads Paradise Regained as a defeatist poem, asserting that
“Milton’s ambivalences about political engagement...ampliﬁed in Paradise Lost,
reach their ﬁnal articulation in Paradise Regained.” William Kolbrener, Milton’s
Waning Angels: A Study of Critical Engagements (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), pp.144-45, 49. For further reading of Paradise
Regained as a “retreat from politics,” see Blair Worden, “Milton’s Republicanism
and the Tyranny of Heaven,” in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Gisela Bock,
Quentin Skinner and Maurizo Viroli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990), 224-25. S. Marx, “The Prophet Disarmed: Milton and the Quakers’, SEL
32 (1992): 111-28.

3“ Elizabeth Sauer, Barbarous Dissonance and Images of Voice in Milton ’s Epics
(Montreal, Kingston, London and Buffalo: McGill-Queen’s University Press,
1996), p.136.

3“ For similar readings of Paradise Regained, see also Gary D. Hamilton,
“Paradise Regained and the Private Houses,” in Of Poetry and Politics: New
Essays on Milton and His World, ed. P.G. Stanwood (Binghamton, NY: Medieval
& Renaissance texts & studies, 1995), pp. 239-48. David Loewenstein, “The
Kingdom Within: Radical Religious Culture and the Politics of Paradise
Regained,” Literature & History 3:2 (1994): 63—89. Stella P. Revard, “Milton and
Classical Rome: The Political Context of Paradise Regained,” in Rome in the
Renaissance: The City and the Myth, ed. P.A. Ramsay (Binghamton, NY:
Medieval & Renaissance texts & studies, 1982), pp. 409-19. David Quint,128-
47.

“7 See note 30 above.

3“ Burton Kurth, Milton and Christian Heroism (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1959), p. 116.

159

3“ The extent and degree to which the Son’s divine nature was involved in his
defeat of Satan, particularly during the pinnacle scene, was a source of critical
debate. Cameron Allen, for example, argues that on the pinnacle the Son “ﬂares
into divine certainty.” The Harmonious Vision: Studies in Milton ’8 Poetry
(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Press, 1954), p.119. Lewalski, while
noting that the Son’s humanity accentuates the drama of his trial in the
wilderness, concedes that on the pinnacle the Son is given the “miracle of full
illumination," becoming aware of his identity as the “conscious agent of the divine
power” (Lewalski 1 966, 317). Rushdy, however, stresses that Paradise
Regained consistently underscores the Son’s humanity arguing that he “is
neither the agent nor the recipient of a miracle” and that he stands on the
pinnacle “of human volition and by human power” (Rushdy, 203-04). Louis
Martz, pointing to Milton’s steadfast preference for the term “Son of God” over
“Jesus” or “Christ,” similarly argues that Milton emphasizes the Son’s human
nature in the brief epic to highlight his exemplary role. As indicated by Martz,
Milton uses the phrase “Son of God” thirty-nine time, “Jesus” six times, “Savior”
twenty-one times, “Messiah” seven times, but signiﬁcantly, “he never once calls
his hero by the name of Christ.” Martz goes on to argue that Milton avoids the
term “Christ” because “he is not writing only about the life of Christ, that unique
being, Prophet, Priest, and King; he is writing about a composite generalized
being whom he calls the Son of God.” The Paradise Within (New Haven &
London: Yale University Press, 1964), pp. 180-81. For further studies on the
Son’s human nature in Paradise Regained, see Thomas Langford, “The Nature
of the Christ of Paradise Regained,” MiltonQ 16 (1982): 63-67; Gary D. Hamilton,
“Philological Quarteriy 50 (1971): 567-81; A. B. Chambers, “The Double Time
Scheme in Paradise Regained,” Milton Studies 7 (1975): 189-205; Elaine B.
Safer, “The Socratic Dialogue and ‘Knowledge in the Making’ in Paradise
Regained,” Milton Studies 6 (1975): 215-226.

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Chapter Four: Rigorous Justice: Samson, Vengeance and Paradigm of
Deliverance in Samson Agonistes

As F. Michael Krouse has argued, Samson Agonistes1 “brings to full circle
the immense story, which Milton took up in Paradise Lost and continued in
Paradise Regained.”2 If Paradise Lost depicts the problem of the Fall, Paradise
Regained dramatizes the Son’s victory over Satan, which enables man’s
restoration to grace. After Milton completed Paradise Regained, however, he
still has to demonstrate the victory over sin on a human level. Having provided
the theologically perfect example of the Son’s victory, Milton wanted in Samson
Agonistes to provide his readers with a more humanly accessible model. Hence,
his choice of Samson who, as a humanly ﬂawed protagonist, is more likely to
inspire identiﬁcation. Writing after the failure of the Puritan revolution, Milton
wants in particular to demonstrate that redemption was possible even for those,
such as the Puritan revolutionaries, who Milton believes were guilty of betraying
the godly cause? For this reason, in Samson Agonistes, Milton provides for the
beneﬁt of fallen man an example of a human hero who is as weak and as sinful
as contemporary men.“ This sinful Samson, Richard S. Ide argues, “completes
an exemplary journey of heroic regeneration” 5 before proceeding to fulﬁll his
destined role as instrument of divine vengeance. Samson’s victory, which
reveals him as “Homo Victor” (the parallel of “Christus Victor”) is thus “a palpable

exempliﬁcation of the meaning to Man of his Redemption” (Krouse, 132-133).“

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What it tells Milton‘s readers is that the ﬁnal victory over sin is attainable,
however difﬁcult, and is not merely an ideal.

Integral to Milton’s efforts to depict Samson as an approachable human
exemplar in Samson Agonistes is his dramatization of Samson as a sanctiﬁed
revenger of God. In Paradise Regained, Milton offers the unique example of the
restorative and instrumental nature of the Son’s revenge as a paradigm for
man’s regeneration. Samson Agonistes continues where Paradise Regained left
off. It depicts the story of Samson’s revenge on the Philistines in order to
dramatize the example of a sanctiﬁed revenger on a more human level. The
importance of the drama of revenge in Samson Agonistes is pointed out by
various critics, including John F. Andrews, who argues that Samson Agonistes is
“a species of revenge tragedy” (Andrews, 81). Despite Milton’s declaration in his
preface that Samson Agonistes was never intended for the stage, as Andrews
points out, many parallels exist between Renaissance revenge tragedy and
Samson Agonistes, and this makes Milton’s dramatic poem an interesting study
from the aspect of revenge? Peggy Anne Samuels concurs with Andrews,
arguing that “of all the dramatic sub-genres surely it is revenge drama that
Milton’s play most blatantly recalls” (P.A. Samuels1993, 108). Similarly, Richard
S. Ide notes that the poem’s emphasis on Samson’s triumph and revenge,
together with the bloody destruction he visits upon his enemies, seems to
“encourage the association of Samson with the conventional revenger” (Ide
1997, 159).“ Simply put, Samson Agonistes, according to Hugh Trevor-Roper, is

“a drama of revenge, pure and simple?“ Indeed, the overriding and climactic

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event within Samson Agonistes is the “horrid spectacle” of Samson’s vengeance
upon the Philistines which takes place offstage. This rigorous justice results in
the “desolation of a hostile city,” killing all the “[l]ords, ladies, captains,
counsellors, or priests,l Their choice nobility and ﬂower.” ‘“

As indicated by Andrews, notwithstanding having the traditional attributes
of the typical protagonist of a revenge tragedy, Milton’s Samson differs
substantially from his original model, creating “something approximating a
transformation of the genre” (Andrews, 83). One feature that sets Samson
Agonistes apart from the Elizabethan revenge tragedy is the public nature of
Samson’s vengeance, which derives from Samson’s original vocation as Judge

of the Israelites. As Samson himself afﬁrms during his debate with Harapha,

I was no private but a person raised
With strength sufﬁcient and command from heaven
To free my country...

(SA, 1211-13)

Using works of Protestant exegetes to support her argument, Barbara K.
Lewalski points out that. the Israelite Judges had two functions: “deliverance of
God’s people from bondage and wreaking Divine vengeance upon God’s
enemies,” both of which are also functions of Milton’s Samson. Accordingly,
Lewalski maintains that, consistent with the tradition of Protestant exegesis,

“Samson’s desire for revenge was not a personal motive, or a fault, but an

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aspect of his ofﬁce.”11 Hugh MacCallum, like Lewalski, afﬁrms that Samson
“acted not as a private person, but as one whose calling to free his country came
from heaven” (MacCallum, 276). Though Samson Agonistes echoes the form
and expectations of Elizabethan revenge tragedy, Andrews maintains that
Samson “acted as an inspired minister of God rather than as a reprobate
scourge” (Andrews, 93-4, 95). Ide similarly calls our attention to the fact that,
behind Milton’s evocation of the Senecan revenge and Elizabethan revenge
tragedy tradition, exists a “countervailing conception of tragedy as a revelation of
God’s justice” in which “Samson’s role is to act as the agent of divine
vengeance.” Unlike the typical protagonist of the revenge tragedy whose acts of
revenge are frequently tainted by angry passions, Ide argues that Samson
Agonistes “reinforces one’s sense of divine retribution at the catastrophe” (Ide
1997, 158-60, 161).12

Another distinguishing characteristic of Samson Agonistes is the way in
which the instrumental and restorative nature of Samson’s vengeance mirrors
that of the Son’s in Paradise Regained. According to John Mulryan, the
unsympathetic view of Samson as being crude and barbaric springs from a
problem in interpretation that places undue emphasis on the theme of revenge.
Instead, Mulryan points to a “shift in meaning from vengeance to deliverance” in
the recent translation of Judges that indicates Samson is motivated not by
vengeance per se but by vindication or deliverance?“ Thus, just as the Son’s
vengeance in Paradise Regained transcends the merely retributive aspect of

justice to become an instrument of man’s restoration, so Samson’s vengeance is

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a means rather than an end unto itself. “‘Deliverance’ now takes the place of
‘vengeance’ as the motivating force behind Samson’s actions” (Mulryan, 218). It
is to this important correlation between vengeance and deliverance within
Samson Agonistes that David Loewenstein is alluding when he argues that the
dramatic poem envisions “a ‘speedy redresse’” of persecution and enthrallment
of the godly by means of “a terrifying vengeance against the ungodly Philistines”
(Loewenstein 1996, p.170). In the end, Samson’s ﬁnal act of vengeance can be
read as a fulﬁllment of the angel’s promise that Samson “[slhould Israel from
Philistian yoke deliver” (SA, 38-9)?“ a point brought home by Manoa at the

conclusion of the poem:

Samson hath quit himself
Like Samson, and heroicly hath ﬁnished
A life heroic, on his enemies
Fully revenged, hath left them years of mourning,
And lamentation to the sons of Caphtor
Thorough all Philistian bounds. To Israel
Honour hath left, and freedom, let but them
Find coUrage to lay hold on this occasion,

(SA, 1709-1716, emphasis mine)

Before Samson can be reinstated to his ofﬁce as“ ‘deliverer’ and minister of

God’s revenge” (Ide 1997, 172), however, he must ﬁrst undergo what John T.

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”‘5 in order to “transcend himself, both

Shawcross calls the process of “renovation
what he was and what remained of his past self” (Shawcross 1996, 200). As
John Steadman suggests, this process of Samson’s renovation, which is
manifest in his “repentance and faith”, may be “a theological precondition for
Samson’s major act.”’“
At the outset of Samson Agonistes, Samson appears alone, tormented by
“restless thoughts” and suffering from “swoonings of despair,l And sense of
heaven’s desertion”(SA, 19, 631-32). Samson himself tells us that his alienation
from God’s grace was a consequence of his own disobedience in publishing
“impiously” God’s “holy secret” and thereby abandoning his vocation (SA, 497-
98). Samson’s betrayal of his secret to Dalila, grievous though it may be, is,
however, not the only instance of his disobedience toward God and certainly not
the only ﬂaw in his character. The earlier Samson is a character of many ﬂaws,
as is evident from his own admission that, “swoll’n with pride”, “[tjearless of
danger, like a petty godl I walked about admired of all and dreaded” (SA, 533,
529-30). An impetuous hero who is easily given to anger and violence, the
unregenerate Samson embodies many of the impurities of the revenge tradition
such as “barbarism, violence, wrath...rashness” (P. A. Samuels 1993, 139)
which he has to overcome before he can execute his ofﬁce as instrument of
God. However, as John S. Hill argues, by learning the “lessons of humility,
patience, and faith” through the process of spiritual renovation involving suffering

and undergoing a series of temptations, Samson is “spiritually created anew and

made the ﬁt instrument of the divine wrath against the worshippers of Dagon.”17

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lntimately linked to Samson’s vocation as a vehicle of divine vengeance
and deliverance in Samson Agonistes, then, is his role as paradigmatic pattern of
redemption. Through his ordeal, Samson undergoes all the traditional stages of
conversion: “Vocation, Fall, Regeneration, Temptation, Trial, Growth in spiritual
perfection” (Lewalski 1970, 1055). As Fredson Bowers indicates, “Samson may
serve as a paradigm for any individual” faced with the problems of “sin,
punishment, and reconciliation?“ Shawcross similarly argues that, rather than
being “simply the biblical ﬁgure wreaking revenge,” Samson takes on the role of
“a type of the Son exemplifying what must be done to escape from
bondage”(Shawcross 1983, 235). As such, Samson Agonistes and Paradise
Regained are companion poems in that the renovated Samson parallels the
heroic action of the Son in his faith and obedience to the godhead (Shawcross
1996, 196)?“ It is in his capacity as an exemplar, then, that Milton chose
Samson as his protagonist in Samson Agonistes.

The fact, however, remains that at the outset of Samson Agonistes,
Samson appears a fallen and degenerate sinner cut off from God’s grace and his
vocation to avenge and deliver his people from bondage. Thus, before he can
exact vengeance against the enemies of God, Samson must ﬁrst experience
regeneration. At the beginning of the poem, we ﬁnd him eyeless, languishing in
captivity, and tortured by the memory of “[t]imes past, what once I was, and what
am now” that torments him like “a deadly swarm/ Of hornets” (SA, 19-22).
Samson’s physical blindness is symbolic of his alienation from the divine

presence, which is reﬂected in the bitterness and anger in his speeches. In the

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process of seeking an explanation for his calamity, Samson comes close to

despair and rebellion as he harshly questions the wisdom of divine dispensation:

Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed

As of a person separate to God,

Designed for great exploits; if I must die

Betrayed, captived, and both my eyes put out,

Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze;

To grind in brazen fetters under task

With this heaven-gifted strength? 0 glorious strength
Put to the labour of a beast, debased

Lower than bond-slave!

(SA, 30-38)

Samson’s cry of “why?” shows the degree to which he questions divine
dispensation. This ingratitude and presumption, together with self-pity, anger,
resentment, guilt and self-loathing, indicate the extent of despair and degeneracy
to which he has fallen?“ Samson’s complaint is that he clearly serves no divine
purpose in prison, where his “heaven-gifted strength” is wasted and debased
and that his current condition appears to betray the original promise given at his
birth that he will deliver Israel from the Philistines. He sorrows over being
constrained under the “Philistian yoke” (SA, 39). lngrained in Samson’s thinking

at this point is his association of a champion of God with “glorious strength” and

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“great exploits” (SA, 36, 32). Samson has a classically heroic conception of
himself. The Chorus underscores Samson’s earlier propensity to violence
through brute strength. According to the Chorus, the Samson of old was

someone who used to be “heroic, renowned,” and “Irresistible,” performing
great deeds of glory and martial valor. He was someone “[w]ho tore the lion,”
who with “trivial weapon” felled “[a] thousand foreskins,” and bore the gates of
Azza upon his shoulders in the manner of Hercules bearing the heavens upon
his shoulders (SA, 125-50). We are also told that, instead of waiting patiently
upon the will of God, the early Samson took God’s promise that he would begin
the deliverance of Israel as a license for willfulness and impetuosity. In a
delusion of self-sufﬁciency that imposed his will over the will of the Creator,
Samson acted “like a petty god,” committing sins of rashness, precipitous action,
and violence, the ﬂaws traditionally associated with the conventional revenger.
Thus, as Darryl Tippens aptly points out, while Samson Agonistes is
ultimately a demonstration of the power of weakness and the ultimate triumph of
“Humiliation and strong sufferance,” the “early Samson accepts most of Satan’s
assumptions about the means to greatness—through classical heroic action.”
Even before his disclosure of God’s holy secret to Dalila, Samson, according to
Tippens, was “vain, boastful, naive, and dependent upon brute strength.”21
Furthermore, Samson’s opening lament discloses that he continues to associate
his role as the instrument of God’s vengeance exclusively with physical strength
and military prowess, war and violence.” This, according to Tippens, afﬁliates

Samson with the Satanic, rendering him unﬁt as an instrument of God. In order

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for Samson’s ﬁnal vengeance to transcend the limitations of personal revenge
and its corresponding impurities of pride, violence and rage, it is necessary for
Samson to demonstrate his ﬁtness as a vehicle of divine justice. Milton satisﬁes
this “theological precondition” (Steadman 1992, 218) by depicting Samson
remaking himself within the crucible of temptation, in the manner of the Son in
Paradise Regained.” While Paradise Regained dramatizes the Son bruising the
head of Satan after overcoming all temptations “[b]y humiliation and strong
sufferance” (PR, I. 160), Samson Agonistes offers a more human example of the
sanctiﬁed revenger as Samson defeats his temptations through humility,
suffering and obedience. It is through this process of humiliation that Samson is
prepared to receive his “rousing motions” (SA, 1382)—those divine instructions
that will enable him to carry out his mission of divine vengeance against the
Philistines at his moment of greatest humility.

The drama of Samson’s revenge, therefore, revolves around the process
of Samson's renovation into a sanctiﬁed revenger of God through a series of
temptations presented to him by Manoa, Dalila, Harapha, and the Philistian
ofﬁcer. As Anthony Low indicates, the process of preparing for just vengeance
and deliverance involves Samson ﬁrst refusing “the alternatives offered by each
of his visitors” (Low 1974, 168)?“ By replacing past impulses to rash action,
violence and pride with patience, humility and faith, Samson succeeds in
expiating the sin of betraying God’s secret. At the same time, Milton succeeds in
his efforts to rewrite the revenge tradition in English drama, a task he began by

dramatizing the apotheosis of revenge in Paradise Regained. As in Paradise

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Regained, Milton interrogates and critiques the ﬂaws associated with traditional
revenge in Samson Agonistes, transposing upon it his own idea of sanctiﬁed

vengeance.

Milton’s ongoing effort in his epic cycle to portray a new approach to
revenge, a revenge that would rise above the impurities of excessive violence
and rage that marred the traditional revenge tragedy, begins in Samson
Agonistes with the arrival of Manoa, who embodies the temptation to rash and
impetuous action. A mourning father, Manoa, observing the “miserable
change”(SA, 340) in his once heroic son, is stricken with despair. Questioning
the justice of Samson’s punishment, he offers to ransom his son from the
Philistines. As Bowers points out, according to the idea of redemptive justice
that governs Samson Agonistes, the purpose of punishment is to lead those who
have crossed the divine purpose back to God’s favor. The spiritual blindness of
Samson, Manoa and others, however, leads them to assume that God’s
punishment is solely punitive rather than redemptive (Bowers 1989, 216-7).
Samson’s renovation as a sanctiﬁed revenger must, therefore, begin with
humility, patience, and the understanding of the purposefulness of God's
punishment, that it is “the ‘saving med’cin’ necessary for his spiritual health” (Ide
1997, 163-64)?“ Had Samson prematurely given in to Manoa’s suggestion of
retiring to the comfort of his father’s house, he would have consigned himself to
perpetual banishment from the vocation to which he was born. In order for

Samson to respond to the “rousing motions” that lead him to enact God’s

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vengeance against the Philistines, Samson must therefore stay where he is,
endure his humiliation, and gradually replace his disposition to violence and
rashness with patience and humility. This, in Milton’s reformed outlook, is how
one can truly achieve godly vengeance.

When Manoa enters the poem, he displays a ﬂow of reasoning that
uncannily mirrors Samson’s opening lines in questioning the justice and efﬁcacy
of the divine dispensation (SA, 368-72). As Kathleen M. Swaim points out,
Manoa, together with Dalila and Harapha, serve as agents of Samson’s
regeneration by acting as his “mirrors or extensions of the hero’s mind and
thought” thereby serving “to facilitate his growing understanding and selﬂessness
by presenting aspects of the hero that can thus be seen, evaluated, and
transcended?” Thus, like Samson, Manoa, in his opening speech, reveals his
attachment to appearance, power and physical strength as he gloriﬁes Samson’s

past heroic deeds:

O miserable change! is this the man,

That invincible Samson, far renowned,

The dread of Israel’s foes, who with a strength
Equivalent to angel’s walked their streets,
None offering ﬁght; who single combatant
Dulled their armies ranked in proud array

(SA, 340-45)

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Manoa’s reveling in Samson’s past and his lingering attraction to the lures
of power, glory and violence is an important indicator of his blindness to the ways
of God and the redemptive purpose of Samson’s punishment. In a manner
similar to Samson’s opening complaint, Manoa questions the wisdom of
Providence in providing Samson with his “mortal strength” (SA, 349) only to
desert him by allowing Samson’s fall into bondage. Ever a grieving father,
Manoa cannot see that Samson’s “suffering is merited, for such recognition
would involve condemnation of his son.”27 Eager to deﬂect blame away from
Samson, Manoa even goes as far as to accuse God of cruelty, charging

blasphemously that God set Samson up for betrayal:

O wherefore did God grant me my request,

And as a blessing with such pomp adorned?

Why are his gifts desirable, to tempt

Our earnest prayers, then given with solemn hand
As graces, draw a scorpion’s tail behind?

For this did the angel twice descend?

(SA, 356-61)

Manoa’s criticism of God hinges on the argument that God’s punishment seems
overly severe for one of his elect. Manoa contends that God “should not so
o’erwhelm” those “God hath chosen once/ To worthiest deeds” and that Samson

“bear’st/ Enough, and more the burden of that fault” (SA, 370, 368-69, 430-31).

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His belief that Samson’s punishment is excessive and cruel leads Manoa to
excuse Samson as an injured party and to suggest that Samson accept his offer
to ransom him from the Philistines.

Despite his fatherly good intentions, Manoa's offer serves as a temptation
to Samson by enticing him to join in Manoa’s indictment of God and thereby
aggravate his past mistakes. As Jeanne K. Welcher explains it, Manoa’s role in
the poem is to voice an alternative choice of retirement and retreat to Samson
that undermines the whole raison d’étre for which he was conceived. Thus
Manoa represents “the alternative against which Samson must struggle” in the
poem?“ Manoa’s temptation, however, has an unintended but meritorious effect
on Samson, for his “confrontation with Manoa, like the confrontations after it,
permits the hero to see and hear himself" (Cullen, 208)?“ Samson’s recognition
of Manoa’s spiritual blindness in questioning the divine dispensation reminds
Samson of his own sinfulness and separation from God. Seeing a mirror image
of himself he dislikes in Manoa, Samson therefore rejects the part of himself he
sees there and repents and acknowledges his own responsibility for what has
happened to him. In this way, Manoa’s temptation plays a pivotal role in the
unfolding drama in that it induces Samson to come to terms with his own

culpability and place the blame where it rightly belongs, on his own shoulders:

Appoint not heavenly disposition, father,
Nothing of all these evils hath befall’n me

But justly; I myself have brought them on,

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Sole author I, sole cause:

(SA, 373-76)

By accepting his own guilt as “sole cause”““ of his afﬂictions rather than
attempting to deﬂect blame onto an unjust God, Samson achieves a new level of
“sorrow and contrition” which, according to Bowers, is a point of emphasis in the
Manoa episode (Bowers 1989, 227). Thus, in a display of “proper humility,”
which M.E. Grenander considers “a necessary condition before he can be
restored to God’s favor?“1 the bitter irony in Samson’s speech is replaced by a
patient and conciliatory tone. It is Manoa’s rash attack on God as over-
demanding and unjust that arouses Samson to a role reversal, defending rather
than accusing God. Whereas Manoa attempts to minimize Samson’s
transgression to an instance of human error committed out of frailty, Samson
emphasizes the depth of his culpability and the appropriateness of his
punishment. As Samson points out to Manoa, he had willingly chosen servitude
to freedom by betraying the secret of his strength “to a woman,l A Canaanite”
(SA, 379-80). Samson further acknowledges, in a clear and simple tone of
confession and prayer, that his folly has contributed to the glory of Dagon:
“Father, I do acknowledge and confess! That...to God have brought! Dishonour,
obloquy, and oped the mouths! Of idolists, and atheists; have brought scandal!
To Israel, difﬁdence of God, and doubt! In feeble hearts” (SA, 448-55). Within

the overall context of Samson’s regeneration, Samson’s admission of guilt and

175

 

contrition is signiﬁcant and constitutes one of the turning points of the poem,
indicating Samson’s ﬁrst step towards regeneration.”

The clarity of vision and patience brought about by the admission of guilt
allows Samson to oppose Manoa when he returns to the original purpose of his
visit, which is obtaining his son’s release from captivity. Apparently unconvinced
by Samson’s justiﬁcation of the ways of God, Manoa argues in favor of ransom
and release by stating,“[t]hou must not in the meanwhile here forgot! Lie in this
miserable loathsome plight! Neglected” (SA, 478-81). In an attempt to persuade
his son, Manoa even goes as far as to suggest that it is the Philistines rather
than God who are the agents of Samson’s destiny. Manoa’s argument,
however, displays a blatant lack of judgment and understanding of God’s
redemptive purpose. It also reveals that Manoa still clings to the belief that
Samson’s punishment was unequal to his crime. It is for this reason that Manoa
urges Samson to act swiftly to end his punishment instead of trusting in God. As
Bowers points out, however, had Samson acceded to Manoa’s offer, “he would
once more have interposed his will against God’s by seeking to cut short the
punishment that justice has visited upon him” (Bowers 1989, 223). It would also
mean giving up hope of ever again being called back to his vocation by God. In
a testament to how far he has progressed from his ﬁrst opening cries of agony,
Samson patiently refuses Manoa’s temptation by pointing out that his

punishment is not merely punitive but redemptive:

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let me here,
As I deserve, pay on my punishment;
And expiate, if possible, my crime,
Shameful garrulity.

(SA, 488-91)

The key to Samson’s refutation is the concept of “expiation” which the
OED deﬁnes as “the action of expiating or making atonement for” a crime or
“ceremonially purifying from guilt or pollution.” By stating his hope to expiate his
crime through punishment, Samson offers the endurance of punishment with
patience and humility as the only sure means to atone for his sins of betrayal.
He advocates self-modiﬁcation, denial of the self and submission to God as the
cornerstone of spiritual renovation. At this moment, Samson no longer looks on
his punishment as simply punitive. Punishment has provided the far more
beneﬁcial function of expiation as Samson embraces it as the means to make
reparation for his sin. The poem’s ﬁnal catastrophe, thus, is no arbitrary accident
of history but the logical outcome of Samson’s repentance and restoration. It is
his patience and humble sufferance that not only enables Samson to avoid
falling into another pitfall of “false action”““ but to participate in God’s plans.
Samson’s rejection of the temptation to precipitous and rash action, and his
decision to wait and suffer patiently instead, is signiﬁcant in that it not only shows

the true path towards individual regeneration but towards godly vengeance as

177

well. Through the example of Samson, Milton demonstrates how one becomes a
sanctiﬁed revenger of God.

As Mary Ann Radzinowicz and others indicate, however, “Samson’s
regeneration does not trace a simple curve; like all suffering men, he can and
does lapse from new levels of insight back into old positions” (Radzinowicz 1978,
p. 237)?“ At this early stage, he is far from being the embodiment of patience
and self-sacriﬁce that he is by the conclusion of the poem. Thus, during the
Manoa temptation, although Samson has come a long way in confronting his
past by acknowledging his guilt and the justice of God, he demonstrates that he
is not yet ready to face his future by relapsing back into self-pity and despair
upon Manoa’s departure. After contemplating his present state of slavery and
degradation against the possible future, be it in Dagon’s temple or his father’s
house, Samson ﬁnds his situation to be even more distasteful and cries
despairingly, “His pardon I implore; but as for life,! To what end should I seek it?”
(SA, 521-22). Faced with a future not to his liking, Samson clings to the only life
he knows, his former life as a violent and heroic deliverer. Reversing his
acceptance of his punishment as a means of expiating his sin, Samson now
rejects his mortiﬁcation and abasement as an integral and necessary part of the
regenerative process. The only satisfactory future imaginable for Samson is his
restoration as a deliverer in the image of his earlier self, “admired of all and
dreaded” (SA, 530). Hence his horror at Manoa’s plans to ransom him and take

him back home to what he believes would be a useless and ignoble life:

178

To what can I be useful, wherein serve

My nation, and the work from heaven imposed,
But sit idle on the household hearth,

A burdenous drone; to visitants a gaze,

Or pitied object, these redundant locks
Robustious to no purpose clustering down,
Vain monument of strength; till length of years
And sedentary numbness craze my limbs

To contemptible old age obscure.

(SA, 564-72)

Samson’s disdain at the prospect of being a “pitied object” and his fear of
a “contemptible old age” shows how far he needs to go before he can be fully
restored to his divine vocation. His attitude reveals how the contemplation of his
future has overshadowed the spiritual insights he has gained through his selﬂess
defense of God, bringing about a momentary halt to his regeneration?“ Thinking
of his vocation as the sanctiﬁed revenger of God only in terms of the human, the
physical and the martial, Samson mistakes strength for worth and refuses to see
how God could- make weakness the means to godly vengeance. He, therefore,
sees no reason to preserve himself and wishes for “oft-invocated death” (SA,
575). This echoes the earlier wish for oblivion in his opening speech. It is
important to point out, however, that this portrayal of Samson’s regression,

following immediately upon his moment of enlightenment, does more than

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indicate the difﬁculty involved in Samson’s regenerative process. What it creates
is a diametrical contrast, pitting violence and haughty pride against patience and
humility in order to assert the moral superiority of patient fortitude over physical
violence. If there is to be any future for Samson as a sanctiﬁed revenger of God,
he must ﬁrst undergo a meaningful transformation based on patience, humility
and unequivocal submission to the will of God. That, according to Milton, is how
Samson can fulﬁll God’s mission, how the violence of divine vengeance can be
reconciled with godly purpose. It is a message we see demonstrated in -
Samson’s encounter with Dalila, who offers him “the opportunity to expunge his

previous uxorious weakness by passing the test he once failed?”

Milton’s efforts in Samson Agonistes to depict the process of Samson's
renovation and reinstatement as an agent of divine vengeance continue with
Dalila’s temptation. When Dalila arrives upon the scene, she attempts to seduce
Samson with the same duplicity she used to betray him.“7 Appearing humble
and contrite, Dalila approaches Samson with “feigned penitence” (John S. Hill,
162) and attempts to persuade Samson to forgive her for betraying the secret of
his strength to his Philistine enemies. Pronouncing herself guilty, she tells
Samson she deserves his displeasure, but that now, she seeks to learn how she
may appease and make amends for his suffering (SA, 732-47). As if to
emphasize her claim of penitance, Dalila even talks of shedding tears to atone
for her sin, a parodic image of Samson’s earlier offer to expiate his crime through

suﬁenng:

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yet if tears
May expiate (though the fact more evil drew
In the perverse event than I foresaw)
My penance hath not slackened, though my pardon
No way assured.

(SA, 735-39)

As Thomas Kranidas points out, however, the truthfulness of Dalila’s
confession is suspect?“ Though Dalila says she has come only to seek
Samson’s pardon, her efforts to shift blame away from herself reveal that her
confession is more an excuse than a heartfelt admission of guilt?“ Indeed, as
Low points out, Dalila persists on putting “the blame on Samson, on her
weakness as a woman, on the Philistine magistrates and priests, but never for a
moment on herself" (Low 1974, 148). Dalila’s attempt to lessen and play down
her guilt provokes Samson to react angrily with a violent outburst of “Out, out
hyaena!” Prompted by his “inexpiable hate” (SA, 839) towards Dalila, Samson
denounces her entire attempt at self-exoneration as evidence of her “wonted
arts” and “feigned remorse,” intended to try his patience and virtue (SA, 748-58).
Samson's angry response to Dalila, however, does more than expose the
insincere artiﬁce of Dalila’s confession, revealing Samson’s own propensity

towards rationalization as he tries to depict himself as an innocent victim:

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That wisest and best men full oft beguiled
With goodness principled not to reject
The penitent, but ever to forgive,

Are drawn to wear out miserable days,
Entangled with a poisonous bosom snake,
If not by quick destruction soon cutoff

As I by thee, to ages an example.

(SA, 759-64)

' An intricate aspect of Dalila’s temptation, therefore, is the temptation for Samson
to view Dalila as a scapegoat. Samson’s attempt to depict himself as an
innocent victim cursed with an overly forgiving nature is problematic at best,
considering he is in the process of working out his own expiation for a
transgression greater than Dalila’s, revealing God’s secret. If he does not
recognize in his rage his own complicity in his fall, then he will have projected all
of his guilt upon Dalila. Indeed, as Mason Tung points out, Samson’s initial
confrontation with Dalila indicates that “he is really blaming Dalila for all his
problems, especially for ruining his future, his prophesied opportunity to help
God fulﬁll Israel’s delivery?“
Nevertheless, in the context of Samson’s regeneration, Dalila’s attempts
at equivocation and rationalization prove fortuitous in that they stimulate Samson

towards the path of regeneration by sharpening his sense of responsibility and

remorse. As Cullen points out, Dalila, together with Manoa and Harapha

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“presents Samson with a mirror to his Adamic corruption” (Cullen, 202). Dalila’s
temptation thus becomes the means towards Samson’s spiritual growth and
understanding, fostering patience and a deep understanding of “what true
repentance really means,” an essential component for his eventual
regeneration.“1

With her initial protestations of remorse exposed as false and rebuffed by
Samson, Dalila next attempts to seduce Samson into pardoning her by laying the
blame for her betrayal on Samson. Dalila reasons that, in light of her inﬁrm
nature, Samson is also at fault for revealing the source of his strength to her

“importunity” in the ﬁrst place:

Was it not weakness also to make known

For importunity, that is for naught,

Wherein consisted all thy strength and safety?
To what I did thou show’dst me ﬁrst the way.

(SA, 778-81)

The crux of Dalila’s argument is that both she and Samson share the mutual
weakness of “shameful garrulity” (SA, 491). Just as Dalila is guilty of publishing
the secret of Samson’s strength to his enemies, so he is likewise at fault for
betraying the secret of his strength to her against the express command of God.

Because, as Dalila correctly points out, “Samson has been as guilty in the past

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as she has been” (Low 1974, 147), she suggests that it might be best for both to

forgive and forget:

To what I did thou show’dst me ﬁrst the way.

But I to enemies revealed, and should not.

Nor shouldst thou have trusted that to woman’s frailty
Ere I to thee, thou to thyself wast cruel.

Let weakness then with weakness come to parle

So near related, or the same of kind,

Thine forgive mine; that men may censure thine

The gentler...

(SA, 781-88)

Despite her attempt to justify, or at least ﬁnd forgiveness for her sin of
betrayal, Dalila’s effort has the opposite effect, underscoring her rebrobation. As
Samson informs her, “by evasions thy crime uncover’st more” (SA, 841). To ask
forgiveness only on the grounds of weakness or mutual guilt is merely to excuse
one’s actions and not a true repentance. As Low points out, Dalila’s excuse
lacks the very conviction of sin, which is the ﬁrst necessity for repentance. Thus,
her efforts to seek forgiveness, rather than an indication of her contrition, merely
reﬂect her attempt to make her crime seem inevitable, simply to be “glossed over
and forgotten” (Low 1978, 149, 147).“2 Dalila’s temptation, however, proves

beneﬁcial in that it provides Samson with a moment of retrospection. Hearing

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Dalila use the same kind of rationalizations for her actions that he himself had
used earlier instills within him a heightened sense of responsibility for his own
predicament. Thus, instead of resorting to anger or attempting to justify himself
as he did in his ﬁrst exchange with Dalila, Samson demonstrates his growing

understanding and maturity by taking full responsibility for his crime:

I gave, thou say’st, the example,
I led the way; bitter reproach, but true,
I to myself was false ere thou to me

(SA, 822-24)

Samson’s admission of guilt reveals a very deﬁnite beneﬁt of his exchange with
Dalila. Like her, Samson has been hardly “impartial, self-severe, inexorable”
(SA, 827) towards himself in his examinations of his downfall. Though he has
admitted to Manoa the folly of trusting God’s secret to Dalila, true objectivity has
been hard to maintain as he has been continually tempted to rationalize and
excuse his actions and to shift the blame away from himself. Because of his
confrontation with Dalila, however, Samson sees the end of such reasoning in its
most bitter light. Thus, because “neither for himself nor for Dalila will weakness
serve as an excuse” (John S. Hill, 163), weakness being an abnegation of
responsibility, Samson correctly responds with an injunction against Dalila’s

argument of weakness:

185

weakness is thy excuse,
And I believe it, weakness to resist
Philistian gold: if weakness may excuse,
What murderer, what traitor, parricide,
Incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it?
All wickedness is weakness: that plea therefore
With God or man will gain thee no remission.

(SA, 829-35)

The chief difference between Samson and Dalila lies less in the nature of
their crimes than in their response to sin. While Samson is tortured by his
betrayal of God and his people, Dalila, according to George M. Muldrow, “seems
never to have realized that an unequivocal admission of sin a necessary step in
her repentance” (Muldrow, 197). Despite the blunt and unforgiving nature of
Samson’s rebuttal that “[ale wickedness is weakness,” therefore, he is correct in
exercising rigorous justice towards Dalila because her easy excuses and self-
exoneration represent a possible stance his own conscience might assume.“3
Initially, he himself had indulged in it. However, Samson’s perception of Dalila’s
self-serving nature becomes the impetus for his growth in transcending what she
represents. Realizing that Dalila’s argument is a kind of casuistry in which he
cannot allow himself to indulge, Samson rejects Dalila’s argument of weakness,

thereby ruling out this possible justiﬁcation for himself.“

186

The Samson who defeats Dalila’s temptation is a different person from the
angry and despairing sinner we see at the beginning of this temptation. His
confrontation with Dalila has taught him the need to take full responsibility for his
guilt. Samson’s recognition of guilt has also nurtured a deep sense of
repentance, leading to an inner transformation that replaces anger and denial
with contrition, penance, and submission to the will of God. By reacquiring
humility and temperance through repentance, he is now able to recognize the

hand of God in Dalila’s visit:

God sent her to debase me,
And aggravate my folly who committed
To such a viper his most sacred trust
Of secrecy, my safety, and my life.

(SA, 999-1002)

Considering that Samson’s engagement with Dalila teaches Samson the ﬁrst two
step of regeneration admission of guilt, acceptance of responsibility, and
repentance the trial of temptations is a gift of God to him. As noted by Sherman
H. Hawkins, “Manoa, Dalila, and Harapha come because—all unknowingly—they
are sent” (Hawkins, 225). Without God’s benevolent intercession, the
temptations and taunts would have resulted in no progressive self-realization.
The plain language of “So let her go” shows that Samson has come a long

way from the violent emotions of “out, out Hyena.” It indicates an understanding

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of his own culpability and the presence of God’s providence in his punishment. It
also shows that Samson is through blaming Dalila and is prepared to move on.
Armed with his new selﬂessness, Samson is now ready to face his ﬁnal
temptation. The depiction, in the aftermath of his confession and repentance, of
the simplicity and calmness of Samson’s demeanor also serves to remind us that
true strength lies not in physical might but in humility, sufferance, and the
abasement of the self before God. By making confession, contrition and
departure from evil prerequisite steps before Samson can take the ﬁnal step to
his regeneration, “the acceptance of the challenge to action” (Muskin, 243)?“
Milton reveals a new approach to revenge—one that emphasizes the power of
weakness rather than physical force or violence. It is not through heroic acts but
through humble repentance and obedience that Samson can fulﬁll his vocation
as a vehicle of God’s vengeance. That, Milton tells us, is how one achieves

godly vengeance against the enemies of God.

Despite having taken the ﬁrst two steps towards regeneration through his
confession and contrition at the end of Dalila’s temptation, Samson’s renovation
is not yet complete. As his defeat of Dalila’s temptation shows, Samson has
come very close to his restoration as the agent of God’s vengeance. However,
his violent response to Dalila’s ﬁnal offer to approach and touch his hand (SA,
952) throws into relief his remaining vulnerability to the temptation of physical
violence. What Samson needs is one more challenge to help him transform

himself into a ﬁt instrument of God. “In terms of Samson’s spiritual recovery,”

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therefore, Harapha’s appearance represents the culminating temptation (Cullen,
227) that educates Samson on the moral superiority of patient fortitude over the
excesses of violence, particularly in the service of vainglory and pride. In his
discussion of Paradise Lost, D. M. Rosenberg argues that, by exposing to
ridicule Satan’s vainglory and self-deceiving pride, Milton attempts to subvert
“the ideal of military heroism” in favor of “true heroic action founded on the
Christian ideal of obedience and suffering patience” (Rosenberg, 86-89).
Rosenberg’s ﬁndings concerning Milton’s valorization of true heroic action based
on obedience and patience in Paradise Lost are equally applicable towards
understanding Milton’s efforts to elevate godly vengeance above the impurities
of rage, ranting and violence that mar conventional revenge in Samson
Agonistes. If Samson’s “pride in his epic strength” was the cause of his fall, “his
humiliation and self-acknowledged weakness will be the source of his heroic
recovery” (Ide 1997, 171).

The appearance of Harapha gives the readers something of a portrait of
what Samson was prior to his fall?“ According to Tippens, there is a striking
similarity between Harapha and the old Samson; Harapha is a “mirror image of
Samson’s former heroic self—vain, boastful, naive, and dependent upon brute
strength” (Tippens, 187). Harapha thus exempliﬁes for Samson what the pursuit
of vainglorious violence does to an individual character. It is an example to be
shunned and avoided. Harapha’s disposition towards violence is conveyed in
the poem by the Chorus, who compares him to a “storm” and as a “kind of

tempest” (SA, 1061-63). He is the typical braggart soldier. With his opening

189

remarks, Harapha boasts of what he could have done had he met Samson on

the ﬁeld of battle, how he would have won fame by defeating him in battle:

0 that fortune
Had brought me to the ﬁeld where thou art famed
To have wrought such wonders with an ass’s jaw;
I should have forced thee soon wish other arms,
Or left thy carcass where the ass lay thrown:
So had the glory of prowess been recovered
To Palestine, won by a Philistine
From the unforeskinned race, of whom thou bear’st
The highest name for valiant acts, that honour
Certain to have won by mortal duel from thee,
I lose, prevented by thy eyes put out.

(SA, 1093-103).

Harapha’s haughty bravado; however, is no worse than what Samson has
described of his own earlier ambition when “like a petty god,” he was always
“after some proof! Of acts indeed heroic, far beyond! The Sons of Anak” (SA,
526-29). Intoxicated with power he has received, Samson appears to have gone
to the extreme to maximize his own heroic stature, to show what he is capable
of: “on their whole host I ﬂew! Unarmed, and with a trivial weapon felled! Their

choicest youth” (SA, 262-64). Even now, blind and in chains, Samson does not

190

allow Harapha’s provocation to go unanswered. He responds to Harapha’s
threats and taunting with a challenge of his own: “Boast not of what thou wouldst
have done, but doNVhat then thou wouldst” (SA, 1104-05). When Harapha
demurs to Samson’s offer of battle with a disdainful refusal to “combat with a
blind man” (SA, 106), Samson reissues his challenge of “carnal duel” (Ide 1997,
187) to Harapha with a bristling insult to the power of Philistine arms and threats

of violence and death:

Therefore without feigned shifts, let be assigned

Some narrow place enclosed, where sight may give
thee, .

Or rather ﬂight, no great advantage on me;

Then put on all thy gorgeous arms, thy helmet

And brigandine of brass, thy broad habergeon,

Vantbrace and greaves, and gauntlet, add thy spear

A weaver’s beam, and seven-times-folded shield,

I only with an oaken stall will meet thee,

And raise such outcries on thy clattered iron,

Which long shall not withhold me from thy head,

That in a little time while breath remains thee,

Thou oft shalt wish thyself at Gath to boast

Again in safety...

(SA, 1116-28)

191

In his confrontation with Harapha, Samson comes face to face with an
image his earlier self, “a parodic double” of his vengeful self that used to strut
around like a “petty god,” threatening violence.“7 Samson can surely hear in
Harapha’s misplaced thirst for battle something of his own earlier attachment to
violence. Harapha’s likeness to what Samson has described of his own days as
a “petty god,” however, unwittingly illustrates for Samson the perversion of
priorities when one places violence and martial prowess over spiritual insight.
The presence of Harapha, eager for violence and battle, therefore, is particularly
instructive for Samson, for the hollow boasting of Harapha shows Samson not
only something of his own self, but what he needs to avoid. Due to the presence
of the mirror image of his own moral errors, “Samson is helped to purge the
same faults from his own spiritual system” (Low 1974, 162).

The edifying effect of Harapha’s temptation on Samson becomes evident
in the next scene which underscores Samson’s growing humility and patience as
he moves from self-centeredness to defense of God. Samson’s confrontation
with Harapha, which initially threatens to dissolve into violence, undergoes a
transformation when Harapha touches on the subject of God’s involvement.
Attempting to demean Samson’s God-given strength, Harapha ridicules it by

attributing it to black magic:

Thou durst not thus disparage glorious arms
Which greatest heroes have in battle worn,

Their ornament and safety, had not spells

192

And black enchantments, some magician’s art,

Armed thee or charmed thee strong, which thou from
heaven

Feign’dst at thy birth was given thee in thy hair

(SA, 1 130-35)

By claiming that Samson’s divine dispensation was counterfeit, Harapha
inadvertently mimics Samson’s own past murmuring against God. At the
beginning of the poem, Samson himself had questioned divine dispensation by
blaming God for his own predicament. Attributing his fall to lack of wisdom, he
had blasphemously dared to blame God for not having given him wisdom equal
to his strength: “0 impotence of mind, in body strong I! But what is strength
without a double share! Of wisdom, vast, unwieldly, burdensome,l Proudly
secure, yet liable to fall! By weakest subtleties” (SA, 52-56). According to
Bowers, up to this moment Samson had responded to Harapha as “a private
man, not as a representative of his nation or of his God” (Bowers 1989, 231).
Harapha’s disparagement of heavenly dispensation, however, marks the turning
point of the episode. As Tung points out, “only after Harapha ridicules Samson’s
God-given strength does the challenge move from a personal to a religious
basis” (Tung, 486). Confronted with Harapha’s impiety, Samson changes his

focus from himself to God as he comes to the public defense of his deity:

I know no spells, use no forbidden arts;

193

My trust is in the living God who gave me

At my nativity this strength, diffused

No less through all my sinews, joints and bones,
Than thine, while I preserved these locks unshom,
The pledge of my unviolated vow.

(SA, 1139-44)

Samson’s solemn refutation of Harapha’s remarks indicates a dramatic
shift in the process of Samson’s renovation. It would have been easy for
Samson to rebuff Harapha’s attempt to belittle his strength with an impetuous
challenge to battle as he had been doing earlier. Nevertheless, instructed on the
virtues of patience and humility by looking at the mirror image of his own
impetuous and violent self, Samson now responds to the latest challenge with
restraint, avowal of his trust in God, and recognition of his own instrumentality.
The humble confession of trust in God is a signiﬁcant development for Samson,
who earlier complained that God had “cast [him] off as never known! And to
those cruel enemies.../ Left me all helpless with the irreparable loss! Of sight”
(SA, 641-45). If Samson’s fall was a result of the hubris that lead him to forget
that his strength “was a ‘high gift...committed’ to him by God” (Ide 1997, 171),
his new expression of trust in God, the admission that his strength is contingent
upon his keeping his “pledge” to God, and that he is only an instrument of a
higher power, indicates a newfound selﬂessness and spiritual maturity. The

pride that had caused his downfall has been transformed into faith.

194

In spite of Samson’s growing spiritual maturity and conﬁdence, however,
in a typical display of a soldier’s contempt for religion, Harapha bellicosely
rebukes Samson’s expression of faith. He presents Samson’s current captive
state as evidence that, even if Samson’s God does exist, he has clearly

disowned him and therefore cannot be trusted:

Presume not on thy God, whate’er he be,
Thee he regards not, owns not, hath cut off
Quite from his people, and delivered up
Into thy enemies’ hand...

(SA, 1158-59)

Besides sounding surprisingly like Samson’s earlier accusation that God
had abandoned him, Harapha’s taunt reveals that the loudmouthed bully does
not have the intellectual or spiritual resources to perceive Samson’s growing
maturity. As Tippens points out, “the scurrilous charges are the bitter truths in
ways Harapha and others cannot fathom” (Tippens, 188). Ironically, however,
the bitter truth behind Harapha’s charge that Samson is a pariah isolated from
God paves the way for Samson’s redemption and triumph. Instead of
despairing, therefore, Samson responds to Harapha with a testament of faith and

a humble acknowledgment of guilt:

All these indignities, for such they are

195

From thine, these evils I deserve and more,
Acknowledge them from God inﬂicted on me
Justly, yet despair not of his ﬁnal pardon
Whose ear is ever open; and his eye
Gracious to readmit the suppliant;

(SA, 1168-74)

The equanimity with which Samson now accepts his punishment from
God clearly indicates the extent of his spiritual growth and regeneration.
Admittedly, he has taken responsibility before for his actions, only to regress
back to despair and doubt. The difference between this acknowledgment and
his earlier ones, however, is that he now expresses his faith in God’s “ﬁnal
pardon.” In spite of his humiliation and suffering, therefore, Samson can now
fully acknowledge the justice of his suffering without despair or doubt. According
to Grenander, “[t]his faith in his ultimate restoration to divine favor is the last step
necessary for Samson to take before he can be chosen again as God’s agent”
(Grenander, 387). Punishment does not mean God has abandoned him. Rather
it signals continued attention. Samson’s humiliation and defeat is a means of
educating Samson to the “possibility that the punishment has been corrective
and that God will pardon him in the end if he will act correctly in accord with
God's will” (Bowers 1989, 233). Armed with his newfound conﬁdence in God’s
ﬁnal pardon, Samson reassumes his public role as the vehicle of God’s

vengeance by renewing his challenge to “mortal ﬁght” ““2

196

In conﬁdence whereof I once again

Defy thee to the trial of mortal ﬁght,

By combat to decide whose god is God,
Thine or whom I with Israel’s sons adore.

(SA, 1174-77)

In contrast to his previous challenges that are tainted by his thirst for
personal revenge, this latest challenge by Samson, by subsuming himself
beneath God, becomes impersonal and public in nature. In a clear indication of
his spiritual development, Samson’s renewed challenge to combat is restated in
such a way that Samson the hero disappears, becoming instead a humble
instrument representing God in a test between God and Dagon. The conﬁdence
of victory is as strong as ever. However, the conﬁdence is no longer an
expression of his own pride but of faith. The pride that had caused his downfall

has been transformed into faith?“

The confrontation between Samson and Harapha is crucial to Milton’s
efforts to reconcile violence with humble patience in Samson Agonistes.
Ostensibly, Samson’s struggle with Harapha valorizes patience and obedience
over physical violence. This symbolizes Milton’s efforts to transcend violence
and military heroics, moving from active force to passive fortitude. The presence

of a vain and violent Harapha who mirrors many of Samson’s own failings, such

197

as pride, boastfulness and the propensity to violence, presents Samson with an
opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of his fall. Milton’s depiction of the
passions associated with the violent revenger in the poem thus serves as a
moral example, that angry passions needs to be purged, warning the readers
about the consequence of abusing one’s power through angry violence. Instead
of reacting in kind to Harapha’s threat of violence Samson therefore responds
with temperance, faith, and obedience to God. This is how Samson ultimately
achieves his vengeance on the Philistines. It is no accident that Milton depicts
Samson’s retributive destruction of the temple of Dagon as the outcome of
Samson’s spiritual growth. It is only when Samson reaches the state of “better
fortitude! Of Patience and Heroic Martyrdom” (PL, IX. 31-32) that he ultimately
achieves his revenge on the Philistines.

The emphasis on patience, nevertheless, does not mean that Samson
renounces all violence as his challenge to Harapha and his ﬁnal act of
vengeance against the Philistines indicates. As Radzinowicz points out, despite
the realization that wisdom is “better and prior necessity,” Samson never rejected
the use of violence in public terms (Radzinowicz 1978, 169). Patience for Milton,
therefore, is not the rigid mask of impassivity and paciﬁsm. Milton does not
reject violence per se. He learns to divert it from speciﬁc persons and occasions
and wait for the right moment when it can be used for the glory of God.
Samson’s latest challenge of “judicial combat,” therefore, signiﬁes the all-
important movement “from Samson as private to Samson as public champion”

(Bowers 1989, 231-32)?“ It indicates that “self-pitying becomes a true

198

repentance, wrath turns to righteous indignation, contentious pride to zeal for
Israel’s God” (Hawkins, 224). The episode thus demonstrates Samson’s
successful transformation as a humble instrument of God showing that Samson
is “again worthy to receive the “rousing motions’ that are God’s means of

commanding His agent’s acts” (Libby, 524).

As Radzinowicz points out, Samson Agonistes is “a poem of growth and
change, depicting a hero who achieves late insight into his earlier thoughts”
(Radzinowicz 1978, xx). Samson achieves this growth and insight through
humility, penitence, and faith as he overcomes the successive temptations of
Manoa, Dalila and Harapha. The point therefore has come when Samson must
no longer suffer in patience but act in his capacity as instrument of God. The
impetus to action comes to him in the form of a Philistine ofﬁcer who commands
Samson’s attendance at the feast of Dagon: “[tjo honour this great feast, and
great assembly;/ Rise therefore with all speed and come along” (SA, 1315-16).
At ﬁrst, Samson refuses this opportunity to act by citing Hebraic Law: “Our law
forbids at their religious rites! My presence” (SA, 1320-21). Though Samson
may be genuine in his concern for God’s law, the anger and distress he also
shows at the prospect of the Philistines making “a game of [his] calamities” (SA,

1331) reveals the residual “I” that still rule his thoughts:

Can they think me so broken, so debased

With corporal servitude, that my mind ever

199

Will condescend to such absurd commands?
Although their drudge, to be their tool or jester,
And in my midst of sorrow and heart-grief

To show them feats, and play before their god,
The worst of all indignities, yet on me

Joined with extreme contempt? I will not come.

(SA, 1335-42)

The portrayal of Samson’s concern over himself, coming after his
repentance, seems inconsistent with the growth and change which he has
already demonstrated at the end of Harapha’s temptation. However, by offering
this realistic depiction of the inner conﬂict that is dividing Samson within, Milton
conveys not only the complexity of the situation faced by Samson but also
accentuates the sacriﬁcial nature of Samson's decision to submit himself to
certain humiliation when he feels the hand of God guiding him. The image of
Samson grappling with the conﬂicting demands of God and his own pride
indicates how far removed he is from his earlier self caught under the “sense of
heaven’s desertion” (SA, 632). Samson has made too much progress toward
reconciliation With God to allow his pride to rule his action. Thus, in spite of his
realization that humiliation and punishment is the underlying motivation behind
the Philistine order, Samson displays a new “Heroic magnitude of mind” (SA,

’ 1279) by choosing to humble himself and put his trust in God:

200

Yet that he may dispense with me or thee
Present in temples at idolatrous rites
For some important cause, thou need’st not doubt.

(SA, 1377-79)

According to Christopher Grose, “these lines contain the ‘presage in the mind’ to
which Samson refers eight lines later?“1 Prepared by patience and faith,
Samson now feels the hand of God in the form of “rousing motions” guiding and
directing his course of action, prompting him to comply with the Philistine ofﬁcer’s

command:

Be of good courage, I begin to feel

Some rousing motions in me which dispose
To something extraordinary my thoughts.

I with this messenger will go along,

(SA, 1381-84)

In following the divine impulse that sends him to Dagon’s temple, Samson
enacts an unconditional surrender that is analogous to that of the Son’s act of
supreme submission in the Pinnacle scene in Paradise Regained. By having
Samson move to the temple of his own volition, there to perform the humiliating
and disgraceful acts that he dreads and to become a spectacle before those he

most loathes (SA, 1614-28), Milton emphasizes Samson’s total surrender to the

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will of God. As MacCallum points out, there is an undeniable personal cost to
Samson in his decision to appear at the feast of Dagon involving the surrender of
his sense of personal honor, the humiliation of wearing the state livery of the
Philistines and of playing the fool for them (MacCallum, 278). This image of a
man who sacriﬁces his pride and personal honor in order to obey the “rousing
motions” (SA, 1382) of God dispels any notion of a rash revenger going on a
rampage of vengeance.

When he leaves the stage, Samson does not yet know what great act he
is to perform. He only knows that he has been called again and follows divine
impulsion, trusting that God will use him for “something extraordinary.” That
extraordinary act is manifest in an act of retribution at the temple of Dagon
where, as narrated by the Hebrew messenger, “with the force of winds and
waters pent,/ When mountains tremble,” Samson shook “two massy pillars! With
horrible convulsion” and pulls the roof of Dagon’s temple thundering down onto
the hated Philistines (SA, 1647-52). The result is truly apocalyptic, bringing
about a “universal groan” ﬁlled with “[b]lood, death, dreadful deeds.../Ruin,
destruction at the utmost point” (SA, 1511, 1513-14). As pointed out by the

Chorus, Samson’s act fulﬁlls his calling to avenge Israel and God:

0 dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious!
Living or dying thou hast fulﬁlled
The work for which thou wast foretold

To Israel, and how li’st victorious

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Among thy 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.

(SA, 1660-68)

Despite the magnitude of destruction involved in Samson’s revenge, however,
Milton is careful to defend Samson’s revenge as a sacriﬁcial act of heroism done
in accordance to the will of God and for the good of his people. As Swaim points
out, for readers schooled in Christian paradox, the emphasis that Samson
incurred his death “[n]ot willingly” is signiﬁcant in that it “signiﬁes Samson’s
transcendence of his earlier willfulness and his submission to fulﬁlling the divine
will” (Swaim, 231-32). Similarly, Radzinowicz also valorizes Samson as being
praiseworthy for, by his action, he is “representative of the pious few who acted
in the name of the welfare of the nation” (Radzinowicz 1978, 81).

The violent context of Samson’s revenge, nevertheless, has prompted
some critics such as Lana Cable to reject the Chorus’ interpretation of Samson’s
action as the fulﬁllment of divine dispensation.” Cable argues that Samson
Agonistes dramatizes an “old vaunting Samson” who is much like the rebellious
angel Satan of Paradise Lost?“ Pointing to the magnitude of the catastrophic
destruction caused by Samson’s revenge, P. A. Samuels also asserts that the

act of Samson’s revenge is a story of “excessive violence rather than measured

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justice.” She further suggests that Milton purposely raised in the dramatic poem
the “issues of excess, violence, crudeness, and wrath” which make Samson’s act
of revenge suspect rather than cleansing it of moral perplexity (P.A. Samuels
1993, 118, 119, 124)?“ In opposition to revisionist critics such as Cable and
Samuels, however, critics such as Raymond B. Waddington support the reading
of Milton’s dramatic poem as a vindication of divine providence by arguing that
“the process of Samson’s spiritual regeneration constitutes the action preceding
the catastrophe” Waddington, 259)?“ Burton J. Weber also endorses the
reading of Samson’s act as a victory by arguing that, by the time “Samson
receives God’s motions, he is already a regenerate man?““ Vlﬁlliam Kerrigan
similarly argues that Samson is a chosen man driven by the “irresistible, terrible,
the rousing motions of God” to deliver Heaven’s “Anger and just rebuke, and
judgment giv’n”(PL, IX. 10). Kerrigan further maintains that while Samson’s ﬁnal
act is “at once a sacriﬁce and a judgment,” the emphasis of Samson’s action lies
in its message of “typological fulﬁllment” as “[hlumility passes to revenge,
passivity to action?“7 Kerrigan’s assessment of Samson’s action as an act of
divine vengeance is collaborated by Low, who argues that Milton’s purpose in his
dramatic poem is the depiction of “not private but divine vengeance, not spite but
justice” and that in his deed Samson “is supported and vindicated by God
himself?” Low argues that Samson’s destruction of the Philistine temple is “the
culmination...of his inner development and regeneration, made possible by his
new self-knowledge and humility, his victory over despair, and his conﬁrmation

in...patience” (Low 1974, 87). Thus, Samson’s vengeance for his personal

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injuries is unimportant compared to the fulﬁllment of his mission, “the vindication,
and gloriﬁcation of God, the salvation of Israel, the destruction of their enemies”
(Low 1971, 231)?“

Despite the violence and destruction associated with Samson’s ﬁnal act,
critics who argue that regeneration is at odds with Samson’s revenge fail to take
into account the centrality of the pattern of loss and recovery behind his act of
vengeance. Samson at the conclusion of the dramatic poem is deﬁnitely a much
different person than when we ﬁrst ﬁnd him at the beginning, tormented by
“restless thought...like a deadly swarm! Of hornets armed” (SA, 19-20). The
argument for a regenerate reading of Samson’s ﬁnal act gains further credence
when we consider Milton’s painstaking efforts to forestall condemnation of
Samson’s vengeance in Samson Agonistes. As Carole S. Kessner points out,
Milton “raises Samson to the highest level of heroism” by purposely eliminating
motives such as suicide and personal revenge which would be antithetical to
Samson’s spiritual progress in the poem?“ Stating that it is notable that Milton
suppressed Samson’s death-wish of Judges xvi, 30 (“Let me die with the
Philistines”) in his poem, David Loewenstein also argues that its express
purpose is to dismiss the suggestion of “willful self-destruction” from Samson's
act of revenge and destruction (Loewenstein 1996, 173). The chorus’ efforts to
dissociate Samson’s ﬁnal act from the suspicion of suicide by attributing his
death to “necessity" (SA, 1660-66), therefore, provide a context, which allows

easy acceptance of the instrumentality of Samson’s vengeance.

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At the end of Samson Agonistes, Samson is a regenerate hero who is at
peace with himself and with his role as the instrument of divine justice. The result
of his renovation is that Samson’s vengeance against the Philistines becomes an
act of self-sacriﬁce performed in accordance with the will of God that will begin
the liberation of the Israelites from the bondage. By portraying Samson’s
demeanor as “patient but undaunted” (SA, 1623) and devoid of any signs of rage
or hatred as he carries out his vengeance, Milton is careful to elevate Samson’s
act of vengeance above the impurities of conventional revenge. Through the
depiction of Samson’s drama of self-abasement, Milton espouses patience,
waiting, enduring and biding one’s time as the only path to becoming a sanctiﬁed
revenger of God. In so doing Milton depicts an example of a new approach to
revenge that reconciles “action with patience” (Radzinowicz 1978, 175), thereby
extolling the virtues of humility, self-sacriﬁce and patient suffering as not only the
means to but an integral part of divine vengeance itself. Instead of indulging in
an orgy of violence and physical strength, one must wait, endure, and watch for
the hand of Providence. That, Milton tells us, is how one achieves godly
vengeance.

While the emphasis on humility and patience is at the heart of Milton’s
efforts to portray his new approach to revenge in Samson Agonistes, it is also
intimately linked to his efforts to create a political vision in the wake of the failed
Puritan revolution. Milton attempts in Samson Agonistes to answer the question
of how the fallen Puritan revolutionaries, who have failed to live up to their

vocation, can regain their calling and complete the task to which they were

206

elected. As Radzinowicz points out, there is a pertinence of the Samson story to
the situation of the English Puritan revolutionaries after the Restoration that

Milton exploits in Samson Agonistes:

Milton wanted to show how his own nation had erred and betrayed the
light of God within them: he wanted to show the responsibility of the
English people for their tragic enslavement; and in giving them an
instance of God’s renewal of freedom, he wanted to dramatize the
possibility of recovering liberty, of remaking their national life when they
saw occasion.

(Radzinowicz 1978, 169) “‘

Despite the tendency among some critics to read Samson Agonistes as a
work of pessimism and quietism because, from a historical perspective, Samson
died in vain without achieving the liberation of Israel (Hill 1984, 311),“2 critics
such as Jackie Di Salvo emphasize the centrality of political activism in the poem
by arguing that it'shows “a central movement from passivity to activism, an
activism that ultimately takes the form of a violent struggle against a political
oppressor” (Di Salvo-1972, 40). Christopher Hill similarly rejects the idea that
Samson Agonistes is “a tragedy of defeat,” arguing that there is “no evidence
that Milton ever adopted the post-1661 Quaker position of paciﬁsm and
abstention from politics.” He argues that, by depicting the successful

withstanding of temptation in Samson Agonistes as well as Paradise Regained,

207

“[b]oth poems offer hope [that] the people of England for whom Milton was
writing might one day do better” (Hill 1984, 313-15). As Bennett puts it, “[t]hat
their liberation will be short-lived...does not invalidate the justice of Samson’s
cause or the justice of the Philistines’ punishment, or the basis for the Israelites’
dimly understood hope” (Bennett, 161). Lewalski, in a like manner, argues that
despite the biblical record of Israel’s continued corruption and servitude, “the
Samson paradigm allows no retreat from the political arena” because “in the
play’s historical moment that future is not yet ﬁxed, and choices are still M
possible.” Thus Lewalski stresses that, for the Israelites in the poem, and by
implication the English and all others that come after, “liberation might be
possible; the chance is always there” (Lewalski 1988, 248). Samson Agonistes,
therefore, “is not pessimistic. It is in one sense an intellectual and moral analysis
of failure and defeat. But the failure is not accepted as ﬁnal...Samson Agonistes
is a call of hope to the defeated” (Hill 1977, 441).“3

Because “political failure is moral failure” (Hill 1977, 350), however,
Milton’s efforts to create a bridge between present defeat and ultimate victory in
Samson Agonistes begins with the examination of failure and defeat. Though
Milton evidently feels that there is enough responsibility to go around, he
reserves his harshest criticism for the leaders of the revolution, “Israel’s
governors, and heads of tribes” whom he aCcuses of squandering the God-given
opportunity to establish political freedom by “[acknowledging] not, or not at all
considered! Deliverance offered" (SA, 242-46). Comparable to Samson who

was promised that he “Should Israel from Philistine yoke deliver” (SA, 38-39), the

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Puritan revolutionaries, Milton believed, were specially elected as deliverers of
England. Again, similar to Samson, who failed in his mission to deliver the
Israelites from tyranny through his “own default” (SA, 45), they were also led
astray by such temptations as ambition, pride, and “the urge for instant solution,”
(Hill 1977, 421). Milton sees the plight of the Puritans as analogous to that of
Samson who, according to Hill, repeated Eve’s mistake of aspiring for “a godlike
power” instead of relying on “self-knowledge and self-discipline” (Hill 1977, 351).
In the end, though, Milton spares no one in his efforts to identify the causes that
led to the Restoration. Using Samson to voice his anger and dismay over the

failure of the revolution, Milton charges that the English people as a whole are

guilty of corruption and servitude:

But what more oft in nations grown corrupt,
And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty,
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty;
And to despise, or envy, or suspect

Whom God hath of his special favour raised
As their deliverer. ..

(SA, 268-74)

As Hill is quick to emphasize, however, the “diagnosis of national failure,”

rather than resulting in quietism and a repudiation of action, “leads to the

209

prophecy of the conditions necessary for a successful republic” (Hill1984, 311).
Having shown how the Puritans had erred and are responsible for their own
bondage, Milton goes on offer the hope of restored liberty if they but rededicate
themselves to the Good Old Cause by arming themselves with the power
humility, and repentance and faith. Though Milton does attempt to reconcile
violence with patience, to spiritualize struggle is not to pacify it. Thus, just as
Milton offers a defense of Samson’s vengeance as a means of deliverance, so
he promotes violence against oppressive institutions and the segments of the

populace who invite or administer them:

My nation was subjected to your lords.
It was the force of conquest; force with force
ls well ejected when the conquered can.

(SA, 1205-207)

Milton further validates acts of resistance against tyranny in Samson
Agonistes by emphasizing the providential nature of Samson’s vengeance. Not
only is the sanctity of Samson’s revenge conﬁrmed by the “patient but
undaunted” (SA, 1623) demeanor he displays in the temple but, by accentuating
Samson’s prayer to God preceding his act of retribution, Milton underscores the
instrumental nature of his self-sacriﬁce. It is thus that the Chorus celebrates the
destruction of the temple as the ﬁnal fulﬁllment of Samson’s mission: “thou hast

fulﬁlled! The work for which thou wast foretold! To Israel.”

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Because of Samson's revenge, Israel has been bequeathed an
opportunity for freedom, “let but them! Find courage to lay hold on this occasion”
(SA, 1661-63, 1714-16). Milton thus not only endorses Samson’s revenge, but
also articulates a political faith in the face of the Puritans’ post-Restoration
defeat. Through Samson’s example, Milton holds out hope to the Puritan
Revolutionaries that occasion may yet remain for them to fulﬁll their divine
calling. By contrasting the earlier Samson with the renovated Samson, Milton
offers not only the reasons for the failure of the Puritan revolution, but also
shows ways the fallen Puritan revolutionaries can recover their calling to liberate
the English people from political tyranny.

The story of Samson’s fall, recovery and fulﬁllment of his vocation to
avenge and deliver his people, therefore, must not be read as an isolated story.
Rather it needs to be placed within the larger context of human history as a
paradigm of deliverance. As Radzinowicz points out, Samson’s action was
“exemplary and given to his nation for their encouragement and education”
(Radzinowicz 1978, 177). The importance of Samson’s role as exemplar is also
stressed by Sharon Achinstein who argues that Samson Agonistes is “Milton’s
way of writing a political tract for his times in poetry, a message for how one
ought to behave by the exemplary...story of Samson’s internal growth and ﬁnal
action?“ The story of Samson’s failings, his punishment, and his eventual
renovation therefore serves as a convenient medium for Milton to convey what
Bowers calls the “healing message of Samson Agonistes,” that even those who

have crossed divine purpose and have been alienated from grace can be taught

211

to understand the will of God and thereby return to God's favor (Bowers 1989,
216). With the destruction of the Philistine temple, Samson’s part is done.
However, the part of the Israelites, and by inference all those who follow in
Samson’s footsteps, is just beginning. As a humanly ﬂawed exemplar
embodying all the strength and weaknesses characteristic of humanity, Samson
provides a pattern for the regeneration of every individual. The decision for
action, however, remains theirs. Like Samson, every human being must face
and overcome a series of powerful temptations, sometimes from enemies,
sometimes from well-meaning friends. As Samson’s scalding rebuke of the
governors and heads of Israel for failing to seize upon the offered deliverance
reminds us (SA, 241-46), freedom and regeneration cannot be forced upon a
reluctant and unworthy people. Thus, while Milton presents Samson as an
example for all men, Milton also tells us that only those who willingly weather
these spiritual challenges through humility and patience can become one of the

elect, a chosen remnant, one of the “ﬁt audience...though few.”

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Notes

‘ The term “agonistes” according to OED is from “agonist” meaning a
“combatant in the games,” “a contender,” “a person engaged in a contest or
struggle,” or “a protagonist.” Because “agonistes” is a derivative of a word
signifying a struggle or contest, Anthony Low argues that Milton intended the title
“Samson Agonistes” to suggest the meaning of “spiritual conﬂict” and by
extension, a ”spiritual warrior or saint” and that, “Samson proves the victor of
both a spiritual and a physical combat.” Anthony Low, The Blaze of Noon: A
Reading of Samson Agonistes (New York and London: Columbia University
Press, 1974), no. 1, p. 62.

2 F. Michael Krouse, Milton’s Samson and the Christian Tradition (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1949), p. 132. Sherman H. Hawkins provides a
concurring argument by advocating a view of “triadic pattern of Paradise Lost,
Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes” in which the image of Samson’s
“sacriﬁcial self-offering” completes “the pattern of history and of Milton’s three
great poems.” “Samson’s Catharsis,” Milton Studies 2 (1970): 211-30, pp. 227,
21 1.

3 David Loewenstein argues that the publication of Samson Agonistes in 1671
invites us to construe the implication of the dramatic poem in relation to the
Restoration. “The Revenge of the Saint: Radical Religion and Politics in Samson
Agonistes,” Milton Studies 33 (1996): 159-80, p.159.

“ As Anthony Low puts it, Samson is “Milton’s most human hero” (Low
1974,164).

“ Richard S. Ide, “The Renaissance Dramatic Heritage of Samson Agonistes,” in
Soundings of Things Done, Essays in Early Modern Literature in Honor of S. K.
Heninger Jr., Peter E. Medine and Joseph Wittreich eds (Newark: University of
Delaware Press, 1997), p.164.

“ In a similar line, M. V. Rama Sarma indicates that, because Old Testament
events and persons sometimes preﬁgure and foreshadow the New Testament,
Samson can be seen as a Christ ﬁgure. “ ‘The Unsearchable Dispose of Highest
Wisdom’: Samson Agonistes,” Milton Quarteriy 13 (1979): 85-9, p.87.

7 Some of the parallels between Samson and the conventional revenger of

Renaissance drama indicated by Andrews include: the preoccupation over
injustices and injuries, the sense of despair and isolation, and, the meditations

213

on vengeance that result in violent and bloody deaths, including that of the
protagonist himself (Andrews, 83-85).

“ For further studies of the revenge motif in Samson Agonistes see Richard F.
Hardin, “Milton’s Radical ‘Admirer’ Edward Sexby, with a note on Samson’s
revenge,” Milton Quarteriy 15 (1981): 59-61; R.J. Kaufrnann, “Bruising the

. Serpent: Milton as a Tragic Poet,” Centennial Review 11 (1967): 371-86;
Anthony Low, “No Power but of God: Vengeance and Justice in Samson
Agonistes,” Huntington Library Quarterly 34 (1971): 219-32.

“ Hugh Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans: Seventeenth Century
Essays (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), p.280.

‘° “Samson Agonistes,” Milton: Complete Shorter Poems, ed. John Carey
(London and New York: Longman, 1971), 1542, 1562, 1653-54. All quotations
from Milton’s Samson Agonistes are from this edition and further quotations will
appear parenthetically with volume and line numbers.

1‘ Barbara K. Lewalski, “Samson Agonistes and the ‘Tragedy’ of the
Apocalypse,” PMLA 85 (1970): 1050-62, p. 1056-57. See also Jackie Di Salvo
who also notes Milton’s use of the sermons of Puritan preachers in which
Samson and other heroes of the Old Testament who became “moral models” in
the context not only as saints but “soldiers ﬁghting ‘the Lord’s Battells’” (Di Salvo,
40).

‘3 For further reading on the providential nature of Samson’s revenge, see
Harold Skulsky who argues that Samson ﬁnal act of vengeance must be viewed
in the context of his ofﬁce as one of the Judges of Israel. As Skulsky points out,
Samson informs us that it is God’s motions which are presumably “disposing”
him to do the “something extraordinary” which he ﬁnally does, thereby implicating
God in the act (Skulsky, 74-5). Jackie Di Salvo likewise argues that “Milton
underlies the providential nature of Samson’s actions by constantly reminding
the reader that his power to overcome the Philistines is always directly provided
by God” (Di Salvo, 48).

‘“ John Mulryan, “The Heroic Tradition of Milton’s Samson Agonistes,” Milton
Studies 18 (1983): 217-34, pp. 217-19.

‘“ Cf. Judges 13:5: “...the child (Samson) shall be a Nazarite unto God from the
womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.”

‘“ John T. Shawcross maintains that the term “renovation” best describes what
happened to Samson considering Milton’s own testament that “[i]t is by MAN’S

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RENOVATION that he is BROUGHT TO A STATE OF GRACE AFTER BEING
CURSED AND SUBJECT TO GOD’S ANGER.” John T. Shawcross, “Misreading
Milton,” Milton Studies 33 (1996): 181-203, p.192.

3“ John Steadman, “Efﬁcient Causality and Catastrophe in Samson Agonistes,”
Milton Studies 28 (1992): 211-26, p. 218.

‘7 John S. Hill, “Vocation and Spiritual Renovation in Samson Agonistes,” Milton
Studies 2 (1970): 149-74, pp. 156-57. See also William Riley Parker who argues
that Samson’s recovery involves patience, faith, conquering the weakness which
led to his fall and obeying the call to further service (Parker 1937, 237-38).

7“ Fredson Bowers, “Milton’s Samson Agonistes: Justice and Reconciliation,” in
Hamlet as Minister and Scourge and Other Studies in Shakespeare and Milton
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989), 211-39, p.214.

3“ Other critics who identify Samson’s role as exemplar, see Joan S. Bennett
who argues that “Samson serves as a model for the regenerate Christian.”
“Liberty Under the Law: The Chorus and the Meaning of Samson Agonistes,”
Milton Studies 12 (1978): 141-63, p. 142. See also Low who note that Samson’s
regeneration and “his recovery of the special relationship he once enjoyed with
God” is important “as an emblem for imitation” (Low 1971, 227).

2“ Samson’s monologue lamenting his fate, questioning divine justice, and then
correcting himself not to “rashly call in doubt! Divine prediction” (SA, 43-44) have
a striking resemblance to an earlier lament by Adam in Paradise Lost. Following
his fall and judgment in Book X of Paradise Lost, Adam, in a monologue,
bemoans his fate, questions divine justice (X. 720 if), and then, corrects himself
by acknowledging his own complicity; “ﬁrst and last! On me, me only, as the
source and spring! Of all corruption, all the blame lights due” (PL, X. 831-33).

2‘ Darryl Tippens, “The Kenotic Experience of Samson Agonistes, “ Milton
Studies 22 (1986): 173-94, pp. 185, 187.

” According to Tippens, at the opening scene of the dramatic poem, the
humiliation of the unregenerate Samson is “more like the humiliation of the
defeated rebel angels rather than Christlike martyrdom” (Tippens, 185).

” Critics such as P. A. Samuels, however, read Paradise Regained and
Samson Agonistes as “contrastive companion poems” (P.A. Samuels, 140).
Wittreich also argues that Paradise Regained shows how “paradise within may
be achieved,” while Samson Agonistes demonstrates “how [paradise] may be
lost, and the effects of its being lost” (Wittreich 1979, 209). However, I agree

215

with Radzinowicz’s assessment that the two works are complementary in that
both “end in anagnorisis or discovery,” and that temptations are “the very
material of which virtue is made” in both works (Radzinowicz 1978, 229, 232).

2“ The indispensable role of temptation to Samson’s renovation has been also
argued by Ann Gossman who argues that “temptation is the means of causing
Samson to assert and manifest his virtue of intelligence and thereby to be
regenerated.” Ann Gossman, “Milton’s Samson as the Tragic Hero Puriﬁed by
Trial,” JEGP 61 (1962): 528-41, pp.530, 535.

2“ According to Ide, in Milton’s poems the only acceptable disposition for the
sinner in this fallen world is to accept patiently God’s justice and that “essential to
this patient disposition is the belief that God’s punishment is purposeful” (Ide
1997, 163).

7“ Kathleen M. Swaim, “The Doubling of the Chorus in Samson Agonistes,”
Milton Studies 20 (1984): 225-245, p.230. Patrick Cullen likewise ﬁnds in
Manoa’s speech the mirror of “Samson’s meditation in its despair and distrust” of
God. lnfemal Triad: The Flesh, the World, and the Devil in Spenser and Milton
(Princeton and London: Princeton University Press, 1974), p.208.

27 Nancy Y. Hoffman, “Samson’s Other Father: The Character of Manoa in
Samson Agonistes,” Milton Studies 2 (1970): 195-210, p. 204.

2“ Jeanne K. Welcher, “The Meaning of Manoa,” Milton Quarteriy 8 (1974): 48-
50, p.49. Ide likewise notes that, by advising Samson to avoid God’s
punishment, Manoa play the role of a bad physician in the poem (Ide 1997, 164).

7“ Because Manoa’s temptation is instrumental to Samson’s renovation, he can
be categorized as an instance of “good temptation.” “A good temptation” as
Milton deﬁnes it “is that whereby God tempts even the righteous for the purpose
of proving them, not as though he were ignorant of the disposition of their hearts,
but for the purpose of exercising or manifesting their faith or patience, as in the
case of Abraham and Job; or of lessening their self-conﬁdence, and reproving
their weakness, that both they themselves become wiser by experience, and
other may proﬁt by their example” (Columbia XV, 87-89).

3“ Samson’s admission that he is the “sole cause” of his fall is in clear contrast to
his earlier attempt to shift responsibility by stating to the Chorus that he was the
“prime cause” (SA, 234), implying that he was not the “sole cause," and
responding to the fact that Israel still serves the Philistines with a disclaimer,
“That fault I take not one me, but transfer” (SA, 241).

216

“‘ M. E. Grenander, “Samson’s Middle: Aristotle and Dr. Johnson,” University of
Toronto Quarterly 24 (1954-55): 377-89, p. 385.

“2 The process of regeneration as outlined by Milton in De Doctrina Christiana
involves the “Conviction of sin, contrition, confession, departure from evil,
conversion to good” (Gilliland, 27).

“3 Nicholas Jose, “Samson Agonistes: The Play Turned Upside Down,” in Ideas
of the Restoration in English Literature 1660-71 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1984), p.148.

““ See also Anthony Low who notes that Samson’s inward progress is not an
even one that it goes through setbacks moving by waves and turns (Low1974,
pp. 169-70) and Shawcross who argues that “Samson’s renovation must occur in
stages, moving the self-absorbed and still proud and recriminatory defeated blind
man in to one who gives himself up fully to guidance and selﬂessness and
action” (Shawcross 1996, 200).

““ Other indicators of Samson’s retrogressive mental state include his continuing
attachment to his public image, and the depiction of himself as a victim. '
Forgetting for the moment his own admission to be “Sole author I, sole cause” of
his fall, Samson again bemoans the fact that, having been brought up as God’s
special “nursling” and “choice delight,” he is left “all helpless” among his enemies
to be “the subject of their cruelty, or scorn” (SA, 633, 644-46).

3“ Raymond B. Waddington, “Melancholy Against Melancholy: Samson
Agonistes as Renaissance Tragedy,” in Calm of Mind, ed. Joseph Anthony
Wittreich, Jr. (Cleveland & London: The Press of Case Western Reserve
University, 1971), p. 274.

“7 The potency of her temptation which lies in her charms and artfulness is
highlighted by the Chorus who depicts her in the manner of an “ornate” and
“stately ship” (SA, 712-14). Dalila’s “wiles” (SA, 402) had not only seduced
Samson to, like Adam in Paradise Lost, Supplant his duty to God with his love for
a woman, but it still remain a puissant threat to his renovation. That Samson is
still potentially vulnerable to her “feminine assaults” (SA, 403) is evident from
Samson’s agitation upon hearing her arrival.

3“ According to Kranidas, Dalila acts as an unscrupulous lawyer who defends a

guilty client by “pleading...for an outweighing of the evidence.” “Dalila’s Role in

Samson Agonistes,” Studies in English Literature 6 (1966): 125-37, p.128. See
also George M. Muldrow who notes that despite her claims to the contrary, the

reason she presents why she deserves pardon “sounds more like excuses for

217

the betrayal.” Milton and the Drama of the Soul (The Hague: Mouton, 1970),
p. 1 93.

3“ According to Peggy Samuel, this speech is an attempt to transform moral
error into an accident. “Fire not Light: Milton’s Simulacrum of Tragicomedy,”
Milton Quarterly 30:1 (1996): 1-15, p.4.

“° Mason Tung, “A Reinterpretation of Milton’s Samson Agonistes,” Texas
Studies in Literature and Language 9 (1968): 475-92, p.482.

“‘ Miriam Muskin, “Wisdom by Adversity”: Davidic Traits in Milton’s Samson,”
Milton Studies 14 (1980): 233-255, p.243. Because, pardon for Samson can
result only from the Hebraic scheme of repentance, Miriam Muskin argues that
Samson’s willing repentance is instrumental towards turning his back to Dalila,
leaving evil behind him and moving up back to God.

“2 Michael Atkinson also emphasizes Dalila’s obduracy in this scene by arguing
that what Dalila asks of Samson is not to forgive her sin but condone it. This, in
opposition to true repentance, would be to perpetuate sin by accepting and
retaining it unchanged. “The Structure of the Temptation in Milton’s Samson
Agonistes,” Modern Philology 69 (1972): 285-91, p.288. Hugh M. Richmond
provides a similar reading of this scene by arguing that Dalila is tempting
Samson to “slur over the issues in a facile reconciliation with evil and failure” and
suggesting that “human inadequacy is so universal it should simply be accepted
and forgotten” (Richmond, 183).

““ It must be pointed out that the implication of Samson’s statement is not that it
is wrong to forgive weakness. He is, after all, in the process of working out his
own expiation for an admitted transgression even greater than Dalila’s. What
Samson refuses to condone in the poem, however, is Dalila’s obdurate refusal to
repent her evil.

“ Importantly, if Samson seems harsh in his condemnation of Dalila, he
exercises the same harsh judgment upon himself by acknowledging that “I to
myself was false ere thou to me” (SA, 824). Thus, his injunction against easy
excuses is directed as much to himself as to Dalila.

““ According to Muskin, the Hebraic scheme of repentance used by Milton in
Samson Agonistes involves free admission of guilt, turning one’s back on evil,
and Ieaming to do good or accepting the challenge to action (Muskin, 243). This
is generally analogous to the process of regeneration as outlined by Milton in De
Doctrina Christiana involves the “Conviction of sin, contrition, confession,
departure from evil, conversion to good” (Gilliland, 27).

218

““ As Low points out, “[a]lthough [Samson] began life as a chosen champion of
God, he came closer and closer to turning into a mere Harapha, until only the
agony of his fall could save him and set him back on the right course. Harapha,
then, represents what Samson nearly became, and would have become if he not
had God’s chastening help"(Low 1974, 163).

“7 According to Low, “Samson’s description of himself, walking about swollen with
pride or hybris like a petty god...comes very close to the behavior of Harapha at
their meeting. In fact, it is clear that by introducing the giant into the play, Milton
provided Samson with a parallel, a parodic double” (Low 1974, 162).

““ Nancy D. Libby emphasizes the public nature of Samson’s latest challenge to
Harapha by arguing that from this moment on, “no longer is this to be a contest
between men, but between gods.” “Milton’s Harapha,” The South Atlantic
Quarterly 71 (1972): 521-29, p.523. Jon S. Lawry likewise argues that it
constitutes a prophetic challenge from “the living God” to Dagon. The Shadow of
Heaven: Matter and Stance in Milton’s Poetry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1968), p.386.

““ Despite its public nature, Samson’s latest challenge to Harapha has been
pointed out by P. A. Samuels among others as sign of his “failure to resist the
temptation of violence” (P. A. Samuels 1993, 118) and that no regeneration has
occurred at all. Lawrence W. Hyman also suggests as much when he argues
that Samson’s ﬁnal challenge to Harapha isn’t symptomatic of “increased hope”
as a sign of “resignation.” “The ‘true experience’ of Samson Agonistes,” Milton
Quarteriy 13 (1979): 90-95, p.93. In a similar vein, William V. Nestrick indicates
that Samson’s challenge to Harapha serves to evoke a sense of unease and that
it is “a false image of the trial of fortitude that must be rejected.” “Samson
Agonistes and Trial by Combat,” Studia Neophilologica 43 (1971 ): 246-51, pp.
247, 251. Such an argument, however, is predicated on the mistaken
assumption that Milton views all violence as evil. As Hill points out, however,
rather than a rejection of violence as a viable course of action, “it is the use of
force for worldly ends, or its untimely use by God’s servants, that is condemned”
in Samson Agonistes (Hill 1984, 314). What Milton attempts to achieve in
Samson Agonistes, therefore, is a reconciliation of violence with the purifying
emotion of patience and humility.

““ Ann Gossman similarly argues that Samson indicates his return to the role of
God’s elect hero by issuing his challenge to battle “not like a petty god, but like
God’s champion” (Gossman, 539).

“‘ Christopher Grose, “ ‘His Uncontrollable lntent’: Discovery as Action in
Samson Agonistes,” Milton Studies 7 (1975): 49-76, p.62.

219

“2 As Steadman points out, while the “general consensus” is to view Samson as
an instrument of God in Samson Agonistes, “revisionist criticism” not only deny
the notion of Samson’s regeneration but the role of divine providence in the ﬁnal
catastrophe (Steadman 1992, 211). Gallagher similarly notes the tendency of
some recent criticism to “depreciate the traditional view that Samson ﬁnishes his
career as the reinstated champion of God” (Gallagher, 259).

“3 Lana Cable, Carnal Rhetoric: Milton ’s lconoclasm and the Poetics of Desire
(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995), p.171.

5“ In her most recent article on Samson Agonistes, however, P.A. Samuels
appears to have reversed her position regarding Samson, giving implicit approval
to a regenerationist reading of the poem. Noting that the poem resists a ,
“reconciliation that would rewrite sin as accident” and conclude weakness as
inevitable, P. A. Samuels concludes that, for Samson, “forgiveness becomes a
temptation to be resisted” ( P. A. Samuels, 1996, 5-6). For further reading on
anti-regenerationist criticism of Samson Agonistes, see John Carey who charges
in his introduction to Samson Agonistes that the ending of the dramatic poem is
“morally disgusting” and that “Samson’s last bloody act of vengeance....is
condemned, at a deeper level, by the progression of imagery” resulting in a “the
weak-minded, vengeful hero” who is reduced to “the level of Dalila and the
Philistines” (Carey, 333, 338-41); Helen Damico, “Duality in Dramatic Vision: A
Structural Analysis of Samson Agonistes,” Milton Studies 12 (1978): 91-116;
Lawrence W. Hymen, “The Unwilling Martyrdom in Samson Agonistes,”
Tennessee Studies in Literature 13 (1968): 91-8; G. A. Wilkes, “The
Interpretation of Samson Agonistes,” Huntington Library Quarteriy 26 (1963):
363-79; Clay Daniel, “Lust and Violence in Samson Agonistes,” South Central
Review 6:1 (1989): 6-31; Stanley Fish, Question and Answer in Samson
Agonistes,” Critical Quarterly 11 (1969): 237-64.

““ While most critics take the stance of either the regenerationist or anti-
regenerationist argument regarding Samson’s ﬁnal act of vengeance, Stella P.
Revard offers an interesting third perspective by suggesting that Samson may be
neither be fully regenerate or unregenerate at the conclusion of the dramatic
poem. Revard suggests that it may be Milton’s intention to induce mixed
reaction from his audience, wanting “his audience to pity his dying hero” while at
the same time “not necessarily to approve of the destruction he accomplishes.”
“The Politics of Milton’s Hercules,” Milton Studies 32 (1995): 217-45, pp. 240-41.

““ Burton J. Weber, “The Worldly End of Samson,” Milton Studies 26 (1990):
289-309, p.289.

220

“7 \Nilliam Kerrigan, The Prophetic Milton (Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1974), pp.246-49.

““ Anthony Low, “ ‘No Power but of God’”: Vengeance and Justice in Samson
Agonistes,” Huntington Library Quarterly 34 (1971): 219-32, pp.231-32.

“9 For further regenerationist readings of Samson Agonistes see, Ann Gossman,
“Milton’s Samson as the Tragic Hero Puriﬁed by Trial,” JEGP 61 (1962): 528-41;
John S. Hill, “Vocation and Spiritual Renovation in Samson Agonistes,” Milton
Studies 2 (1970): 149-74; Lynn Veach Sadler, “Regeneration and Typology:
Samson Agonistes and its Relation to De Doctrina Christiana, Paradise Lost, and
Paradise Regained,” SEL (1972): 141-56; Philip J. Gallagher, “The Role of
Raphael in Samson Agonistes,” Milton Studies 18 ( 1983): 255-294; Hugh
MacCallum, “Samson Agonistes: The Deliverer as Judge,” Milton Studies 23
(1987): 259-90; Fredson Bowers, “Milton’s Samson Agonistes: Justice and
Reconciliation,” in Hamlet as Minister and Scourge and Other Studies in
Shakespeare and Milton (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989), 211-
39; David Loewenstein, “The Revenge of the Saint: Radical Religion and Politics
in Samson Agonistes,” Milton Studies 33 (1996): 159-80.

““ Carole S. Kessner, “Milton’s Hebraic Herculean Hero,” Milton Studies 6
(1975): 243-58, pp. 256-57.

“‘ Joan S. Bennett also emphasizes the political context underlying Samson
Agonistes by arguing that “Samson Agonistes is a drama of spiritual struggle in
the context of revolutionary political commitment and defeat” (Bennett 1989,
119)

“3 One such critic is Irene Samuel who points to Samson’s ultimate failure to
liberate Israel to support her argument that Milton repudiates politics and
violence in Samson Agonistes: “Samson’s announced vocation was to deliver
Israel, not to slay Philistines. Ask for that great deliverer at the end, and ﬁnd him
dead in Philistia among his ‘slaughtered foes’...We need only read past Chapter
16 in the Book of Judges to learn how much deliverance Israel gained” (Samuel
1971, 252-53). Noting that “the paciﬁst note, the repudiation of force...is the
theme of his major poetry,” Michael Wilding also argues that there is an
underlying “moral rejection of force as a means of change” running through
Samson Agonistes. VWding, Dragons Teeth: Literature in the English Revolution
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp.253, 257. For further reading of Samson
Agonistes as a withdrawal from politics see also Barbara Lewalski who argues
that “[r]eaders will hardly derive from [Samson Agonistes] an optimistic
assessment of the possibilities for political liberation.” “Samson and the ‘New
Acquist of True [Political] Experience,” Milton Studies 24 (1988): 233-51, p.247.

221

Arguing that “Samson Agonistes is a poem of, and partly about, the Puritan
Revolution,” Joseph Wittreich likewise maintains that Samson “becomes a mirror
for gazing upon its failures.” Because Samson is marked by his “continual
backsliding, his retaliatory spirit, his wanton lust, his becoming inured to blood
and violence” \Mttreich stresses that Samson provides an analogy of the fall
rather than the exaltation (Wittreich 1986, 218, 220).

“3 For further reading that underscores the political activism of Samson
Agonistes see David Loewenstein who argues that the poem is about “ﬁerce
rage and deﬁance against outward authority” (Loewenstein 1990, 141-42); John
F. Andrews who stresses that “Samson’s death affords the opportunity for
political freedom” (Andrews, 97); Mary Ann Radzinowicz who emphsizes that
“Milton did not abandon either politics or his nation and was never a quietest or
an elitist” (Radzinowicz 1978, 168); E. M. W. Tillyard who go as far as to read
Milton’s dramatic poem as a kind of “political manifesto” that is “nothing less
than stark deﬁance of the restored government and a prophecy that it will be
overthrown.” Milton (London, 1961), p. 329.

““ Sharon Achinstein, “Samson Agonistes and the Drama of Dissent,” Milton
Studies 33 (1996): 133-58, pp. 135. See also Lynn Veach Sadler who also
emphasizes Samson’s role as exemplar by arguing that “Samson acquires his
regenerative consolation under the Old Testament dispensation, but is
exemplary, after the Christ’s own role of Exemplar, for those who adjust his
experience to that of their own historical circumstances” (Sadler, 141).

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Epilogue: Milton’s Providential View of History in Paradise Lost,
Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes

In order better to understand Milton’s poetic purpose in Paradise Lost,
Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, it is best to read them together as
an epic trilogy. Rather than being separate works, Milton’s three major poems
comprise the progressive stages of one epic vision, one intellectual process. As
Christopher Hill points out, there is evidence in Milton’s three major poems of a
thematic progression involving the Scriptural pattern of the Fall, purgation, and
restoration (Hill 1977, 446) that illustrates not only a paradigm of salvation but a
providential view of history?

As indicated by Achsah Guibbory, Milton accepts the Christian view that
history has taken a “cyclical course” in which periods of virtue and purity are
followed by corruption and decline. Milton, however, believes that this cyclical
pattern of history can be transcended “through man’s efforts aided by God’s
providence.” Integral to Milton’s works therefore is the ideal of “the providential
pattern of progress” (Guibbory, 170-72, 177)? One of the ways in which Milton’s
providential view of history is manifested in his poems is through the depiction of
two contrasting types of revenge: satanic and divine. While Satanic revenge is
identiﬁed with the causes that led to the Fall, divine revenge is presented by
Milton as the means of repairing the effects of the Fall. Through his adaptation

and transformation of the theme of revenge, Milton not only presents an

223

apotheosis of revenge but also uses it to raise more far-reaching questions
concerning providence and the role of humanity in providential history.

Milton’s development of the theme of revenge in his epic trilogy begins in
Paradise Lost where he presents Satan’s attempted revenge against God and
humanity in its most grotesque and evil aspects. Satan is a villain revenger who
is motivated by envy, pride, and hatred to pursue his revenge with intense single-
mindedness. He is also a spiritually isolated individualist who acknowledges no
restrictions on his behavior other than those that conform to his self-interest.
Despite his attempt to keep up the guise of an unselﬁsh leader, the grotesque
images of his soliloquies reveal that he is driven by a cold and venomous hatred
which compels him to engage in a perverse act of destruction against those
whom he acknowledges have done him no wrong (PL, IV. 386-87). There is,
however, a purpose to Milton’s depiction of Satan’s desire for ungodly revenge.
As Huston Diehl points out, the grotesque can be an effective vehicle as catalyst
to change and for underscoring moral lessons.“ In Paradise Lost, therefore,
Milton presents Satan as a negative example, which he then counters with the
examples of the Son and Samson in Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.
As Christopher Hill points out, if men follow the Son’s example, Milton believes
that “the Fall can be reversed” and the elect “on earth recover the lost internal
Paradise and themselves become Sons of God” (Hill 1977, 423). Writing after
the failure of the Puritan revolution, however, Milton is also acutely aware of the
limitations of fallen man, of how easily he can be discouraged from the true path

that leads up to God. Thus, for the beneﬁt of fallen man, Milton also offers the

224

 

example of Samson’s revenge in Samson Agonistes, which exempliﬁes the
divine revenge on a more human level.“ Samson’s revenge, which is marked by
its abandonment of “all self interest” and the surrendering of himself as “a willing
instrument of God’s purpose” is also indicative of “how the remnant, the
conscious minority should behave” (Hill 1977, 446).

By portraying two contrasting types of revenge, satanic and divine, Milton
suggests that Man must choose between the two. The war between good and
evil is the war between two champions God and Satan, who are bent on revenge
against each other. Aligning oneself with one or the other makes one a soldier in
God’s or Satan’s army. The theme of revenge in Milton’s epic trilogy therefore
involves the element of free will which affords Man the liberty of choice.“ As
Golda Werman points out, Milton differs radically from the Reformed theology of
the period in that he rejected the Calvinist view of man as “totally depraved” and
“vitiated by the effects of original sin.” Instead, Werman maintains that Milton
insisted on the agency of free will in man’s redemption by arguing that “man
plays an effective part in his own salvation?“ Reuben Sénchez Jr. similarly
argues that “the need to struggle, to strive, so that one may achieve and
manifest proffered grace is...tundamental to Milton.”7

Milton himself expounds his doctrine of free will in De Doctrina Christiana,
where he asserts his belief that the Fall does not annul contingent election, and
that “the gift of reason has been implanted in all, by which they may of
themselves resist bad desires” (Columbia XIV, 131). The emphasis on the

operations of free choice in Paradise Lost also offers scope for understanding

225

 

Milton’s position concerning the theological controversy between divine will,
predestination and free will. Watching Satan ﬂying from Chaos to Earth in Book
III, God foresees that man will fall by choosing to disobey His commandment

(PL, III. 93-96):

lngrate, he had of me
All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufﬁcient to have stood, though free to fall.
Such I created all the ethereal powers
And spirits, both them who stood and them who failed;
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.

(PL, III. 97-102)

Explicating this paradox that “predestined” is the antithesis of being “free,”
however, God states to the Son that both man and angels are endowed with free
will for without freedom of will they would be incapable of faith or love and would
be serving “necessity,l Not me” (PL, Ill. 103-04, 110-111). Foreknowledge,
which is merely cognitive, is not the same as direct causation, which involves
active intervention.

Considering Milton’s ﬁrm belief in the efﬁcacy of free will, it is hardly
surprising that implicit in Milton’s offer of the Son’s and Samson’s revenge as
exempla is his ﬁrm belief in our ability as individuals to help shape providential

history. As Hill points out, Milton’s faith in the individual’s ability to participate in

226

God’s providential design is evident from his ﬁrm belief in “the Old Testament

doctrine of the remnant“

from whose efforts he believe “victory would still come
in the end, however tragic the present, provided we do not lose our heads or our
heart” (Hill 1977, 348, 463).“

Not all critics, however, agree with Hill’s assessment that Milton envisions
“a hope for humanity on earth in the future, attainable by human effort and self-
discipline” (Hill 1977, 387). William Kolbrener, for instance, argues that Paradise
Lost and Paradise Regained are defeatist poems which articulate “Milton’s
ambivalence about political engagement” (Kolbrener, 49). David Loewenstein
also suggests that Milton’s poems, rather than an unequivocal testament of
political faith in the face of defeat, reveal a troubled mind grappling with the
question, “to what degree can a human agent....both participate in and conﬁgure
the drama of history?” According to Loewenstein, the “disturbing mixture of
pessimism and iconoclasm,” the conﬂation of the degenerative and cyclical with
the apocalyptic and typological elements in Milton’s poems, is indicative of a poet
who did not believe in the possibility of positive change in the historical process
(Loewenstein 1990, 5-7).

To some extent, both Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes may
seem to end unsatisfactorily, leaving their audience troubled. As noted by Hill,
Milton clearly rejects in Paradise Regained the “urge for instant solutions," and

this explains the Son’s “dismissal of political solutions” to Israel’s problems (Hill

1977, 421). Despite its celebration of a “new acquistl Of true experience” (SA,

227

 

1755-56), Samson Agonistes likewise appears to end without a deﬁnitive and
satisfying conclusion, as the hero is killed alongside the Philistine oppressors.
At the end of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, we experience
neither Redemption nor the Apocalypse. By projecting these indeﬁnitely into the
future, however, Milton is not advocating quietism, as some have claimed, but is
reminding us that redemption is an ongoing process, that we are at a crossroads
between redemption and damnation and that the choice is ours to make.
Because of his experience of the failure of the Puritan revolution, Milton realizes
that life does not insure that the reader will make the right choice. We may react
positively to the examples of the Son and Samson, or we may follow Satan and
fall further from God. What Milton emphasizes is that we are free to choose
between the satanic and the divine. To be disturbed by the inconclusive endings
or discomﬁted by the unsettled nature of things in Milton’s poetry thus is to miss
the point, for I would argue that indeterminacy and free choice is the very
essence of Milton’s poetic purpose. As the nature of history is yet indeterminate,
everything is possible if we but choose correctly. Herein lies the basis for
Milton’s ideal of “the providential pattern of progress.” Instead of the rantings of
an embittered political outcast, therefore, Milton’s ﬁnal poems are an expression
of faith in the ability of the elect to deliver themselves and their nation from the
bondage of sin. While misery, a product of disobedience, is an aspect of the
human condition, Milton demonstrates in his poetic works that occasions yet

remain for the elect to fulﬁll God’s providential design.

228

 

Notes

‘ Milton himself emphasizes the importance of this providential pattern of loss
and recovery in De Doctrina Christiana where he argues that “[t]he Providence of
God as regards the fall of man, is observable in the sin of man, and the misery
consequent upon it, as well as in his restoration” (Columbia 15, 179). This
restoration, Milton tells us over the course of his three major poems, involves
God's salvation for those individuals who repent and return to him through
obedience to his Will.

2 In emphasizing Milton’s understanding of the cyclical versus the providential

pattern of history, Achsah Guibbory echoes a similar argument by Christopher

Hill who earlier notes that despite Milton’s realization that “there was a cyclical

return to evil after each good start,” he adhered to the belief that “God’s people
must learn to escape from history as circular treadmill” (Hill 1977, 386).

3 According to Huston Diehl, “the grotesqueness of many acts of stage violence
serves to make memorable certain moral ideas.” Diehl’s argument has
implication towards understanding Milton's portrayal of the grotesque nature of
Satan’s revenge, that it not only leads to its condemnation but promote in
Milton’s “ﬁt audience” the purgation of the contrarious passions of pride and
hatred. Huston Diehl, “The lconography of Violence in English Renaissance
Tragedy," Renaissance Drama 11 (1980): 27-44, p.33.

“ M.M. Mahood explains this progression as an attempt by Milton to ﬁrst explore
“metaphysical roots of both true and false heroism” before attempting to offer “a
pattern-hero in the character of Samson.” Poetry and Humanism (London:
Jonathan Cape, 1950), p.211.

“ According to J.B. Savage, the fundamental and distinguishing feature of
Milton’s humanism is a belief in man’s innate freedom. “Freedom and Necessity
in Paradise Lost,” ELH 44 (1977): 283-311, p. 286.

“ Golda Werman, “Repentance in Paradise Lost,” Milton Studies 22 (1986), pp.
123, 121. The debate between determination and free will can be further
understood within the context of another debate involving “faith” versus “practice”
or “works.” Milton’s argument in Of Civil Powerthat “evangelic religion...is told in
two word, faith and charitie; or beleef and practise” (Columbia VI, 21) reveals
how fundamental the dichotomy between faith and practice is to the English
Reformation. However, as in the case of determination versus free will, how one
approaches faith versus practice was a point of controversy. While the concept
of faith before works underlie the theological discussion among those adhering

229

to the Reformed theology, Milton offers a differing view on the matter, favoring
practice over faith.

The Reformed theologians such as Luther and Calvin afﬁrms that that one
can achieve salvation only by faith or relegates practice or good works to the
secondary or derivative role. Luther, for instance, argues uneqivocally that
“salvation is utterly beyond [one’s] own powers, councel, undeavours, will, and
works, and absolutely depending on the will, councel, pleasure, and work of
another, that is, of God only” (“The Bondage of the Will,” The Portable
Renaissance Reader, ed., intro. James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin
(New York: The Viking Press, 1953, p. 700). Calvin also places faith over
practice by insisting that “righteousness, if dependent on works, must inevitably
be confounded in the sight of God, therefore it is contained exclusively in the
mercy of God and the participation of Christ, and consequently in faith alone”(
Institutes of the Christian Religion 2 vols. Trans. John Allen (Philadelphia:
Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1936), Il. iii. 5, p. 25).

Milton, however, represents a departure from the Reformed theology in stressing
practice over issues of faith and doctrine. In Of Reformation, for instance, Milton,
contemplating the cause for the “Depravities of the Church” of England,
complains that what is wanting is greater emphasis on the role of works: “for,
albeit in purity of Doctrine we agree with our Brethren [continental reformers]; yet
in Discipline, which is the execution and applying of Doctrine home, and laying
the salve to the very Orifice of the wound; yea tenting and searching to the Core,
without which Pulpit Preaching is but shooting at Rovers; in this we are no better
then a Schisme, from all the Reformation, and a sore scandall to them”
(Columbia, Ill, 6). Milton goes even further in Animadversions, charging that
faith without practice is an act of hypocrisy: “Hypocrites, the Gospell faithfully
preach’d to the poore, the desolate parishes visited and duely fed, loyterers
throwne out, wolves driven from the fold, had been a better confutation of the
Pope and Masse, than whole Hecatontomes of controversies” (Columbia, III,
175).

7 Reuben Sénchez Jr. Persona and Decomm in Milton’s Prose (Madison and
Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997), p.164. Dewey D.
Wallace Jr. similarly argues that in both Paradise Lost and De Doctrina
Christiana Milton postulates the principle of human freedom and the belief that
justiﬁcation is by a faith “not destitute of works.” Puritans and Predestination:
Grace in English Protestant Theology, 1525-1695 (Chapel Hill: The University of
North Carolina Press, 1982), p. 132.

“ According to The lntemational Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, the word
“remnant” has a special signiﬁcance in the prophecies of Isaiah, “as denoting a
‘holy seed,’ or spiritual kernel, of the nation of the people of God, being blessed
of God and made a blessing,” vol. 4, p. 2557.

230

 

“ As Barbara Riebling points out, “lf...in a wicked and corrupt world, virtue can
be found in an individual who serves God, he becomes the saving remnant and
society’s hope for a better future.” “Milton on Machiavelli: Representations of the
State in Paradise Lost,” Renaissance Quarteriy 49:3 (1996): 573-97, p. 595.

3“ David Loewenstein, Milton and the Drama of History: Historical Vision,

lconoclasm, and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990), p. 4.

231

 

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Ames, William. Conscience with the Power and Cases thereof. London, 1643.

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