geous arms" as a further disparagement of the epic ideal. Conventional epic action has been displaced onto both feminine and masculine representations of the ungodly: Samson now reaffirms his faith in the Hebrew God as sole source of his strength.
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A messenger soon arrives to command Samson to entertain the Philistine lords as a stage fool or jester in Dagon's temple, described as a theater. He eventually agrees to go because he feels some dimly understood "rousing motions" that dispose him to believe he will perform some remarkable act this day. He becomes the Pauline wise fool, allowing himself to be led, degraded, by interior illumination to the Philistine temple. Indeed, a messenger relates that after he performed feats of strength, Samson was brought to rest between two pillars. There he inclined his head in prayer or contemplation, the messenger uncertainly reports, whereupon he brought the temple down upon the Philistines and himself. In the drama's final irony blindness and captivity turn out to be the very condition of Samson's redemptive act. Echoing Milton's defenses of his own blindness, the Chorus affirms that Samson acted "with inward eyes illuminated," in contrast to the Philistine's "blindness internal." In his ultimate regeneration Samson hangs ambiguously between being an actor in the full sense of the word and a passive vessel of divine action without human agency, like a Phoenix, which is "vigorous most / When most unactive."
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The paradox is complicated by two contrasting readings the drama offers of itself. On the one hand, Samson's father proclaims that Samson has acted heroically as an epic figure who will inspire Israelite youth to comparable feats of redemptive action in a kind of prophecyor fantasyof the ultimate collapse of the Stuart Restoration. On the other hand, Samson's position with his head inclined, his hands outstretched between the pillars, bringing redemption through self-immolation, mirrors Christ on the Cross, only one of many prophetic parallels between Samson and Christ. The prefiguration of Christ reminds us that no earthly action can bring about full redemption, which can only come in the fullness of time with the Second Coming; Samson's redemption of the Israelites, after all, lasted only a generation.
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In the spirit of these two perspectives on Samson's final action, the final words of
Samson Agonistes
, "all Passion spent," likewise reveal a double perspective: the phrase may refer to the completion of tragic action marked by catharsis, or, in contrast, it may refer to the incompleteness of Samson's action until indeed all passion is spent on the
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