_Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_ were published in 1671. The
first of these treated in four books Christ's temptation in the
wilderness, a subject that had already been handled in the Spenserian
allegorical manner by Giles Fletcher, a brother of the Purple Islander,
in his _Christ's Victory and Triumph_, 1610. The superiority of
_Paradise Lost_ to its sequel is not without significance. The Puritans
were Old Testament men. Their God was the Hebrew Jehovah, whose single
divinity the Catholic mythology had overlaid with the figures of the
Son, the Virgin Mary, and the saints. They identified themselves in
thought with his chosen people, with the militant theocracy of the Jews.
Their sword was the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. "To your tents, O
Israel," was the cry of the London mob when the bishops were committed
to the Tower. And when the fog lifted, on the morning of the battle of
Dunbar, Cromwell exclaimed, "Let God arise and let his enemies be
scattered: like as the sun riseth, so shalt thou drive them away."
_Samson Agonistes_, though Hebrew in theme and spirit, was in form a
Greek tragedy. It has chorus and semi-chorus, and preserved the
so-called dramatic unities; that is, the scene was unchanged, and there
were no intervals of time between the acts.
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