Chapter 7 - Biographical Intrusions

Summary

A major question that is usually not directly made part of gender discussions of the dramatic poem, but that does direct many people’s thinking, is the alleged biographical nature of the work. Because Milton was blind and Samson was blind, they become equated, thus also aligning the monarchy, which Milton argued against, with the Philistines; such identification calls for a real-life Dalila, and Mary Powell, Milton’s first wife, becomes the dubious recipient of that role. But then it is supposed there would be a real Harapha, and nominated has been Salmasius, that is, Claude Saumaise, whose Defensio Regia, Pro Charles I elicited Milton’s governmentally assigned Pro populo Anglicano defensio and who was for a while thought the author of Regii sanguinis clamor ad cúlum adversus parricidas Anglicanos, a rebuttal of Milton’s tract. (That is, Salmasius wrote a defense of Charles I immediately after Charles’ execution by the Parliamentarians, of whom Oliver Cromwell was a major leader, and Milton, having become the Secretary for Foreign Languages to the newly formed Council of State, was ordered to write a rebuttal, justifying the new government and the actions which brought it to power. In turn a tract impugning the “Parricide,” the shedding of the blood of the patriarchal king, was published attacking Milton. This was written by Peter Du Moulin, but was early assigned to Salmasius.) Even Milton’s father has been talked of in connection with the role of Manoa, as farfetched as that would seem to be! Manoa represents, for Howard Erskine-Hill, the image of those who acted to save Milton in 1660 from punishment for his work with the Cromwellian government. The insubstantiality of this kind of biographical reading of the dramatic poem, as well as the silliness it has brought in tow, has been repeatedly shown, but it is the foundation on which such important studies as Hill’s Milton and the English Revolution and Radzinowicz’s Toward Samson Agonistes have been built. Any biographical reading of the poem is deeperset and should involve the political substruct of the poem. Hill and Radzinowicz do examine the political underpinnings of the work but in literal terms of Milton’s experience rather than as political perception.