Publisher's Synopsis
The three dramatic pieces presented in this volume are not only valuable in themselves and indicative that he poet of Paradise Lost was as interested in drama as in epic, but they also illustrate the changes which came over Milton's views of life and art during more than thirty years of self-dedication and struggle. Arcades and Comus were both written in the poet's twenties, when he was full of hope; Samson Agonistes was published in 1671 when he was sixty-three, blind and failing in health. The first two are the work of a gentle and gracious poet trained int eh chivalric courtesy and Platonism of the Renaissance; the third is a product of defeat and disillusionment, of hard-won resignation. A reading of these poems should convince anybody that Milton cannot have been the harsh, contemptuous extremist in religion and morals that some have made him out; and this becomes clearer if we look into his upbringing and the circumstances and substance of the first two pieces.
