Friday, November 24, 2017

The Adulterer, Part XIV: the Truth, or Something Like it

            I have spent, over the course of what we’ll call the last five to seven years, a great deal of time studying the works of the Founding Generation of the United States of America. I have read their words in great depth, scrutinized their choice of expression, traced their references, and sought always to understand why it was they wrote what they wrote. I have learned a great many things in that time, both useful and trivial. But none is perhaps more important or more ambiguous than which this recent series brought once again to my attention. The Founders, you see, did not always speak the truth. But more often than not, they attempted to speak to it.

You’ll ask yourself, I’m sure, why I couldn’t have phrased that somewhat more clearly. My answer to you is that the point I’m going to attempt to make is not always a particularly clear one. It is, in essence, that what the Founders believed to be the truth was often only their limited perception thereof. While this might not seem like much of revelation – that people can only ever know a subjective version of reality – I’ll ask you to consider something before dismissing what I have to say. Think, for a moment, about the way popular media and popular culture treat the Founders. Think about the number of times you’ve seen someone on this or that side of an issue quote Thomas Jefferson or George Washington in support of the point they’re trying to make. So often, it seems, the people who helped to establish the United States as a sovereign republic at the end of the 18th century are treated as the last authority on any social or political issue a modern pundit or politician cares to address. While on one hand it is encouraging to witness such a strong sense of continuity between the founders of a nation and their successors two centuries hence, on the other it is – or should be – a source of deep and abiding concern. This is because, as I said earlier, the Founders didn’t always speak the truth. By this, I don’t just mean that they could not have commented with insight and authority upon issues that would have been inconceivable to them in the 1770s and 1780s – same-sex marriage, say, or physician-assisted suicide. No, what I mean to say – and to discuss further in a moment – is that the Founders were not infrequently incapable of offering an accurate assessment of the events and the issues of their own lifetimes.

There were quite simply things they did not know, or could not have known. In addition to the kinds of demographic information we now take for granted, this was particularly so in relation to the thoughts and feelings of specific individuals. Thomas Jefferson, to take up a prominent example, did not know what kind of a man George III really was, or what motivated him to take this action or reject that one. And yet, this did not stop him from stating in the Declaration of Independence that the relationship between the colonies of British America and the Crown had by the middle 1770s become a, “History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Jefferson did not know for a fact that the king’s purpose was to achieve this end, or course, nor likely did anyone in America. By the same token, Ethan Allen could not have known for a certainty upon his return from captivity in 1778 that the government of New York was endemically corrupt, or that Parliament and the Crown had previously used that colony as a proxy in a scheme to sow disunity and discontent in British America. Regardless, he said exactly that in An Animadversory Address to the Inhabitants of the State of Vermont. Neither man ought to bear the accusation of wilfully sowing falsehoods – doubtless both of them believed that they were speaking the truth. Rather, one should simply keep in mind when reading their words that theirs represents but one perspective on what were almost uniformly complex and multifaceted issues.

In consequence, while the Founders should not be read as speaking accurately upon every topic they addressed, their representation of this event or that individual can be taken to truthfully embody a particular perception of the same. Mercy Otis Warren’s The Adulterer presents a particularly vibrant case in point, containing as it does a vividly rendered caricature of contemporary colonial Massachusetts. Rather than attempt to provide an accurate chronicle of the controversies of the early 1770s, the personalities involved, and the consequences thereof, it instead aspires to reflect the emotional implications of the ongoing crisis from the perspective of those who believed themselves to be its victims. Rapatio, for example, is not so much a mirror image of Thomas Hutchinson as he is the embodiment of what his fellow citizens believed he must have been to commit the acts they had seen him committing. He is the version of Hutchinson that existed in the minds of an embittered people who had suffered to see their rights invalidated, their cities patrolled by armed enforcers, and their countrymen cut down in the streets. Granting that Hutchinson was far from untroubled by the actions that he believed his office required of him, and that he often personally opposed the policies he felt duty-bound to uphold, it isn’t hard to understand how his comparatively stiff and academic response to opposition protest would have offered little comfort to a people who truly believed that the essence of their liberty was under threat.

And therein lays the truth of The Adulterer, its great strength, and the danger it signifies. Warren did not represent her subjects accurately. No officer of the contemporary government of Massachusetts was as self-consciously vile as Hazelrod, no British military functionary as ruthlessly self-important as Bagshot, and no courtier of the Governor as wilfully amoral as Limput or Meagre. And yet, these perceptions were doubtless quite common among Warren’s countrymen whose resentment and suspicion had been aroused by the preceding decade of political and social upheaval. Servia was not Massachusetts, but its portrayal in The Adulterer may fairly be taken as a reasonably accurate reflection of the state to which the citizens thereof believed their country had been reduced. The Governor was not plotting with the commander-in-chief of the military to murder innocent people in the capital square, though after the events of March 5th, 1770 there were doubtless many who believed that to be the case. Likewise, there exists no evidence to suggest that the Chief Justice ever attended the cell of an imprisoned customs officer charged with murder for the purpose of comforting him with visions of further bloodshed, though certain of Warren’s fellow citizens likely had no trouble believing that such a scene took place.

Distinguishing between these things – the sign and what it signifies – is exceedingly important. Taken literally, The Adulterer appears to indicate that those who supported the prerogatives of the Crown and of Parliament amidst the ongoing political crisis in late 18th century Massachusetts were guilty of conspiracy, murder, and treason. Read critically, the same material serves to indicate something significantly more complex – that the people of early 1770s Massachusetts had felt so abused by their governors, had been kept so completely in the dark as to their motivations, doubts, and intentions, that they felt little recourse but to perceive conspiracy and corruption as the most likely explanations. In light of how invested 21st Americans remain in the story of their nation’s founding – how much of their sense of identity and purpose they derive from it – this kind distinction cannot but be of paramount significance.

The story of how the United States came to be has inspired the citizens thereof for generations, and not without reason. It was never a likely outcome that a dispute over legislative prerogatives and tax policy between one of the most powerful empires on earth and a handful of lawyers and merchants in a colonial backwater would evolve into an armed conflict whose subtext was nothing less than the proper derivation of national sovereignty, but that is what happened. It was never particularly plausible that the government that these lawyers-and-merchants-cum-statesmen created for themselves – based on a patchwork of inherited traditions and untested political theory – would survive the rigors of practical experience, but it most certainly did. The events, personalities, and ideas that underlie these narratives describe a litany of virtues, hard lessons, and insightful observations that arguably transcend their native context and may yet fruitfully serve to guide the actions and decisions of generations to come. But the examples provided by the Founding Generation and the events they set in motion cannot perform this vital function unless they are understood for what they are, rather than simply what they appear to be.

Think, for a moment, of the notion of evil. Reading the Declaration of Independence or The Adulterer literally, once might fairly conclude that the Crown, Parliament, and the government of Massachusetts were all engaged in a monumental scheme to deprive the people of British America of the rights and liberties that were theirs by right of birth. The Adulterer in particular portrays these supposed conspirators as cruel, ruthless, and corrupt – the very essence of evil against which people who grasp at virtue are obliged to array themselves. The ensuing conflict is thus almost wholly devoid of moral complexity, as one need only gaze upon such an adversary for a moment to understand why it is they must be opposed. Compelling though this perception of events might be, however – and surely it was to the citizens of Massachusetts to whom Mercy Otis Warren addressed her work – it risks eliding a far more complicated and insidious truth. It is easy to stand up to institutional wrongdoing when it is accompanied by reprehensible personal behavior, and much harder to identify wrongs that need righting when they are committed by those who in every aspect perceivable embody fairness, or virtue, or righteousness. Perhaps worse yet, it is easier still to perceive evil where none exists – to attribute the worst motivations possible to those who actions stand in opposition to our wishes, and to dehumanize them accordingly in pursuit of what we have determined to be right and good. Read plainly, The Adulterer attempts to do exactly that by transforming flawed, conflicted, and variously motivated human beings like Thomas Hutchinson, Andrew and Peter Oliver, and Thomas Gage into cartoonishly reprehensible figures like Rapatio, Dupe, Hazelrod, and Bagshot. While this was almost certainly Warren’s intention – to motivate her countrymen to action by applying a layer of moral simplicity to personalities and events that were anything but simple – modern readers would so well to look past the obvious significance of The Adulterer and attempt to grasp at something more fundamental.  

Troubling though Warren’s wilful mischaracterization of people and events in contemporary Massachusetts might now be, it cannot be denied that The Adulterer represents something quite unusual among the polemical literature of the Anglo-American crisis. Whereas most public commentators upon the topic of perceived British overreach sought either to justify or discourage resistance via references to precedent, tradition, natural rights, and the dictates of reason, Warren broached the same subject in terms that were distinctly moral. Jefferson’s A Summary View, for instance, firmly located the American claim to self-determination in the rights and liberties possessed by the founders of the relevant colonies and in the manner by which said colonies were established. Freely departing from Britain did not entail surrendering these freedoms, he asserted, and nor did the creation of new governments in America constitute an extension of Parliamentary authority. The relationship between the colonies and the Crown was rather a voluntary and customary one whereby the residents of British America acknowledged the authority of the reigning monarch without in any way submitting to the sovereignty of a Parliament in which they no longer considered themselves to be represented.

Hamilton’s A Full Vindication (published, like A Summary View, in 1774) meanwhile sought to justify the recent actions of the Continental Congress – namely the implementation of a boycott on British trade – by establishing the manifest practicality of every decision that had been made and enforced. The delegates to Congress, Hamilton avowed, had, “Devised and recommended the only effectual means to secure the freedom, and establish the future prosperity of America upon a solid basis.” The manner by which he arrived at this conclusion was eminently logical. The rights and liberties guaranteed to every citizen of the colonies under the British Constitution were being actively threatened by the claims of Parliament to make law for America in spite of failing to represent a single American constituency. At the same time, the customary mode of securing a remedy – described by Hamilton with the phrase “REMONSTRANCE and PETITION” – had failed to achieve anything like a satisfactory result. As the people of British America remained in every sense entitled and obliged to defend the freedoms to which they were entitled, and as the body to which they delegated the authority to achieve this defence – the Continental Congress – was a representative assembly of the people of British America, it thereby stood to reason that whatever action Congress recommended was both necessary and proper.

Without in any way denigrating the significance or the quality of these assertions – or of any like them – it cannot be denied that they lack a certain quality of emotional resonance. Granting that a certain type of person would surely have responded to such rigorous, insightful, and eloquent commentary with acclaim and enthusiasm, a significantly larger portion of the contemporary population of British America would likely have been wholly unmoved by any such academic explanation of their present plight. Lacking – for better or worse – advanced knowledge of law, Anglo-American history, or political theory, their aggregate perception of the events of the 1760s and 1770s was doubtless quite straightforward. Parliament had attempted to lay taxes where they had no right to, colonial officials had betrayed their countrymen in cooperating with this mistaken effort, British soldiers had been rather provocatively stationed in key American cities, and several unarmed citizens had been killed as a result. Whatever Britain claimed as justification, and whatever the colonial opposition argued in turn, the explanation which surely felt the most true, plain, and obvious to the largest number of people was that America had been wronged and had a moral imperative to defend itself.

Mercy Otis Warren seemed to understand this to a greater degree than most of her contemporaries, or was more willing to respond in kind. The Adulterer was the result. A mixture of satire and tragedy, it almost completely excused itself from any reflection upon the legal or philosophical origins of the ongoing crisis. Its guiding lights were rather moral and emotional in nature, and its methodology rooted in exaggeration, association, and sentimentality. Warren did not attempt to explain to her countrymen why they ought to resist recurrent attempts to render the colonies of British America more amenable to the dictates of Parliament. Instead, she simply showed them a representation of something with which they were already quite familiar – i.e. Servia, its suffering people, and its wicked government. She did not quibble, did not attempt to complicate the feelings and experiences with which she had doubtless become familiar. The Adulterer thus represents a kind of emotional mirror of contemporary Massachusetts. The resulting image is not a particularly accurate one, or measured, or even-handed. But it is most certainly vibrant, often brutal, and wholly unambiguous as to its moral sensibilities. This quality of urgency – of portraying a conflict then ongoing as being between good and evil, virtue and vice – is in large part what makes Warren’s theatrical work so compelling, so unusual, and so easy to digest. Rather than discuss the history of British liberties, the nature of individual and collective sovereignty, or the logic of self-preservation, The Adulterer instead acknowledges and portrays what countless Americans already believed in their hearts to be true – that crimes had been committed, that restitution was wanting, and that America bled in the interim.

Limited though this perception of events might be, its importance should not be discounted. For all that facts can and do communicate about the past – for all that scrupulous accuracy can tell us about why things happen the way that they do – they rarely record how the human beings involved in the wars, and crises, and social movements actually felt about the things that they witnessed, and relished, and suffered. Bearing in mind that the purpose of studying the past is ostensibly to help people better understand how things got to be the way that they are, it would therefore seem fitting to react against this tendency towards dry recitation to seek out the people whose history is being retold and attempt to grasp the more human qualities of their existence. The Adulterer is one such fragment that serves this purpose in rather spectacular fashion. Not only do its lively descriptions of heroism and villainy, sacrifice and sin make it possible to better comprehend the moral sensibilities of the average citizen of Massachusetts amidst the controversy which preceded the American Revolution, but it serves as evidence of the multiplicity of perspectives on that controversy nurtured and propagated by the Founders of the American republic. Some were concerned with what was legal or traditional, others with what was practical or logical. For her part, and somewhat unusually, Mercy Otis Warren appeared to be concerned with what was right.

Anyway, that’s me. By all means, take a look for your own self.

Friday, November 17, 2017

The Adulterer, Part XIII: More Real than Real, contd.

            As aforementioned, Hazelrod seems to locate Rapatio’s greatness – and his admiration thereof – in the latter’s evident aspiration after the moral impunity of godly power. The Governor of Servia, his Lord Chief Justice accordingly attests, is, “An elevated genius, / That scorns the dust, and towers above the star [.]” By grasping at a power beyond humanity, he thus also attempts to remove himself from ordinary moral considerations. In so doing, Hazelrod further declares, Rapatio has made himself both the envy of the human race and an object worthy of fervent emulation. “Here like a mighty deity you sit,” he says of Rapatio, “Enthroned in state, nor envy Jove his thunder.” Noting the mention of the Roman deity Jove – or Jupiter, equivalent to the Greek Zeus – and the notion of being enthroned, the image of Caesar Augustus (63 BC – 14 AD), first Emperor of Rome, as the seated Jupiter comes to mind. Such depictions were not uncommon during the early empire, and – along with his status as chief priest of the Roman religion and Divi filius, or son of the divine – served to solidify the claim of Julius Caesar’s heir and successor to heavenly sanction. Without necessarily claiming that this is the specific association that Hazelrod – and in turn, Warren – wished to summon, the parallels describe an uncanny similarity. Rapatio, his Lord Chief Justice claims, aspires to wield the power of a god, and makes known his success in this endeavor by the manner in which he scorns or casts aside the trappings of human sentimentality. In so doing – in behaving inhumanly in order to become inhuman – the Governor of Servia takes on the aspect of a deity in Hazelrod’s eyes. He does not “envy Jove his thunder” because he has no reason to be jealous of his equal – i.e. a fellow god. And so deified and “enthroned in state,” Rapatio no longer needs moral justification for his actions. He is – like Augustus before the Roman Senate – above such mortal concerns. 

            Seemingly compelled to the point of unabashed valorization by these elevated or godlike qualities in Rapatio, Hazelrod next asserts that the Governor of Servia cannot be gazed upon with anything like indifference or apathy. Rather, when confronted by the greatness which Rapatio purportedly embodies, individuals and entire peoples alike must render forth their esteem. “While awed by thee,” Hazelrod thus avows,

            The distant nations gaze.
            And thousands yield their tribute of amaze.
            Meanwhile at humble distance I pursue,
            And grow illustrious as I copy you.

On one hand, the Lord Chief Justice here declares that, owing to the quality of his rule over Servia, Rapatio is owed tribute by the nations of the world. The recurrent parallel to ancient Rome – and in particular the practice of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire to seek tribute from the various states they held in formal submission – one more suggests Hazelrod’s equation of Rapatio to the demi-godly Augustus and his imperial successors. On the other hand, as a personal admission, Hazelrod marks the Governor of Servia as a model by which one might “grow illustrious” in imitation. While this might appear to place Hazelrod’s esteem for Rapatio in the same category as that of Dupe or P___P, it bears noting that emulation – while certainly a form of flattery – is not quite the same as adulation. Dupe and P___p grovel and bow and scrape because they seek some scrap of the power Rapatio has accrued. Hazelrod conversely desires to acquire power by repeating what he believes to be Rapatio’s successful course of action. He pays tribute out of honest admiration, therefore, rather than simply in pursuit of reward. While this would seem to paint Hazelrod as being less outwardly obsequious than certain other of Rapatio’s supporters, it also indicates the comparatively greater depth of his iniquity. 

            The next – and final – appearance of the Lord Chief Justice of Servia emphatically serves to confirm this impression. Attending the dejected E___r in prison at the opening of Act V, Scene II, Hazelrod offers comfort in the form of a chilling enumeration of the character and intentions of Rapatio’s erstwhile underlings. First, however, he slings a casual barb at the people responsible for seeing E___r jailed. “What, lost to grief!” he cries,

            Dejected! Can it be!
            Can the poor verdict of some half-formed peasants,
            Unmeaning dull machines, thus damp your courage.

Were it not clear already, Warren here seeks to drive home the impression that Hazelrod’s perspective on humanity stands in fundamental opposition to that of either the Servian Patriots or their real-world counterparts in Massachusetts. Whereas Brutus wept to see his fellow citizen cut down in the streets, lamented in Act II, Scene IV, “To see a brother / Fall by a brother’s hand [,]” and remarked upon the same occasion that the stars that burned above seemed to weep in kind, the Lord Chief Justice feels no such sense of compassion or fellowship. To him, the common people of Servia are “half-formed peasants” and “unmeaning dull machines” not worthy of the name of brother. They are something less than he, it seems, and so unworthy of consideration as anything more than an obstacle or a nuisance. Even the stars, in which Brutus sees sympathy, Hazelrod hopes to “tower above” in the manner he attributes to his benefactor Rapatio. He thus further aspires to remove himself from the bonds of human fellowship, and expresses surprise that E___r is unable to do the same.

            Curiously, in spite of this rather unsympathetic introduction – and the cited sentiments which would seem to corroborate his sense of detachment – Hazelrod next attempts to lift the spirits of E___r by assuring him that he has not been abandoned by his comrades. “Rouse up my friend,” he assures the prisoner, “For friend I still will call thee [.]” The encouragements that follow, however, are hardly the stuff of sitcom schmaltz. True to form, Hazelrod describes the men whom E___r can count on to back him in language seemingly calculated to curl the hair of Brutus and his Patriot brethren. First, he notes, there is, “Decrepit Meagre / In whom a passion for revenge is virtue [,]” and close behind him, “Cautious Limput / whose soul never knew one generous sentiment, / Which gives a sanction to humanity [.]” Together, Hazelrod asserts, these men work, “To crush the friends of freedom, extirpate / The dear remains of virtue, and like Nero, / At one dread blow to massacre his millions.” Recalling that the Lord Chief Justice hopes to comfort his ally with these words – that he offers them in reassurance of the quality of E___r’s cohorts and their intentions – the scene takes on a ghoulish aspect indeed. And while the notion that a man steeped in corruption and avarice would trumpet the iniquities of his comrades – their lust for revenge, or lack of generosity – might seem a tad cartoonish, Warren’s intention was most definitely sincere.

By placing an admiring reference to Roman Emperor Nero (37-68) in Hazelrod’s attempt at a morale-boosting speech, the author of The Adulterer sought to color the institutional opposition to the Servian Patriots as being in favor of tyranny and against the ethos of Classical Republicanism. More recent attempts at rehabilitation aside, Nero has long been considered one of the worst emperors in the history of the ancient Roman civilization. Commonly depicted as wasteful, corrupt, and decadent, the image of Nero playing the fiddle while the Great Fire (64) ravaged the city of Rome accordingly remains an enduring one for critics of unchecked autocracy. For people like Warren and her allies within the increasingly organized resistance to perceived British misrule in late 18th century America, this was doubly the case. Influenced and inspired by those who valorized particular figures from within the history of ancient Rome – like the aforementioned Joseph Addison, or the various English/British political commentators who adopted distinctly Roman pseudonyms – Americans who found the actions of Parliament in the 1760s and 1770s to be particularly distasteful or alarming were quick to adopt the vocabulary and personas of Roman antiquity as symbols of political and philosophical allegiance. Accordingly, Warren chose to name her protagonists in The Adulterer after the assassins of one of history’s most famous tyrants. And likewise, she tarred her antagonists with labels like Caesar (Act IV, Scene I; Act IV, Scene II) or Nero (Act I, Scene II; Act II, Scene III; Act IV, Scene I; Act IV, Scene II; Act V, Scene I) after some of antiquity’s most notorious despots.
                                  
            Hazelrod’s further description to E___r of the sentiments and intentions of his compatriots gives yet more reason for Warren’s intended audience to recoil in abject horror. “When S___r bled,” he first recalls – a reference to Christopher Seider, the previously-mentioned victim of E___r’s real-world counterpart Ebenezer Richardson – “We snuffed the rich perfume, the groans of youth. / Gods! they were music to our ears [.]” More damning yet than the allusion Brutus earlier made to a ruffian who “thirsts for freemen’s blood,” Hazelrod here rapturously admits his savor of the scents and sounds of innocent bloodshed. His subsequent pledge of what E___r should expect upon his release is no less ghastly. “You therefore / Shall one day leave this dismal tenement,” he avows,

            Again with pleasing scenes of blood and carnage,
            To glut our vengeance – yes – by heaven we swear,
            You shall be free whatever pangs it cost us,
            We’ll laugh at all the howls of patriotism.
            Should virtue check, should conscience whisper terror,
            And lash our troubled minds, we’ll brave it all.

It is strange, upon reflection, that Hazelrod should manifest concern for the workings of virtue or conscience upon his party’s villainous plans. It is Rapatio, after all, whom Warren depicts as having to occasionally grapple with the better angels of his nature. Hazelrod is comparatively free of any such qualms, rather seeming to exalt in the suffering and the cruelty that have lately become commonplace in Rapatio’s Servia.

The passage cited above attests to this in no uncertain terms. The Lord Chief Justice finds “scenes of blood and carnage” to be pleasing, relishes the thought of laughing at “the howls of patriotism” drawn from his suffering countrymen, and swears to “glut his vengeance” by “whatever pangs it cost us [.]” The horror inherent in its more obvious implications aside, this dark pledge presents a particularly interesting contrast to that affirmed by Brutus, Cassius, Junius, and Portius at the end of Act I, Scene I. Therein, the assembled Patriots swear to see their homeland liberated, “E’er we’ll be slaves, / We’ll pour our choicest blood. No terms shall move us.” Whereas these men were willing to suffer injury and death for the love they bear their country, Hazelrod attests that he and his fellow conspirators are prepared to endure the “pangs” of virtue and conscience in pursuit of their plot to see Servia wholly bound to Rapatio’s will. The difference in goals, and in the extent of personal harm they are willing to suffer – i.e. death vs. guilt – could not be more vast. The result would seem to be a reinforcement of Warren’s evident desire to portray Hazelrod in particular among Rapatio’s supporters as a dark, twisted inversion of the virtuous Patriot ideal. He is malicious where they are compassionate, he laughs when they weep, and he seeks vengeance where they seek justice. He is, in essence the embodiment of a particular kind of evil which Warren and certain of her countrymen perceived as working to destroy the liberty of the American people from within the institutions of the British Empire. Neither an opportunist like Dupe nor a military functionary like Bagshot, he was rather a sadist whose primary motivation seemed to be nothing less than the furtherance of human suffering.

    Compelling though this portrait may have been, however – and emotionally resonant among those who bore witness to events like the death of Christopher Seider or to the Boston Massacre – it represents yet another wilful exaggeration of the events and personalities of contemporary British America. Based on his relation to certain other characters in The Adulterer – Limput/Andrew Oliver being Rapatio/Thomas Hutchinson’s brother-in-law, and Hazelrod in turn being the brother of Limput – the Lord Chief Justice of Servia was most likely based on Peter Oliver (1713-1791), brother to the aforementioned Andrew and Chief Justice of the Province of Massachusetts Bay between 1772 and 1775. Like his brother, Peter attended Harvard, began his career in shipping, and benefited from their family’s wealth and connections throughout his life in Massachusetts public affairs. Unlike Andrew, however, he chose to pursue the law rather than politics, and perhaps as a result proved himself a somewhat more conservative advocate of Britain’s colonial administration. Appointed a justice of the peace in 1744, he next became a justice of the Court of Common Pleas – the provincial trials court – in 1747, and then a justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature – the highest court in the colony – in 1756. It was soon after this penultimate career achievement, however, that controversy began to crowd upon what had otherwise proven a steady upward trajectory.

Indeed, the aftermath of the Seven Years War (1754-1763) proved a tumultuous era for many public officials in British America, seemingly forced as they were to choose between supporting the prerogatives they and their countrymen had traditionally enjoyed and affirming a formerly uncontroversial sense of loyalty to their benefactors in the contemporary British government. Some, like Benjamin Franklin – agent to the British Crown on behalf of Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the 1750s and 1760s – spoke out against the evident erosion of American liberties threatened by legislation like the Stamp Act (1765) and the Townshend Duties (1767), both in written essays and in testimony before Parliament. Others, like Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson or his deputy Andrew Oliver, were similarly distressed, though they chose to confine their displeasure to private missives while manifesting outward support of Parliament’s claim to legislate for British America. Peter Oliver might fairly be placed in a third category, as a colonial official who believed that his fellow colonists were in fact obliged to contribute a greater share to British defence spending in North America, who correspondingly supported the implementation and collection of new taxes, and who endorsed stronger preventatives measures and penalties against the circumvention of such tariffs via smuggling. This position understandably led to a decline in Justice Oliver’s reputation among the citizens of Massachusetts who had increasingly come to conceive of the ongoing contest between American and British sovereignty as a matter of fundamental moral significance. In consequence, he was not infrequently threatened by the anti-Stamp Act pressure group known as the Sons of Liberty, made to refuse his seat in the Supreme Court of Judicature, and generally painted as a corrupt and avaricious supporter of contemporary British tax policy.

While the early 1770s heralded what would arguably prove to be the crowning achievement of Peter Oliver’s public career, they also witnessed a particularly damning personal indictment against him in the eyes of his critics and brought forth his ultimate professional downfall. The former – his appointment by Thomas Hutchinson as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature in 1772 – came on the heels of what doubtless appeared to his fellow officers of the Crown as a very successful officiation of the trials that followed the Boston Massacre of March, 1770. One of three judges presiding, Oliver’s reputation was understandably burnished by the successful acquittal of the accused British sentries on the charge of murder, and his resultant elevation made him the single most powerful judicial authority in colonial Massachusetts. Unfortunately, this personal and professional triumph quite soon brought about a significant public reversal. Annoyed by what he considered to be the pitiful salary afforded colonial jurists – one hundred twenty pounds yearly as an associate justice, one hundred fifty as chief – Oliver often threatened to resign unless his pay was increased. Personal pique happened to finally coincide with official policy in 1772 when the British government determined to increase the pay of colonial justices in hopes of engendering loyalty at a time of heightened political and social turmoil.

By the terms of the subsequent proposal, justices in British America were to draw a salary of two hundred pounds directly from the Crown in addition to that which they already received from the relevant colonial legislature. The public response to this scheme was understandably heated, given the appearance that the Crown was attempting to purchase the obedience of the colonial judiciary. Doubtless sensitive to this perception – both in terms of the damage it would do to the integrity of their office and to their ability to hear cases in an orderly fashion – nearly every justice in contemporary Massachusetts refused the offer when it was made to them. Chief Justice Oliver, however, did not. Public outrage shifted accordingly, and soon enough the provincial assembly was fielding calls for his impeachment. While Governor Hutchinson managed to forestall this particular outcome for a time, the toxicity attached to Oliver’s name and reputation soon enough became so severe as to spur jurors to refuse being seated while he presided in court. By the time The Adulterer was published in 1773, Peter Oliver was safely among the most reviled officers of the contemporary government of Massachusetts. His stated views were fundamentally at odds with those of the colony’s increasingly radical political opposition, his personal and professional connections to similarly despised figures like Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver were impossible to deny, and whatever professional capital he had accrued during his career as a jurist had essentially been spent on a fit of personal avarice.  

Fitting though these circumstances would seem to have made Justice Oliver as a model for Warren’s vile jurist Hazelrod, certain elements of his life and career ought to be considered before one too readily equates the man with his doppelganger. On the subject of his political views, for instance, it bears remembering that the issues which most animated the supporters and detractors of contemporary British policy in America were almost wholly absent obvious resolutions. Easy though it may now be to commend the Sons of Liberty, the legislative opponents of Governor Hutchinson’s attempts to enforce the policies handed down by Parliament, or the eventual supporters of the Continental Congress for taking what appears to be a strong moral stand against unchecked authority, the implications of the topic at hand – i.e. whether political sovereignty ultimately emanated from the people or from Parliament – were far from unambiguous. However powerful rallying cries like “No Taxation without Representation” proved to be, therefore, Hutchinson was perhaps more accurate in his assessment of the subject at hand when he confessed to a British correspondent in the late 1760s that there seemed to be no solution to the mounting crisis in the Thirteen Colonies, “But what will produce as great an evil as that which it may remove [.]” Attempting to integrate the various colonies into the political structure of Britain proper by allowing the citizens of the former to directly elect Members of Parliament presented logistical hurdles which were either insurmountable or intolerable under the material circumstances of the late 18th century. At the same time, permitting the colonies to nullify or otherwise ignore any British legislation with which they took issue flew in the face of the hard-won concept of Parliamentary supremacy which had largely served to stabilize Britain after its tumultuous 17th century. Thereby lacking any solution whose outcome could be demonstrated to be mutually beneficial – the “right answer,” as it were – where a person came down on the great questions of the day was accordingly more a matter of taste and temperament than competence or intention.

That is to say, it would seem misguided to attribute either undue malice or preternatural wisdom to those who respectively espoused resistance to Parliament and the Crown or offered their support to the same. The ultimate outcome of the Anglo-American crisis – the separation of the Thirteen Colonies from the British Empire – makes these kinds of judgements all too easy to apply, and the subsequent valorization of the Founding Generation has led to an unthinking dehumanization of those who determined to reject what they perceived as being tantamount to insurrection. In point of fact, no one involved in the events leading up to the American Revolution possessed a monopoly on moral rectitude. When confronted by what essentially amounted to a choice between bolstering the existence of the British Empire and heralding its downfall, the relevant figures on either side of the issues at hand simply did what they felt was right. Franklin, the sceptical rationalist, sought to vocally and forcefully decry the abuses which he perceived to be taking place within the framework of the Anglo-American relationship without much seeming concern for his reputation. Hutchinson, torn between loyalty to his native Massachusetts and the Crown he had pledged to serve, attempted to split the difference between his private views and public obligations by upholding the policies of Parliament while attempting to engage his fellow citizens in a thorough and public debate on the subject. Peter Oliver was substantially more conservative than either of these men – in his temperament, and in his conception of the relationship between Britain and its American colonies – and so responded to the crisis of the 1760s and 1770s by positively affirming prerogative of the Crown and by decrying the immorality he perceived in certain of the positions adopted by those who stood in opposition to the same.

To claims by the Grenville Ministry that the recent war in North America had been draining, that preserving a colonial empire from across a vast ocean was a costly proposition, and that the people who stood to benefit directly from the relevant defensive measures ought to be made to pay for a larger share of the same, Oliver responded in the affirmative. This position was perhaps not the most popular among his fellow countrymen, but it was hardly an unreasonable one. Just so, when confronted with repeated colonial attempts to circumvent British tariffs via an increasing reliance on smuggling, Oliver again appeared to side against his neighbors by supporting policies designed to crack down on such wanton disregard for customs enforcement. In his mind, evidence attests, this was not just a matter of loyalty. Oliver believed that smuggling was dishonorable and immoral, that it bred licentiousness and vice, and that it had no place in the contemporary British Empire. Bearing witness to the enthusiasm with which his countrymen embraced such tactics in an attempt to spite the British tax policies whose legitimacy they questioned was an offence to his personal sensibilities and his conception of what it meant to be a subject of the British Crown. While this may have likewise rendered him an object of resentment among his fellow citizens in Massachusetts – and while it may make him appear rather stuffy or fastidious by the standards of the 21st century – it most certainly did not make him evil, cruel, or malicious.

Indeed, the historical record can be read to make Peter Oliver appear sympathetic in a way that Warren’s portrayal of Hazelrod could not possibly admit. Whereas, for example, the Lord Chief Justice of Servia explicitly avows that he owes his position to the beneficence of Rapatio – and makes no mention of his own fitness for the job – Oliver’s elevation to the highest post in the Massachusetts judiciary formed the capstone of a career in public service stretching back decades. Furthermore, the event which appeared to seal his position at the head of the Superior Court of Judicature – presiding over the trials that followed the Boston Massacre – hardly qualifies as an unambiguous example of corruption or favoritism. Granting that Hutchinson’s appointment of Oliver followed upon a verdict that doubtless pleased him – i.e. the acquittal of the accused British sentries – contemporary accounts attest to the even-handedness of Oliver’s conduct throughout the relevant proceedings. Rather than offering a reward for services rendered – as the radical opposition claimed – Governor Hutchinson may therefore simply have been determined to elevate the person he believed most qualified by experience and temperament to lead the judiciary of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. This isn’t to say that favoritism couldn’t possible have figured into Hutchinson’s decision to elevate Oliver, only that it cannot be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. 

Furthermore, compared to Hazelrod’s fixation upon the gloriously lofty disdain with which his benefactor Rapatio treated their fellow Servians, Chief Justice Oliver’s concerns were decidedly mundane and material. His willingness to grasp an offer of increased pay despite the controversy surrounding its source, for example, hardly indicates a man of particularly abstract motivations. The choice may have been impolitic, or foolish, or even improper given the nature of his office, but it could hardly have been easier to comprehend. Far from seeming to relish the thought of betraying his countrymen while grasping at power, Oliver simply wanted more money than he was already receiving for his services. Greed, of course, is not a very attractive characteristic, but it isn’t as though the man had no cause to be concerned about his financial future. During the height of the controversy surrounding the implementation of the Stamp Act, the Sons of Liberty managed to pressure Oliver’s creditors into refusing to finance the iron works he’d purchased in Middleborough in 1744. He was thereafter forced to mortgage his properties in order to remain solvent. Combined with the aforementioned efforts by this same political pressure group to prevent Oliver from taking his seat on the Superior Court in 1765, it should come as little surprise that he at times feared the outcome of the mounting crisis in British America and sought to make arrangements for his own security.

Bearing this in mind, his welcoming attitude towards the British troops that arrived in Boston in 1768 ought to be understood as possessing a personal as well as ideological rationale. Granting his disdain for smuggling and resulting support of measures aimed at curbing its frequency in Massachusetts, Oliver surely took even greater solace in the notion that the presence of British military personnel in the capital would once again allow him to live his life and see to his responsibilities – be they public or private – out from under the threat of organized intimidation. Once again, this would seem to place Peter Oliver at a great distance from his literary counterpart Hazelrod. The latter, in offering comfort to a man who had earlier killed an innocent child, referred to the spilled blood and pained cries of the slain as “rich perfume,” and “music to our ears,” offered yet more “pleasing scenes of blood and carnage,” and promised – “by heaven we swear” – that vengeance was at hand. The former, by all accounts that survive, did no such thing, seeming rather to be concerned with personal financial security, public morality, and the obligations owed by a people for their defence. These hardly seem the interests of an aspiring despot. Peter Oliver, therefore, must not have been one, Warren’s portrayal of his counterpart Hazelrod notwithstanding.

Friday, November 10, 2017

The Adulterer, Part XII: More Real than Real, contd.

Compared to Bagshot’s rather austere military bearing, Rapatio’s Chief Justice Hazelrod presents an especially vain, slimy, and depraved portrait of contemporary colonial officialdom. He is by far the most verbose of the Governor of Servia’s minions, the most grandiose in his manners, and the one seemingly most given to relish the wickedness he is being asked to partake in merely for its own sake. Granted, he remains most emphatically Rapatio’s creature. The praise he sees fit to lavish upon his patron is profuse in the extreme. That being said, the manner by which he describes Rapatio’s administration and tactics implies a love of method as much as personality. That is to say, Hazelrod does not appear simply to express adoration for his superior in gratitude for the preferment he has received thereof, but does so as a great admirer of the kind of man he perceives Rapatio to be – i.e. imperious, decisive, ambitious, and cynical. In this quality of his character, Hazelrod arguably embodies what any number of those who stood in opposition to the Stamp Act (1765) and the Townshend Duties (1767) in British America believed to be true of every government minister, military officer, tax collector, and colonial administrator that supported and promoted the same. It was not out of principle or personal conviction that these kinds of functionaries acted as they did, claimed notable firebrands like Samuel Adams (1722-1803) and Patrick Henry (1736-1799), but rather because they were brutes, or sycophants, or tyrants at heart. As drawn by Warren, Hazelrod most certainly – and unsubtly – plays to this perception.

Consider, by way of example, his first full appearance in Act IV, Scene III of The Adulterer. Of note, before the character is able to utter so much as a single syllable, are the stage directions that precede his entrance. “Opens with a procession of coaches, chariots, etc. [,]” Warren writes of the scene, which then, “Changes to the chamber where the divan is opened with a speech by Hazelrod, highly pleasing to creatures of arbitrary power, and equally disgusting to every man of virtue.” Forgiving the narratively questionable choice of including a description of a speech in the text of a play before that speech is actually delivered – loaded though the phrases “creatures of arbitrary power” and “men of virtue” may be – certain elements of this brief sketch serve to subtly presage the nature of the character about to appear. That Hazelrod must first be introduced by a literal procession – that his existence in the world of The Adulterer can only follow upon a display of wealth and social preeminence – says a great deal about his potential role in the events of the narrative. So introduced, one might fairly assume that he is prideful, relishes a show of status, and willingly embraces his place in the gilded halls of power. Rapatio, by comparison, is introduced to the audience alone, secreted in his home, and attempting to cast off whatever sympathy he may still feel for his fellow Servians so that he can achieve the revenge that has become his burning preoccupation. It is a private moment, and one that speaks to the Governor of Servia’s self-consciousness and suspicion. Hazelrod entrance is nowhere near so intimate. He first makes himself known in the company of bombast, and so doubtless forms a primary association in the minds of the audience between himself and a sense of posturing pomposity.

Turning again to the cited stage direction, another symbolic association presents itself as most certainly intended by Warren to color audience perceptions of the forthcoming Hazelrod – if not the entire administration to which he belongs. Having described the train of wealth which must proceed the character, the text then denotes, “The chamber where the divan is opened with a speech [.]” Note the use of the word “divan” – here seemingly meant to indicate the governing council of Servia – in place of something more literal. Originally a Persian term, divan (or diwan, or dewan) has historically indicated a high government body within any number of Islamic states. Populated by viziers, military paymasters, tax officials, and bureaucrats, the divans of the Umayyad (661-750) and Abbasid Caliphates (750-1258) evolved to meet the needs of the ruler, the situation, or the culture then in ascendancy. The divan best known to the 18th century Anglo-American imagination – chiefly through the medium of trade – was almost certainly that of the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922), known as the Divan-ı Hümâyûn or Imperial Council. Without delving into the complexity of its history, its various functions, or its shifting composition, it will here suffice to say that the Ottoman divan was a very structured and regulated form of centralized administration that was both effective in governing a vast and complicated empire and almost wholly antithetical to the Anglo-American tradition of parliamentary sovereignty.

While the divan performed the same basic function as the cabinet within the British parliamentary system, it was by no means accountable to a larger representative body. Councillors were not also required to be elected members of an Ottoman legislature – which itself didn’t exist until 1876 – and everyone served at the nominal pleasure of the reigning sultan. The resulting opportunities for corruption, the complete lack of any safeguards against executive tyranny, and the absence of any form of legislative oversight would doubtless have been cause enough for alarm and revulsion from the perspective of an Anglo-American observer. What made the very concept of the divan so much more reprehensible, however, was its association with a distinctly “Oriental” culture whose perception in the European world had long become synonymous with decadence, effeminacy, vice, and brutality. This ingrained tradition of portraying the world of “the East” as wholly antithetical to the values of “the West” – rightly distressing though it now may appear – has formed a part of the European cultural vocabulary since at least the era of the Greco-Persian Wars (499-449 BC) and been renewed and reinvigorated through centuries of conflict between major European powers and the dominant civilizations of contemporary Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Having inherited the vast majority of their basic cultural assumptions and traditions from their English/British forebears, the members of the Revolutionary Generation were very much heirs to this ingrained practice of “othering” the East and using references thereto as a kind of literary shorthand for the values which they found to be disagreeable. Accordingly, in the same way that an American living in the late 20th century might have taken it for granted that all things French were inherently effeminate, their late 18th century counterpart would have been as likely to think of the Turkish civilization as fundamentally barbarous, corrupt, and backward.   

Mercy Otis Warren was no stranger to these kinds of perceptions, or to making use of them in order to advance the message she intended to communicate. Thus, in Act III, Scene I of The Adulterer, Cassius takes solace in the awareness he and his fellow Servians possess of their battered liberties by asking his countrymen to, “Look to the Turk, and relish if you can / A life in chains – he sighs, but sighs unpitied.” In his mind, it seems, the Ottoman citizen appears as an object of supreme pity whose suffering is made worse by his inability to grasp the nature of his plight. Thus, also, Warren describes the aforementioned Bagshot in the Dramatis Personae as the “Aga of the Janizarie” after the commandant of the Ottoman sultan’s personal bodyguard of slave-soldiers. Referring to the governing council of Servia as a divan was yet another example of this same species of literary Orientalism. Referred to by a name whose cultural associations are overwhelmingly negative, Rapatio’s advisory body is thereby robbed by Warren of any possible claim to legitimacy in the eyes of her audience. Portraying the character of Hazelrod as offering a speech before the opening of the same then transferred these selfsame negative associations onto him. As the presiding officers of Rapatio’s divan – a body which epitomizes decadence and corruption – he is thus inherently debauched, and cruel, and autocratic – and all before he even opens his mouth.

            The content of Hazelrod’s much-heralded address does nothing to dispel this impression. Indeed, it arguably serves to heighten the sense of revulsion that Warren appeared so keen to cultivate. Not only does he offer his deep and abiding gratitude to Rapatio for having recently appointed him to the position of Lord Chief Justice – “Rapatio – hail!” he declares, “Tis by thy faltering hand / This happy day beholds me robed in honor” – but he accompanies his thanks with a soaring meditation on the nature of power and his patron’s expert grasp upon it. “Power!” he declares,

            Tis a charm the gods can only know;
            These, while they view this little globe of earth,
            And trace the various movements of mankind,
            With pleasure mark that soul that dares aspire
            To catch this heavenly flame and copy from them.

Beyond simply offering praise in exchange for a favor fulfilled – like Dupe – or pledging aid out of a sense resignation – like Limput – Hazelrod here elevates Rapatio to the status of one who possesses a quality of godliness. He seems captivated by the very notion that such a person could exist – one who “dares aspire to catch this heavenly flame” – and so his tribute takes on a quality of philosophical admiration. “And sure Rapatio,” he goes on to say,
            
            If mortality
            Could ever boast an elevated genius,
            That scorns the dust, and towers above the stars;
            A soul that only grasps at high achievements,
            And drinks intoxicating draughts of power,
            The claim is thine – while simple yet thy station,
            True greatness peered and promised future glory.

Compared to those of his followers who only see in Rapatio a means by which they might advance their own fortunes, Hazelrod perceives in him a sense of innate superiority which informs his present office rather than derives from it.

Consider, to that end, Dupe’s declaration that “It gives me highest joy to see your honor / Servia’s sole ruler [,]” and his subsequent expression of disbelief that he has lived to see such “halcyon days.” His praise is explicitly derived from the fact of Rapatio having attained the office of Governor of Servia. It seems a monumental achievement, in Dupe’s eyes, and worthy of praise as a thing alone. The enigmatically named P___p demonstrates a similar motivation during a conversation with Rapatio in Act II, Scene IV. In a seeming attempt to make known his bona fides as a servant of and seeker after power, he asks, “Is Rapatio grown distrustful of me? / Of me, who long had sacrificed my honor, / To be a tool? Who cringe and bowed and fawned / To get a place? Fear not I ever should prove / An alien here [.]” Compared to these blatant testimonials of flattery and favor-seeking – by which Rapatio’s servants effectively describe his attainment of high office as the reason for their service – Hazelrod appears to see the position recently conferred upon his benefactor as a mere outward sign of the man’s inner quality. “While simple yet thy station,” he accordingly admits, “True greatness peered and promised future glory.” What seems to attract Hazelrod to Rapatio, therefore, is not just the promise of preferment which inevitably accompanies executive office – though he has benefited from the same – but rather the manner by which Rapatio attained that office. He then goes on to describe the relevant technique – what he believes to be his benefactor’s path to greatness – with characteristic zeal.  

            The key to Rapatio’s greatness, Hazelrod effuses, lies chiefly in the man’s ability to cultivate virtue and integrity while secretly planning to dispose of all those sentiments and attachments which block the path to power. The future Governor of Servia, he avows, imbibed a lust for dominance, “Yea while an infant, hanging at the breast [.]” Thereafter, as a youth, he set to work on the plan which would see him placed upon the seat of power. “With this in view,” Hazelrod acclaimed, in seeming address to Rapatio, “You’d imitate devotion, / Which like a mantle, covered great designs, / With virtue glow, and set among her sons [.]” Thus, “When nature slept, they busy mind awoke, / And pored on future scenes, and planned thy fate.” Again, Hazelrod shows that his admiration for the Governor of Servia runs deeper than mere ambition or greed. Rather than rest at fawning over the man in exchange for personal advancement, he paints Rapatio’s birth and adolescence as a kind of quasi-heroic narrative whereby the man honed the skills he would require to achieve his destined success. The aspects of this tale which most seem to animate Hazelrod are denoted by the extravagance of his description thereof.

The manner by which Rapatio appeared to seize the power offered him as Governor of Servia, for example, is painted as though it were a masterstroke of superhuman genius. “Then,” Hazelrod thusly narrates,

           When the ties of virtue and thy country,
            Unhappy checked thy lust of power – like Caesar,
            You nobly scorned them all and on the ruins,
            Of bleeding freedom, founded all thy greatness.

It is this evident betrayal that Hazelrod seems to find most glorious in Rapatio’s drive towards power, and the language he uses to describe the same reveals yet more of his disagreeable character. Whereas Patriots like Brutus and Cassius speak of their common love for Servia and their devotion to virtue with total and utter sincerity, Hazelrod characterizes these same sentiments as obstacles lying in Rapatio’s path to a kind of godly spiritual superiority. To scorn these things, the Lord Chief Justice avows, constitutes a noble imitation of one Julius Caesar, by which the Governor of Servia effectively founded the greatness that Hazelrod attests to be his birthright. This wilful twisting of the terminology of the Patriot resistance to Rapatio in service of glorifying the man himself – and the rhetorical association of the Classical Republican enemy of virtue, Caesar, with the characteristic of nobility – was surely intended to solidify the depravity of Hazelrod in the eyes of Warren’s intended audience. By claiming virtue and patriotism as impediments to personal ambition, and by attaching nobility to an act of betrayal, Hazelrod attempts to pervert the values that serve to motivate characters like Brutus and his cohorts. His justification for such degenerate acts is thus a curious one, combining as it does a soaring sense of purpose with the most squalid behavior imaginable. 

Friday, November 3, 2017

The Adulterer, Part XI: More Real than Real, contd.

In terms of the number of lines delivered, Rapatio’s two most significant confidants are most certainly Bagshot and Hazelrod. The events of The Adulterer paint both of these characters as being of particular importance to the Governor of Servia’s vengeful ambitions, and in the end they may each be held responsible for no small portion of the institutional evils depicted therein. That being said, their respective characterizations are somewhat more complicated than those Warren attributed to Rapatio’s lesser supporters like Dupe, Limput, Meagre, and Gripeall. And while neither is depicted in a particularly flattering light, they nevertheless seem to be something more than mere pawns, hangers-on, or sycophants who have chosen to trail in the wake of more powerful men than themselves. Without knowing what Warren intended by this – if, indeed, she intended anything at all – the effect would seem to be a broadening of the conspiracy supposedly directed against the people of Servia. Possessed of a greater degree of autonomy than most of Raptio’s supporters – moved, it seems, by something other than loyalty and/or its potential rewards – Bagshot and Hazelrod indicate by their respective reactions to the events portrayed in The Adulterer that the threats encroaching upon the liberties of the Servian people are in fact multifaceted. Granting the validity of this depiction on Warren’s part, it again warrants caution how closely one associates any of the characters depicted in The Adulterer with their likeliest real-world counterparts.   

Bagshot, for example, was almost certainly intended to represent General Thomas Gage (1718-1787), commander-in-chief of British forces in North America between 1764 and 1775. In part responsible for the stationing of British troops in major urban centres like New York and Boston in the aftermath of the Seven Years War (1754-1763), Gage was reportedly a capable administrator and a man of honor and integrity – if also one possessed of distinctly conservative political sentiments. Tasked with overseeing the security of a newly enlarged colonial empire several thousand miles from the capital thereof, his tendency seemed to be to locate threats to peace and stability within perceived centres of disorder or discontent. In Massachusetts, this mistrust of the evident restlessness of the colonial population found its focus first in the organized resistance to the implementation of the Stamp Act (1765) and the Townshend Duties (1767). Confronted by street protests, riots, mob violence directed against colonial officials – of which, as aforementioned, both Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver were victims – and collective resistance in the form of boycotts on British goods, Gage was forced to conclude by 1770 that, “America is a mere bully, from one end to the other, and the Bostonians by far the greatest bullies [.]” Considering the nature of his remit – to maintain the peace and stability of British America – this was perhaps an unavoidable conclusion.

Over a century of relative autonomy had promoted among the citizens of the various colonies of British America a strong sense of local sovereignty and self-sufficiency that was in many ways both philosophically and logistically at odds with contemporary British political orthodoxy. However Gage and the individuals he believed were chiefly responsible for the stirring up public agitation around issues like customs duties and domestic taxation might have shared a common regard for British culture and wished to uphold British political traditions, therefore,  they were more than likely to perceive the same events, institutions, and concepts through drastically different lenses. Whereas Gage seemed to view the public backlash against the implementation of the Stamp Act and the Townshend Duties – the demonstrations, riots, petitions, and boycotts – as actively corrosive to public order, the “Boston radicals” he so detested understood them as essential to the preservation of the inherited rights and liberties that it was in part Gage’s job to protect. Likewise, while Gage eventually settled upon the ubiquitous New England town meeting as one of the core causes of political disorder in British North America – “Democracy is too prevalent in America,” he wrote his superior in 1772, “And claims the greatest attention to prevent its increase” – the people of Massachusetts understood it to be an absolutely fundamental element of the political and cultural identity. The crux of the disagreement between Thomas Gage and the most ardent critics of British policy in America in the 1760s and 1770s was therefore both monumental and somewhat slight. Each sought to defend and promote the cultural and political community to which they shared a common connection, disagreeing chiefly in terms of method and process.

While, again, Warren’s Bagshot is not nearly as obsequious as most of Rapatio’s followers, his portrayal in The Adulterer nonetheless fails to capture the sincerity at the heart of his real-world counterpart’s public behavior. Speaking to the Governor of Servia in the first of his two appearances, he expresses his undisguised disdain for the riotous behavior of the Servian people upon the killing of an innocent youth by one of Rapatio’s supporters. “It must not [,]” he vows, “Shall not be – the dirty scoundrels, / Foaming with passion animate each other – / Abuse my men and trample on my bands.” Wholly forgoing any semblance of sympathy, Bagshot here seems far more concerned with the indignity being suffered by his men as they face abuse at the hands of an agitated populace. Rapatio seems to play upon and feed this evident sense of vanity and self-importance with his response, calling the people in question, “Insulting dogs!” He then goes on explain that, “A scene now opens to my mind. / And hark’ee Bagshot – should these high swollen wretches / Again insult, remember you are soldiers [.]” Bagshot’s response again seems to show the focus of his anger as being tied to the pride of the men serving under him. “Well then,” he replies,

Since you approve, 
I’ll give those orders, which I dare not do
By my mere motion.
Repeated wrongs have blown up all their courage.
They stretch like steeds, and snuff the distant battle;
And like the vulture, couch in dreadful ambush
And wait a day of carnage – fire, adieu [.]

Bagshot here expresses a willingness to visit force upon the people of Servia, not because it will please Rapatio to do so – as seemed to motivate the aforementioned Dupe and Limput – but because he seems to believe that the men under his command require it. “Repeated wrongs have blown up all their courage,” he says, as might a father who wants to see his bullied son fight back. And while his subsequent description of them as a species of beast is perhaps not the most flattering – “They stretch like steeds,” he avows, “And snuff the distant battle” – it likewise seems to expose an aggressively paternal attitude on Bagshot’s part. If the men under his command are like horses, then he as their handler wants to let them run – let them live and act according to their nature. While the outcome of this attitude ultimately serves the end that Rapatio desires, the manner in which Bagshot expresses it seems to have little to do with pleasing or glorifying his selfsame superior.

The second – and perhaps most compelling – of Bagshot’s two appearances in The Adulterer comes at the end of Act II, Scene II. Confronted by a delegation of Servian Senators who seek to remonstrate with Rapatio over the turmoil his leadership has thus far witnessed, the Governor of Servia begs to confer with his chief military officer before making any decisions concerning the movement or dismissal of troops. Once alone with Bagshot, however, he proceeds to curse the rebelliousness of the Patriots and ask his general-in-chief what might be done. “Say, Bagshot,” he bluntly enquires, “Can you stand the gathering storm?” Bagshot’s answer, in light of the appearance he earlier displayed of sensitivity to slights or disrespect, is surprisingly pragmatic. “Tis a hard case indeed,” he admits,

What can I do?, 
A soldier’s honor should remain unsullied.
True to his post, should laugh at every danger,
Enjoy his fate, and smile amid the storm.
But when ten thousand furies burst upon me,
Despise my utmost force and breathe defiance
Honor says, stand – but prudence says, retire.

Rapatio is understandably taken aback by this, and seeks to once more tweak the man’s pride. “But, Bagshot!” he cries, “How this scoundrel mob will triumph.” Bagshot remains unmoved, however, and this time dismisses the Governor’s entreaty to further violence. “These are charming words [,]” he agrees,

           Close in his cell, the calm philosopher
            Enjoys the storm, grasps at the palm of glory,
            And fights the distant battles of the world.
            It will not, cannot do – if they’re determined
            We yield to conquering fate and curse our fortune.

No longer eager to let his men off the leash – to allow their injured pride to find relief in bloodshed – Bagshot has become wholly resigned to the whims of “conquering fate.” Whether Warren intended her audience to attribute this change of heart to military pragmatism or cowardice, however, is not entirely clear.

            Bagshot, whether seeking violence or scorning it, gives voice to a quality of military pretension in the way that he responds to Rapatio’s enquiries and requests. He seems concerned with matters of image, reputation, and pride. Salving the prestige of his command appears to interest him to a greater extent than feeding the ego of his ostensible superior. And so he acts, with Rapatio’s urging, to put down what then doubtless seemed to be a relatively minor disturbance. He moves from strength, therefore, and attacks when victory is assured. By the time Rapatio once more seeks his counsel, however, Bagshot’s vanity no longer appears to rule him. He still feels a prideful need to stand fast against the mounting gale of public discontent – to “laugh at every danger,” and “and smile amid the storm” – but the odds are no longer in his favor. Opposed this time by “ten thousand furies,” Bagshot relents, scorns Rapatio’s naïve ardour, and counsels acceptance of defeat. Uncertain of victory, therefore – or perhaps certain of defeat – he refuses to risk his pride or his life, regardless of the cause.

While presenting something of an oversimplification, this basic outline likely conformed to what the average American colonist of the late 18th century perceived of the British military establishment. Men like Gage came into their midst, full of the pomp and circumstance that officers were trained and cultured to seek and protect, and proceeded to act and to behave according to orders that often had very little to do with the daily concerns of the British American people. Gage in particular was tasked with maintaining security and stability in the aftermath of the Seven Years War, and went about this commission with what his superiors doubtless believed to be efficiency and zeal. When, over the course of the 1760s, it became clear that the greater threat to colonial security lay in the urban centres rather than on the frontier, he oversaw the deployment of British troops in places like Boston and New York City. And when discontent persisted – in the form of protests and petitions – he first identified the restless colonial elite as the source of the trouble, and then the New England propensity for local self-government. These were not acts of cruelty or pride – by all accounts – but rather the actions of an experienced, shrewd, and dedicated military officer who sought to fulfil his responsibilities as best as he was able. The colonists whose streets were being patrolled by armed soldiers and whose cherished institutions were being actively maligned, however, were unlikely to see things in quite that way.

To the typical citizen of 1770s Massachusetts, figures like Gage were more than likely seen to be officious, draconian, and uncaring. Far from acting out of principle – or seeming to, at any rate – he simply followed the orders given him. Whether those order required him to protect settlers in the colonial interior from raids by Native Americans or to place the streets of Boston under armed guard surely appeared to those affected to matter very little. Indeed, most colonials likely had no way of telling what Gage thought of the directives he had been given to carry out. All that they had access to, by which to form their opinions of the man, were appearances and outcomes. He seemed to relish participating in the social scene in New York City, were his administration kept its headquarters. Perhaps this made him appear vain and prideful. He professed a strong suspicion of the aforementioned town meeting form of municipal government, and lobbied to have it banned. No doubt this caused him to seem like an enemy of the liberties of the people of colonial New England. His soldiers fired upon a crowd that had assembled before the customs house in Boston on the night of March 5th, 1770, and were subsequently acquitted of murder. Likely this made him appear uncaring and cruel. What evidence exists indicates that Thomas Gage was not these things, or at least not exclusively. But Bagshot was, as drawn by Warren. Not a devotee of Rapatio – just as Gage, in fairness, was not a confidant of Hutchinson – the commander of Servia’s military acted rather out of evident concern for military distinction. He favored the pride of his men, expressed no qualms about using force against an outmatched opponent, and retreated in the face of potential defeat.

This was very much a caricature, though an intriguing one all the same. However willing Warren may have been to portray a Gage-like figure as embodying the worst aspects of a the type of military functionary familiar to her fellow countrymen, she at least saw fit to separate him in some way from her drama’s unequivocal villain. Bagshot was certainly an ally of Rapatio – perhaps even a confidant – but his interactions with the Governor of Servia are notably absent the fawning praise that so strongly characterizes the dialogue of figures like Dupe and Limput. Indeed, he even goes so far as to disagree with Rapatio’s request for military aid. None of his contemporaries in service to the Governor of Servia even approach this level of autonomy. And though it amounts to little in the context of The Adulterer – Rapatio’s machinations are not much hampered by Bagshot’s refusal – it would nonetheless seem to nod in the direction of the complexity of the threats facing the contemporary American opposition to Britain’s increasingly heavy-handed rule. Hutchinson and Gage – Rapatio and Bagshot’s real-world equivalents – were not “partners in crime” who worked towards a common goal by different means. Rather, they were semi-autonomous agents of separate power structures with different goals and different outlooks. Hutchinson was a statesman, a native of Massachusetts, and an earnest believer in the relationship between English liberties and the supremacy of the English Parliament. Gage, conversely, was a soldier, the son of a Sussex nobleman, and a firm advocate of order and stability. These men were not natural allies, and it would surely have behooved the aforementioned American opposition to understand that when attempting to gauge, predict, or counter their reactions to a potential campaign of political resistance.