ABSTRACT

This chapter reads Samson Agonistes as the culmination of decades of Milton’s thinking about Aristotle. It traces Milton’s engagement with the Poetics by examining how his early sketches for dramas were intended for a potential state-sponsored theatre that would be based on the Hellenic festivals. We see Milton’s interest in using the tragic effect described by Aristotle to reach distinct audiences to distinct effects. In Samson, Milton employs the constraints of closet drama to block the purgative experience of catharsis, turning it inward to disturb the reader into introspection.