Besides functioning as a sort of
badge of honor or a representation of destruction and cruelty, blood yet
performed two further symbolic functions within the text of Mercy Otis Warren’s
The Adulterer. The least common but
perhaps most striking was the use of imagery based on blood and violence as a
means of visualizing the cause and effect relationship Warren perceived between
the defeat of tyranny and the triumph of liberty. A previous citation would
seem to encapsulate this association quite effectively, as offered by Portius
in Act II, Scene I. “I’ll cut my way through all,” he declared of the
supporters of Rapatio, “And this my sword / Drench in the tyrant’s blood, then
on the pile / Of bleeding freedom, pour the rich libation.” Brutal though the
image conjured may seem, the emotion underpinning it was doubtless intended to
be something on the order of self-righteousness. Portius speaks in anger, and
so casts his thoughts in vibrant language, but his intention is
self-consciously just. In order for his fellow Servians to enjoy the liberty
that is theirs by birthright, he believes, their oppressor must be brought low.
Thus, while blood unwillingly drawn from an innocent bystander is a symbol of
horror, destruction, and cruelty, blood drawn unwillingly from a tyrant is
figuratively nourishing to the cause of liberty.
Portius voiced much the same
sentiment in Act II, Scene III following the aforementioned massacre of Servian
civilians – an obvious analogue to the Boston Massacre of March, 1770. Having
witnessed the event alongside his companion Junius, Portius cries out to his
fellow Patriots,
While I can boast one short
reprieve from death
I’ll breathe revenge. This
unstained guiltless dagger
Shall sweat with blood, and rust
with human gore.
While he makes no explicit mention
of whose blood his dagger will sweat with, the context makes it plain enough
that he intends his victims to be Rapatio and his clique. And though the moral
significance of the purported act is left similarly unspoken, the prior statement
made by Portius on the value of a tyrant’s blood likewise indicates the nature
of his desire. Warren almost certainly did not intend her audience to interpret
this vengeful declaration as a sign of personal barbarism on the part of
Portius, though he speaks as freely of causing harm to his fellow man as
Rapatio or Hazelrod. That the words came from the mouth of a Patriot – and one
whose love of liberty and hatred of tyranny has been established – is therefore
the key. Though Portius is somewhat hotheaded – he reacts quickly, sometimes
thoughtlessly – his hatred is not indiscriminate. He sees Rapatio as the cause
of Servia’s suffering, and believes that his removal will bring about an end to
the same. Compared to characters like Rapatio and Hazelrod – who speak of
inflicting suffering and death in general, almost haphazard terms – the
bloodlust exhibited by Portius is therefore made to seem virtuous. He wishes to
draw blood – seems prepared to dedicate his life to the accomplishment – but
only from those whose actions have earned it, and only in service of a higher
goal.
Bearing
this distinction in mind – between blood drawn with cause and blood drawn
arbitrarily – the shared pledge taken by a quartet of Patriots at the end of
Act I, Scene I would appear a prime example of Warren’s use of context as an
indication of symbolic significance. Having poured forth their anger,
bitterness, and self-righteous desire for revenge, Brutus, Cassius, Junius, and
Portius together declare,
No terms
shall move us.
These
streets we’ll pave with many a human skull.
Carnage,
blood and death shall be familiar,
Though
Servia weep her desolated realms.
In truth, it’s hard to know
precisely whose skulls the quartet intended to use for cobbles, or whose blood
and death they intended to become inured to. Out of the mouths of Rapatio or
his supporters, this same statement would doubtless take on an unmistakably
sinister aspect. By their callousness and their cruelty – that is to say, by
the kinds of lines Warren otherwise gave them – there would surely be no doubt
that they intended the victims to be hapless innocents. With Brutus and
company, however, the significance is not quite so clear. On one hand, they may
well have been referring to Rapatio and his followers. Shocking though the
image may be of the ostensible heroes of a story desiring to pave the streets
with the skulls of their opponents, Warren made it clear – as cited above –
that brutal violence was morally acceptable in the world of The Adulterer if it was narrowly directed
at the vile, the cruel, and the unrepentant.
On the other hand, Warren’s
depiction of Patriots like Brutus, Cassius, and Junius shows a strong instinct
towards sell-sacrifice, with personal bloodshed as a symbol thereof. The skulls they speak of, therefore – and the
blood, and carnage, and death – may have been intended as a reference to
themselves. So willing are these Patriots to die for the cause they have chosen
for themselves – to the point of equating death with a kind of moral triumph –it
hardly seems out of the question that they would be willingly to lay their
bodily remains upon the streets of the land they so love, or become victim to
unmitigated carnage in its name. Rather than chose between these connotations –
between self-righteous revenge and self-abnegating sacrifice – as though they
were mutually exclusive, however, it may be closer to Warren’s intention to see
them as joined in a mutual pledge. The Patriots are willing to die for Servia. They
say as much, and so often, that one is forced to admit it as the truth. And
they are willing to kill for Servia. The cited passages from Portius make this
clear enough. Thus, they revel in the blood that is drawn from their own veins
in defence of the land they love, they react in horror to the blood that is
extracted from the bodies of those innocent victims of the tyrannical cabal
that rules them, and they lust after the blood of those same cruel and pitiless
officers whose rule over Servia has become a parody of justice and integrity.
The final gloss that Warren’s The Adulterer applied to the symbolic
significance of blood and death takes the form of a kind of incentive to
action, aimed at Patriots like Brutus and Cassius. Specifically, it is the
image of their fathers’ or forefathers’ blood, called to mind more than once
over the course of the play’s five acts. In Act I, Scene I, for instance, among
the first lives delivered by Brutus is a description of Servia as, “A clime
matured with blood; from whose rich soil, / Has sprung a glorious harvest.”
Cassius subsequently clarifies precisely whose blood it was that enriched the
soil in question, speaking at length to Brutus of, “Our noble ancestors, / Who
lived for freedom, and for freedom died [.]” “Should these heroes,” he goes on
to say,
Start from their tombs and view
their dear possessions
The price of so much labor, cost,
and blood,
Gods! What a pang it would cost
them; yes, they’d weep,
Nor weep in vain.
Brutus registers his agreement with
Cassius by affirming that he, “Sprang from men who fought, who bled for freedom
[,]” and who, “Struggled like patriots, and through seas of blood / Waded to
conquest.” He later invokes the same kind of imagery when he swears, in the
name of his forefathers’ spirit and, “All that blood, that precious blood they
spilt,” to stand and to act on behalf of suffering Servia.
Here,
blood is symbolically invoked as a cost paid – a sacrifice made by one
generation that their descendants must live up to. By the way that it is
characterized, Brutus and his fellow Patriots think it an unequivocally
precious thing. Men suffered – their fathers, and their grandfathers, and their
great-grandfathers suffered – to create something of value that they could
leave to their descendants. In part, that thing was Servia itself – the land,
its boundaries, and all contained therein. But it was also something more
ephemeral – and perhaps for it, dearer still. Those suffering patriots of old –
as Warren would have it – left a legacy of freedom for their children. They
fought for a liberty that doubtless many of them did not live to enjoy. And in
bleeding for that goal, they made it all the more valuable. Thus, attached to
the notion of inheritance and heritage, blood comes to symbolize a kind of
covenant. Brutus and his compatriots feel compelled to fight and suffer for
their homeland because – among other things – they believe that the liberties
they have taken to be their birthright were purchased at as steep a cost as it
is possible to accrue. To justify that cost – to keep true to that covenant –
is to ensure that the ancestors of Brutus and his companions did not suffer or
even die in vain. The Servian liberties that men like Brutus, Cassius, and
Junius seek to protect, therefore, function as both a right and a
responsibility, with blood – shed long ago, but no less vibrant for it – as a
representation thereof.
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