Milton, John / 2008-06-29 00:00:00
1671
SAMSON AGONISTES
by John Milton
Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy
TRAGEDY, as it was antiently compos'd, hath been ever held the
gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other Poems: therefore
said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear, or
terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is
to temper and reduce them to just with a kind of delight, stirr'd up
by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is Nature
wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for so in
Physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us'd against
melancholy, sowr against sowr, salt to remove salt humours. Hence
Philosophers and other gravest Writers, as Cicero, Plutarch and
others, frequently cite out of Tragic Poets, both to adorn and
illustrate thir discourse. The Apostle Paul himself thought it not
unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the Text of Holy
Scripture, I Cor. 15.33. and Paraeus commenting on the Revelation,
divides the whole Book as a Tragedy, into Acts distinguisht each by
a Chorus of Heavenly Harpings and Song between.
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