Theatrum Mundi and Milton's Theater of the Blind in Samson Agonistes

Abstract

This essay argues that God is uncharacteristically absent in Samson Agonistes. Specifically, Milton's closet drama blocks out a spectator-deity. God's startling erasure may be fruitfully examined by excavating Milton's radical deployment of the classical trope of theatrum mundi, which imagined humankind as performers playing out the drama of their lives under the eye of a deity who was both audience and scripter of the action. Samson is understood to be the special recipient of God's favor insofar as he occupies God's field of vision and plays out in his life in accordance with divine prescription. When Samson drowns his heavenly appointed role in lust and self-aggrandizement, his career enacts the contrary possibility that the spectator-God might avert his gaze in displeasure or indifference. By deliberately withholding divine assurance—thereby replicating the limited perspective of the human actor upon the stage of the world—Samson Agonistes produces Milton's most complex and mature enactment of the deep anxiety rooted in the theatrum mundi trope.