Chapter 5 - Lean on Me

Summary

The Chorus in Milton's Samson Agonistes are framed as Milton's friends. In the mold of friendship in this era, they are therefore his peers, his counselors, his advisors, and his allies. They are both companions and neighbours. They also make common cause with Samson in resisting both women, the larger nation of Israel, and especially the Philistines. By showing male friends as creators of a boys-only clubhouse, Milton invokes the local chorographies and regionalism of his day. In making friendship both racist and sexist at its core, Milton also makes his closet drama a tool in exclusive and localized patriarchal networks. Juxtaposed with Thomas Fuller's Worthies of England and Pisgah-Sight of Palestine, Milton's Samson Agonistes is deliberately ungenerous to outsiders or larger loyalties.