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picture from EEBO

Adam and Eve

Here are two images of Adam and Eve, one by Dürer and one by Rembrandt. How do you think they differ in their approach to the temptation scene? What might be each artist's viewpoint on Eden and the Fall? Which drawing you think is closer to Milton's representation of the couple?

Adam and Eve, 1504, Albrecht Dürer

Adam and Eve, 1638, Rembrandt

Apart from Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost, Milton in his closet tragedy, Samson Agonistes (1671), re-imagines the relationship between another biblical couple, Samson and Dalila. How are gender relations represented in this extract from the tragedy spoken by the Chorus?

From Samson Agonistes (ll.1025-1060)

Is it for that such outward ornament
Was lavish't on thir Sex, that inward gifts
Were left for haste unfinish't, judgment scant,
Capacity not rais'd to apprehend
Or value what is best
In choice, but oftest to affect the wrong?
Or was too much of self-love mixt,
Of constancy no root infixt,
That either they love nothing, or not long?
What e're it be, to wisest men and best
Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin veil,
Soft, modest, meek, demure,
Once join'd, the contrary she proves, a thorn
Intestin, far within defensive arms
A cleaving mischief, in his way to vertue
Adverse and turbulent, or by her charms
Draws him awry enslav'd
With dotage, and his sense deprav'd
To folly and shameful deeds which ruin ends.
What Pilot so expert but needs must wreck
Embarqu'd with such a Stears-mate at the Helm?
Favour'd of Heav'n who finds
One vertuous rarely found,
That in domestic good combines:
Happy that house! his way to peace is smooth:
But vertue which breaks through all opposition,
And all temptation can remove,
Most shines and most is acceptable above.
Therefore Gods universal Law
Gave to the man despotic power
Over his female in due awe,
Nor from that right to part an hour,
Smile she or lowre:
So shall he least confusion draw
On his whole life, not sway'd
By female usurpation, nor dismay'd.

Read again Book IX after Eve’s fall. How do you understand Adam’s decision to fall with Eve? What do you make of these lines: ‘How art thou lost! How on a sudden lost, / Defaced, deflowered/ and now to death devote!’ (IX. ll. 902-3)

What do you think is the purpose of ‘their vain contest’ at the end of Book IX? If this was a staged tragedy, what would the impact of this scene be?