afternoon.
Pit and boxes to be put together, and no person to be admitted without
tickets, which will be delivered that day at the office in Covent
Garden Theatre at half a guinea each; first gallery 5_s._; upper
gallery, 3_s._ 6_d._"

The representation was greeted with extraordinary enthusiasm, and
"Samson" soon became so popular that many had to be turned away;
notwithstanding which, the ill-natured Horace Walpole could write, in a
letter dated Feb. 24, 1743:--

"Handel has set up an oratorio against the opera, and succeeds. He has
hired all the goddesses from the farces, and the singers of roast beef
from between the acts at both theatres, with a man with one note in his
voice, and a girl without ever an one; and so they sing and make brave
hallelujahs, and the good company encore the recitative if it happens
to have any cadence like what they call a tune."

The text, as we have said, was adapted from Milton by Hamilton, who says
in his preface to the handbook, or libretto:--

"That poem indeed was never divided by Milton into acts or scenes, nor
designed for the stage, but given only as the plan of a tragedy with
choruses, after the manner of the ancients. But as Mr. Handel had so
happily introduced here oratorios, a musical drama, whose subject must
be scriptural, and in which the solemnity of church music is agreeably
united with the most pleasing airs of the stage, it would have been an
irretrievable loss to have neglected the opportunity of that great
master's doing justice to this work; he having already added new life
and spirit to some of the finest things in the English language,
particularly that inimitable ode[5] of Dryden's which no age nor nation
ever excelled."

The characters introduced are Samson; Micah, his friend; Manoah, his
father; Delilah, his wife; Harapha, a giant of Gath; Israelitish woman;
priests of Dagon; virgins attendant upon Delilah; Israelites, friends of
Samson; Israelitish virgins; and Philistines. After a brilliant overture,
closing, like that to "Saul," with a minuet movement, the scene opens
before the prison in Gaza, with Samson blind and in chains. His opening
recitative, setting forth his release from toil on account of the feast
to Dagon, introduces a brilliant and effective chorus by the priests with
trumpets ("Awake the Trumpet's lofty Sound"), after which a Philistine
woman in a bright, playful melody invites the men of Gaza t