Samson Agonistes

• Sam: 'But foul effeminancy held me yoked

  Her bond-slave. O indignity, O blot

  To honor and religion! Servile mind

  Rewarded well with servile punishment!'
• Chorus: 'Whate'er it be, to wisest men and best/Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin veil,/Soft, modest, meek, demure,/Once joined, the contrary she proves, a thorn'
• Del: 'I shall be nam'd among the famousest/Of Women, sung at solemn festivals,/Living and dead recorded, who to save/Her countrey from a fierce destroyer, chose /Above the faith of wedlock-bands, my tomb/With odours visited and annual flowers.'
• Sam: 'My Wife, my Traytress'
• Samson: 'arts of every woman false like thee,/To break all faith, all vows, deceive, betray'
• 2 Corinthians 6:14: 'Do not be equally yoked with unbelievers. For what parternship has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?'
• Delilah: 'Let weakness then with weakness come to parl.'
• Deliliah: 'Only my love of thee held long debate;/And combated in silence all these reasons/With hard contest - Her love will have delayed her betrayal'
• Sam: 'warbling charms/No more on me have power, their force is null'd'
• Sam: 'This Gaol I count the house of Liberty'
• Genesis 3:17: 'for you have listened to the voice of your wife'
• Samson: 'My sudden rage to tear thee joint by joint. At distance I forgive thee, go with that;'
• Samson Agonistes, published 1671
• Dryden, Marriage-a-la-mode, 1673


  Why should a foolish marriage vow,

  Which long ago was made,

  Oblige us to each other now

  When passion is decay’d?
• Samson, married men:


  'Are drawn to wear out miserable days,/Entangl'd with a poysnous bosom snake"

  [An image similar to those Milton uses to describe bad marriages in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.]'