Milton the Dramatist (review)

In Milton the Dramatist, Timothy J. Burbery sets out to demonstrate that "in addition to being a superb writer of epic and lyric, Milton was also a dramatist, and a considerable one at that" (x). Like all genre categories, however, drama is, to borrow a term from mathematics, a fuzzy set: that is, the boundaries that define drama are not hard and fast. Burbery does not so much prove that Milton was a dramatist against those who maintain otherwise, as he shows to what degree and in what ways Milton can be described as a dramatist.

At the outset, Burbery acknowledges, "one could argue that the essence of [Milton's] genius was dramatic, and that a dramatic quality suffuses all his work" (xvi). Instead of taking on such a diffuse theme, however, Burbery focuses on texts with unchallenged Milton authorship that can be staged in their entirety: Arcades, Comus, and Samson Agonistes. He also takes a close look at the sketches for biblical and British drama found in the Trinity manuscript. After a consideration of "Milton as Spectator, Reader, and Editor of Drama" (the title of chapter 1), the book proceeds by analyzing each of these texts in chronological order culminating in an extended discussion of Samson Agonistes. Throughout, Burbery is admirably clear, attentive to the full range of critical debate, and thorough in his analysis of relevant issues. In all these ways, his book is a model of responsible literary criticism.

Despite limiting himself to a narrow list of Milton's texts, however, Burbery is quick to acknowledge that only Samson Agonistes can justify his claim that Milton should be regarded as an English successor to Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, or as an English rival to Jean Racine —the latter comparison is a fascinating component of Burbery's concluding chapter. To support such a claim, Burbery pursues in illuminating ways how staging Samson Agonistes significantly shapes the meaning of the text. For example, he argues at some length that while the exchanges between Samson and Dalila can be seen as a polemical draw when one reads the play, on stage Dalila's costume vividly undercuts her rhetorical claims and makes Samson's position clearly the most compelling. More broadly, Burbery effectively contrasts frequent and detailed textual cues for visualizing Samson Agonistes on stage to the sparsity of such elements in Elizabeth Cary's Mariam, Queen of Jewry and in other closet dramas by Fulke Greville, Samuel Daniel, William Alexander, George Buchanan, and even Byron and Shelley.

To bolster his position, Burbery has assembled a list of Samson Agonistes productions, from full staging to dramatic reading. The list appears in an appendix, and Burbery discusses it in detail, especially in chapter 5. One problem posed by this line of argument is that full staging of Samson Agonistes did not begin until the 1900 production at the Victoria and Albert Museum by William Poel. Another problem is that most of these productions ran from one to six performances, not abundant support for the claim that Samson Agonistes is theater of the first order. If one's prototype for great drama is a stage play in the public theater that has held audiences over centuries —the plays, say, of Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Racine —Samson Agonistes will remain marginal drama or not really classifiable as drama at all.

But Burbery does offer another possibility. Milton, Burbery reminds us, argued against the closing of the theaters in The Reason of Church-Government. Instead, Milton wished the government to sponsor the sort of play that "would most effectively inculcate moral and spiritual virtue in its audiences" (33). What Milton seems to have envisioned here would be a London parallel to ancient Athens as he imagined it: Milton proposed that officials "assume greater control over public sports and pastimes by holding 'paneguries,' that is, solemn, quasi-religious assemblies" (34). Samson Agonistes, perhaps, would be an example of what Milton had in mind for performance at such events. Indeed...