Chapter 2 - Uncertainty and the Text

Summary

THE text of Samson Agonistes poses a number of problems: its received text in terms of orthography, punctuation, capitalization, and the like; and therefore, its exactness of words and its prosody; its date of composition and even its date of publication. While no problems with specific line lengths and lineage or with images have been raised, such a destabilized text does not offer strong reliability. Some questioning of the similes at the end of the poem as to meaning, application, and appropriateness of their being included has been voiced. The dramatic poem appears in only one text, that of 1671, printed like its companion Paradise Regain’d by J. M., identified as John Macock(e). The lack of other renderings of the text, whether in full or part, in manuscript or print, limits an interpreter of the text to this one edition, and its problems therefore cast uncertainties over a number of matters readers would like to explore.

PRINTING AND TEXT

Changes were made in the type as the 1671 volume was being printed, with two states in signatures B, C, F, H, K, M, N, and P. Samson Agonistes is given on sigs. I–P. The final gathering is a half sheet, and the preliminary material before the beginning of Regain’d is apparently a quarter sheet, of course unsigned. Signature [A] does not seem to be part of the final printed sheet, signature P, as would often occur in contemporary printing practice. Harris F. Fletcher1 reports that signatures B and following were printed before the preliminary material in signature [A], and that the introductory material for Samson Agonistes on I_1–4 (eight pages; in order, title page, “Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call’d Tragedy,” “The Argument,” and “The Persons”) was printed continuously with the rest and without interruption. He noted only that the title pages of both works employed a different font in the second “X” of their dates (MDCLXXI). That the printer made errors or his copy text was difficult to follow seems clear from the fact that P4, in two states, has Errata for both poems, involving word changes, spelling, punctuation, and omission; the rather careless printer made numerous errors in line numbers in both Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes, as well. Page P3v is an “Omissa” sheet for Samson Agonistes; the omissa to be inserted are present lines 1527–35 and 1537.