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

Turning from Warren’s erstwhile protagonists and their equally virtuous forebears to The Adulterer’s undisguised villains, one may find yet more examples of her rhetorical use of exaggeration. Far from representing the rivals of Brutus and his cohort as simply misguided in their aims or methods, characters like Rapatio, Hazelrod, Meagre, Gripeall, and Bagshot are depicted as self-consciously vile, bloodthirsty, avaricious, and cruel. Not only do they take often drastic steps to stymie the calls for relief emanating from the Patriot camp, but they do so with the sort of hand-wringing, teeth-gnashing glee very much of a kind with the moustache twirling evil of a silent movie villain. Not only, as Warren depicted them, do they act immorally, but they acknowledge and revel in their immorality. They don’t appear to think that what they are doing is right. Rather, they seem act as they do out of some innate sense of viciousness which they make no effort to bring to heel. For a significant portion of Warren’s audience, this doubtless comported with their experiences of life in Massachusetts under the administration of Thomas Hutchinson. His leadership had seen much harm visited upon the general population, both directly and indirectly, and by 1773 his reputation was surely at its lowest point yet. Easy though it may have been – and rhetorically effective – to attribute this suffering to some black design of Hutchinson himself, however, the facts hardly corroborate any such characterization.

Take Rapatio’s first appearance in The Adulterer as a particularly illustrative example of the kind of hyperbole Warren seemed keen to engage in. Opening upon a chamber in Rapatio’s house, Act I, Scene II finds the man alone and giving voice to his thoughts. First, he acknowledges his own good fortune at having finally attained the rank of Govenror of Servia. His predecessor “Brundo” – a reference to Hutchinson’s own forerunner and benefactor, Sir Francis Bernard (1712-1779) – having retired, Rapatio muses, “The stage is clear. Whatever gilded prospects / Ever swam before me […] All at command [.]” From this accounting of his forthcoming affluence, however, Rapatio quickly – and characteristically, it will soon become clear – shifts to expressing resentment and recrimination for a wrong he perceives that his fellow citizens have done him. “Now patriots think,” he declares,

Think on the past and tremble.

Think on that gloomy night when, as you phrased it,

Indignant justice reared her awful front,

And frowned me from her – when ten thousand monsters,

Wretches who only claimed mere outward form

To give sanction to humanity,

Broke my retirement – rushed into my chamber,

And rifled all my secrets – then slung me helpless,

Naked and destitute, to beg protection.

For the moment laying aside the text itself – and the fist-shaking bitterness expressed therein – it bears noting that the real world analogue of the sequence of events here described took place in Boston on the 26^th of August, 1765.

In the aftermath of the passage of the Stamp Act in March of that year, the selection of Hutchinson’s brother-in-law Andrew Oliver as the officer responsible for overseeing its implementation in Massachusetts brought forth accusations of corruption by the political opposition upon the then-Lieutenant Governor. Though by all accounts Hutchinson had no prior knowledge of or input into Oliver’s appointment, and in fact he had argued against the Stamp Act in dispatches to London upon the eve of its passage, members of the increasingly radical Boston opposition like Samuel Adams (1722-1803) and James Otis, Jr. (1725-1783) publicly avowed that their deputy executive and Chief Justice was scheming against his fellow countrymen in order to enrich himself and his allies. While a mob inflamed by these sentiments – and having already visited its collective rage upon the dwelling of the aforementioned Oliver – was successfully turned away from Hutchinson’s home in the North End of Boston on the night of August, 13^th, a second gathering on the 26^th succeeded in driving the Lieutenant Governor and his family into the street. The house’s furnishings were subsequently destroyed, silverware, furniture, and other belongings were carried away, and Hutchinson’s personal papers – including a draft of his three volume history of Massachusetts – were scattered. The Lieutenant Governor was subsequently indemnified by the colonial government to the tune of three thousand one hundred pounds sterling – significantly in excess of his claimed losses of two thousand two hundred – and he moved his residence outside the limits of Boston to the nearby village of Milton.

Bearing these facts in mind, the complaints of Rapatio – Warren’s stand-in for Hutchinson – perhaps stand in somewhat starker relief. To begin, though it may be rather pedantic to do so, it would seem worthwhile to acknowledge Rapatio’s claim that his dwelling was besieged by “ten thousand monsters [.]” Granting that the exact number of people involved in the mob that gathered before Hutchinson’s domicile on the 26^th of August can only be estimated, it should nevertheless be noted that the population of Boston in 1765 was only slightly in excess of fifteen thousand. It therefore seems an unlikely thing for Raptio/Hutchinson to truthfully claim that a full two-thirds of the city’s residents turned up to force him out of his home. Such an assertion on Rapatio’s part was therefore almost certainly intended by Warren to portray both that character’s deceit and paranoia. In essence, either he is lying to himself – and in turn to the audience – about the nature of the threat he recently faced, or else he has become convinced that the majority of his fellow citizens conspired to rob him of his dignity and his property. In either case, the principle antagonist of The Adulterer makes it known that he possesses something of a persecution complex and– self-consciously or otherwise – is somewhat out of touch with reality. While it is difficult to say for certain how Hutchinson conceived of the events of August 26^th, 1765 in the privacy of his own mind, his continued willingness to publicly engage with his detractors over the course of the 1770s rather than denounce them outright would seem to indicate a degree of patience and moderation not much in evidence with his counterpart Rapatio.

Similarly significant – and misleading – is Raptio’s claim that the mob in question, “Broke my retirement – rushed into my chamber, / And rifled all my secrets [.]” Though there is significant evidence to indicate that Hutchinson did keep much of what he thought about the events of the Anglo-American Crisis of the 1760s and 1770s to himself, or else communicated it only to select confidants and correspondents, the use of the term “secrets” to describe these private observations would seem to carry an inappropriately sinister connotation. In the context of government, secrets are pieces of information generally seen to be compromising, sensitive, or dangerous – their circulation is strictly controlled, and their exposure often constitutes a very serious crime. With Rapatio, however, the context of the scene implies conspiracy rather than professional caution. He seems less concerned for any potential damage done to the legitimacy or stability of his government than he is outraged that his fellow citizens would invade his personal domain or dare to peer into his private affairs. Even his use of the word itself seems to imply something knowingly untoward. The mob did not disturb his papers or ransack his documents, but rather “rifled his secrets [.]” Of the many and various benign phrases Warren could have selected to describe this event, she had Rapatio give voice to perhaps the most devious possible. The character thus appears, as well as bitter and paranoid, suspicious and scheming.   

  Furthermore, the placement of the phrase in question within the cited passage appears to imply something far from flattering about the Governor of Servia’s personal priorities – and in turn, his personal values. Making no mention of lost property or lost work, Rapatio instead worries that compromising information has been seen by his detractors. They “Rifled all my secrets” he says, and only then describes being thrown naked and helpless into the street. Thus phrased, secrets would seem to be what Rapatio treasures most – hardly a sterling quality in a public servant. By way of comparison, what appeared to trouble Hutchinson most about his unfortunate brush with mob justice were the material losses he suffered and the damage done to his aforementioned manuscript. These are the things he made account of in seeking remuneration, or whose recovery was later remarked upon. If he had been robbed of certain confidences – if potentially compromising information in his possession had been seized by his besiegers – the record makes no mention. Granted, the penultimate Governor of Massachusetts would come to known such concerns in time. After a series of letters written by Hutchinson to a Member of Parliament in which he observed that the citizens of Massachusetts could not reasonably expect to exercise the same rights and privileges as British residents were published in 1773, the resulting furor severely damaged his public standing. This unambiguous invasion of privacy was unconnected to the events of August 26^th, 1765, however, and Hutchinson’s response was hardly to swear vengeance upon his countrymen. Rather, in response to a consequent petition by the colonial assembly to have him removed from office, the Governor simply requested the chance to depart for London and defend himself in person.

Rapatio was far from the only character in The Adulterer to paint such an ominous portrait of himself, of course. From snivelling Dupe, to pragmatic Bagshot, to self-important Hazelrod, Warren made sure to stock the pantheon of Servian officialdom with the most odious, egotistical, and bloodthirsty personalities it was surely in her power to render. And while not every one of them seems to possess an equivalent among Governor Hutchinson’s inner circle in 1770s Massachusetts, their collective depiction of the contemporary administration of that colony was doubtless quite cutting at the time of publication. By the same token, however, Warren’s was not necessarily the most accurate portrayal. Take, for example, the figure of Andrew Oliver (1706-1774). Brother-in-law to Hutchinson, Provincial Secretary, and Lieutenant Governor, Oliver seems to have been represented in The Adulterer by two separate characters. One, the aforementioned Dupe, is Servia’s Secretary of State under Rapatio. The other, Limput, is Rapatio’s bother-in-law and a general hanger-on and sycophant. Unsurprisingly, neither is portrayed as anything other than reprehensible.

Dupe makes his first appearance in Act I, Scene II, following immediately on Rapatio’s declaration of revenge against his fellow Servians. “But here comes Dupe,” Warren’s villain remarks, “A creature formed by nature / To be a sycophant. Though I despised him, / Yet he’s too necessary for my purpose, / To be relinquished [.]” Entering, Dupe thereupon gives an account of himself that in every way lives up to this discreditable description. “It gives me highest joy to see your honor / Servia’s sole ruler” he fawns.

What though not complete

And primly seated in the chair of power,

Yet all the reins of government you hold.

And should that happy period every arrive

When Brundo quits for thee entire possession,

Remember Dupe, and think on former friendships.

Here, it seems, is one of the most powerful officials in Servia – judging from his title in the Dramatis Personae – acting in a manner almost sickeningly effusive towards the occupant of the office of Governor. As Secretary of State, Dupe would presumably have been responsible for keeping any and all records of government in Servia, particularly in terms of spending and revenues, and been required to turn them over in the event of a potential enquiry or investigation. In spite of the independence that such responsibilities would seem to require, however, Dupe is presented by Warren as shamelessly grovelling to Rapatio, expressing personal joy at his success, and seeking favor upon his assumption of even greater power.

The remainder of Dupe’s appearance – comprising two further lines – serves only to reinforce this characterization. Upon Rapatio’s assurance that the time for revenge upon the people of Servia is yet at hand, Dupe exclaims, “What halcyon days! And have I lived to see them? / And share them too? Enough – I’ve lived my day.” When Rapatio then asks of Dupe to confirm the rumors he has heard of the restlessness of the Patriots, he does so without pause. “The thing is fact [,]” he avows. “The worthy citizen / Finds property precarious – all things tend / To anarchy and ruin.” While the former serves to communicate Dupe’s obsequiousness in fairly straightforward terms – he counts himself lucky to have lived to see Rapatio come to power – the latter accomplishes the same objective in a slight more indirect way by showing how emphatically and unquestioningly he agrees with Rapatio’s reading of contemporary events. Whereas the Governor of Servia describes his detractors as having, “Grown fond of riot, and, with pageantry, / Do ridicule the friends of government [,]” the Secretary of State goes so far as to declare that events are tending towards “riot and anarchy.” By way of exaggeration, Dupe thus appears keen to validate the opinion of his chosen benefactor. Far from the noble officer of state that his title denotes, he is rather the “ready tool” whom Rapatio sees fit to wield in his pursuit of revenge.

Limput – perhaps a closer match to Oliver for being Rapatio’s bother-in-law – is portrayed by Warren in a similarly unflattering light to that which she shone upon the obsequious Dupe. Appearing only briefly in Act III, Scene IV, he nevertheless manages to emphatically describe the depth of depravity to which he is willing to sink in service of his friend and benefactor. Responding to Rapatio’s call for willing co-conspirators, Limput explains that,

If this is all you want –

If breaking through the sanction of an oath,

And trampling on the highest obligations

Would back this good design – here’s one will do it.

Though his soul was once, “Full of virtue,” he further avows, so that he would shudder when faced with a crime, “Thoughts like these have long since slept; old habits / Have seared my conscience – Vice is now familiar – / Prescribe whatever form you choose – I sign it [.]” Whereas even Rapatio must occasionally steel himself against attacks of pity or sympathy that would stand in the way of achieving the end he seeks, Limput paints himself as wholly beyond such doubts or concerns. “Old habits have seared my conscience [,]” he explains, and so he is particularly capable of committing the most heinous acts commanded by his friend and brother. In light of what The Adulterer thus far exhibited of Rapatio’s methods – deceit, manipulation, and murder – this ought to be received as a particularly damning admission. No matter what Raptio asks of him – what high obligation he is made to trample – Limput declares that he is ready and willing.

            Rapatio’s immediate response is fairly straightforward, though no less significant for it. His administration having suffered in the aftermath of the slaughter of Servian civilians by soldiers under his command, he asks Limput to swear,

           That long before that night,

            In which we snuffed the blood of innocence,

            The fractious citizens, urged on by hell,

            Had leagued together to attack the soldier,

            Trample on laws, murder the friends of power

            And bury all things in one common ruin.

As if it were not already so unequivocally vile for Rapatio and his followers to scheme at framing a people still mourning their dead for the very circumstances under which they suffer – while speaking freely of having “snuffed the blood of innocence,” no less – Rapatio goes on to damn himself further in the eyes of Warren’s audience by the manner in which he requests that the pledge be sealed. “All this,” he instructs Limput, “You call the majesty of heaven / To witness to as truth.” Quaint it may now seem, but this blasphemous invocation of God in service of such an odious plot was doubtless intended by Warren to further convey the utter depravity of Servia’s Governor and his supporters. Innocent Servians have been killed, and here Rapatio appears keen to set in motion a conspiracy that would likely entail further repression, more suffering, and more deaths. In keeping with his prior claims, Limput responds simply. “I do,” he declares, “And swear.” Whereas Dupe is the pitiful lickspittle who seeks favor in exchange for obedience, Limput seems to give himself over to Rapatio’s schemes out of personal affection and personal habit. That the Governor of Servia would count such a man his brother-in-law, seek his counsel, and engage his service was surely meant to be an object of horror.

            As it happened, however, Andrew Oliver closely resembled neither Dupe nor Limput. Though he was certainly a man of wealth and education whose ascent to the highest levels of the Massachusetts elite was in some part a function of his class and his connections, Oliver was by many accounts also a sober, pious, and dedicated public servant. Far from achieving distinction solely by marrying into the inner circle of the ascendant Thomas Hutchinson, he in fact held a variety of municipal offices in Boston in the 1730s, won election to the Massachusetts Provincial Assembly in 1742, and was finally granted appointment as Provincial Secretary by Acting-Governor Spencer Phips (1685-1757) in 1755. The subsequent selection of Oliver to administer the provisions of the Stamp Act in Massachusetts in 1765 was likewise unrelated to his family connections, though he suffered alongside Governor Hutchinson in the ensuing popular backlash. The events of the 1770s proved similarly trying, particularly as a result of Oliver’s relationship with his brother-in-law. Chosen by Hutchinson to assume the office of Lieutenant Governor in 1771, he subsequently became embroiled in another controversy surrounding the publication of a series of inflammatory letters. Though Hutchinson and Oliver were both privately opposed to the passage and implementation of the Stamp Act, they also harbored certain views as to the relationship between the government and people of Massachusetts and the Crown which ostensibly placed them in opposition to the increasingly radical elements of that colony’s political culture. When these views – as expressed to certain correspondents in Britain – saw print in June, 1773, both men suffered renewed accusations of conspiracy, treason, and betrayal. Oliver, who had damningly stated his belief that the government of Massachusetts ought to have been reformed in order to strengthen the office of Governor, was notably burned in effigy in Boston Common. The strain of enduring such repeated public repudiation took its toll on the exhausted and ageing Lieutenant Governor, and he eventually suffered a fatal stroke in March, 1774.     

Granting that it is now, and may be forevermore, impossible to determine the exact nature of the relationship between brothers-in-law and political confidants Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver, there is very little to indicate that it bore a particular resemblance to those Warren depicted in The Adulterer  between Rapatio and his followers Dupe and Limput. Unlike these characters, whose respective roles in the drama are wholly a function of their adoration of and loyalty to the Governor of Servia, Oliver spent the better part of his career in public service charting a course that was largely his own. His appointment to the office of Provincial Secretary in 1755 came at the conclusion of almost twenty years of service in municipal and colonial government, and notably pre-dated Hutchinson’s assumption of the Lieutenant-Governorship by nearly three years. Furthermore, whereas Dupe and Limput seem content – or at the very least willing – to wholly submit to Rapatio’s ambitions, Oliver appeared to be more of a partner to Hutchinson than a mere pawn in his supposed machinations. He was, after all, publicly burned in effigy in 1773 not merely because of his association with Hutchinson – because he was known to have done that man’s bidding – but rather because letters he wrote independent of his brother-in-law were also intercepted and published. And while the content of those letters may rightly be seen to have placed Oliver at odds with the political and ideological currents then taking hold of contemporary Massachusetts, the implications thereof in no way equate to the conspiracy, duplicity, or cruelty contemplated by the likes of Dupe and Limput. Indeed, where those men seemed to revel in the successes of their spiteful benefactor and embrace the foul deeds he requested they undertake, Oliver rather appeared to find the hatred and the vitriol of his fellow citizens tremendously – and in the end, fatally – taxing. 

The Adulterer, Part IX: More Real than Real

Before calling the present series to a close, I would like to offer a word or two on the subject of hyperbole. Specifically, there would seem to be a worthwhile discussion to be had as to Warren’s use of exaggeration within the text of The Adulterer, not least of which in regard to the potential for misinterpretation among modern readers of the same. As noted previously, the tragedy of Brutus, Rapatio, and their shared homeland of Servia strikes a tone somewhere between satire and a call to arms. And though plainly intended to represent certain events and personalities relevant to late 1770s Massachusetts, it scenes and characters were accordingly rendered with a somewhat broad brush. Its villains – the aforementioned Rapatio and his cohorts – were not merely corrupt or unthinking, but bloodthirsty, cruel, and inhumane. By this same token, its heroes – Brutus and his fellow Patriots – were far more than conscientious and well-intentioned. Rather, they were virtuous, self-sacrificing, and moved by an inextinguishable love of country. The conflict that unfolds between them, therefore, is appropriately stark in it moral contours. Warren gives no indication that she desires her audience to sympathize with Rapatio or in any way question the motives of Brutus and his compatriots. Granting that such an unambiguous portrayal of political conflict surely served her purpose of rousing a people to action, it also demands a certain amount of caution from those who would read The Adulterer in something other than its original context. Lest one start to believe that Thomas Hutchinson was as self-consciously evil as Raptio, or that the Massachusetts opposition was as united in their opposition to the former as the Patriots of Servia were to the latter, much of the content of The Adulterer accordingly warrants further investigation.

To begin, consider a passage spoken by Cassius in Act I, Scene I amidst his shared lament with Brutus over the pitiful state of to which their homeland has been reduced. “Oh! Brutus,” he cries,

Our noble ancestors,

Who lived for freedom, and for freedom died:

Who scorned to roll in affluence, if that state

Was sickened over with the dread name of slaves:

Who in this desert stocked with beasts and men,

Whose untamed souls breathed naught but slaughter –

Grasped at freedom, and they nobly won it;

Then smiled and died contended.

Here, in brief, is Warren’s veiled tribute to the founders of Massachusetts, the suffering they endured, and the personal qualities of integrity and fortitude which allowed them to prosper amid the wilderness of 17^th century New England. So noble were these men, Cassius asserts, and so hard they fought to build a home for themselves and their offspring, that behaving with resignation towards the cruelty and corruption of Rapatio and his supporters is tantamount to treason against them. Brutus readily agrees with this sentiment – “Oh! Cassius,” he exclaims, “You inspire a noble passion” – and several subsequent scenes revisit the theme of legacy and generational obligation. Inspiring though this description of the founding of Servia – aka Massachusetts – may have been, however, it represents something of an oversimplification.

In fairness, the 17^th century English Puritans who founded the colonies of Plymouth (1620) and Massachusetts Bay (1628) were undeniably concerned with and motivated by both the theoretical and practical significance of freedom. Born of a movement within the Anglican Church intent on purging the faith of what they perceived to be the lingering influences of Catholicism, the early Puritans faced widespread institutional persecution during the reigns of James I (1566-1625) and Charles I (1600-1649). Members were regularly imprisoned, monitored, or otherwise harassed, leading many to conclude that their goal of creating a “purified” church would likely be impossible to achieve from within the established Anglican power structure. Separation, therefore, became a cause to which many Puritans rallied, whereby freedom of religious practice could be combined with isolation from potentially corrupting influences. While the founders of Plymouth colony first sought refuge in the Netherlands in 1607, both they and the founders of the colony of Massachusetts Bay ultimately settled upon North America as the site of their dreamed-of “community of believers.” Land patents were subsequently obtained via chartered stock ventures like the New England Company and the London Company of Virginia, passages were booked on vessels like the Speedwell, the Arabella, and the celebrated Mayflower, and settlements were eventually founded at places like Plymouth, Salem, and Charlestown. Between 1630 and 1640, amidst hard winters, bouts of starvation and disease, and intermittent warfare with neighboring indigenous peoples, thousands more arrived in New England. By 1643, the Plymouth Colony had swollen from one hundred souls in 1620 to approximately three thousand. During this same period, the Massachusetts Bay Colony grew from a population of one thousand to twenty thousand.

Free though these resettled Puritans now were to worship as they pleased, and cautious though they often remained in their relationship with the British Crown, the cited characterization of Cassius that his ancestors, “Lived for freedom, and for freedom died” is somewhat wide of the mark when applied to the founders and early governors of colonial Massachusetts. Though they would not qualify as theocracies, wherein the Puritan religious establishment also functioned and the principle organ of government, the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies – and their combined successor, the Province of Massachusetts Bay – were home to notably restrictive, censorious, and often draconian legal and social norms. Not only were such behaviors as smoking, playing cards, certain types of dancing, and working on the Sabbath grounds for criminal prosecution, but punishments regularly included whipping, sitting in the stocks, banishment, and death. Non-Puritan dissenters who had likewise fled England in search of religious freedom meanwhile found themselves a particular object of scorn. Quakers were eventually prevented from attaining citizenship in the Plymouth Colony, and were often subject to arrest pending deportation upon their arrival in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Under a law passed in 1658 making Quakerism a capital crime, the latter jurisdiction went so far as to execute Marmaduke Stephenson, William Robinson, Mary Dyer, and William Leddra in Boston Common between 1659 and 1661. Residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who either expressed unorthodox religious ideas – like Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) or Rhode Island founder Roger Williams (1603-1683) – or questioned the authority of the civil or religions elite – like John Wheelwright (1592-1679) – were also subject to expulsion, a far from merciful punishment considering the unforgiving nature of the colonial hinterland and the harshness of New England winters.     

As to the, “Desert stocked with beasts and men, / Whose untamed souls breathed naught but slaughter [,]” Warren’s characterization of the founding of Massachusetts once again valorizes the founders themselves by creating a narrative seemingly free of moral ambiguity. The beasts that inhabited colonial New England aside – whose hostility towards intruders upon their territory could hardly be resented – the native inhabitants of the region were far from bloodthirsty, ravenous, or prone to slaughter. Indeed, the first Native American encountered by the settlers of the Plymouth Colony in 1621 – members of the Abenaki, Wampanoag, and Patuxet –  proved quite welcoming, and peaceful relations were subsequently established that fostered both trade and mutual defence. Over the years that followed, Plymouth colonists became increasingly involved in the inter-tribal warfare that had long been a regular feature of life in pre-contact New England. A conflict in 1622 between longstanding rivals the Narragansett and the Wampanoag notably warranted an expedition by Plymouth military officer Myles Standish (1584-1656) in aid of the latter, while the rumour of a planned attack on the newly-founded village of Wessagussett led the same militia leader Standish to orchestrate a pre-emptive strike whose results were unexpectedly disastrous. Having killed a number of prominent native military leaders under pretense of negotiation, Standish succeeded in causing a number of neighboring tribes to flee the area for fear of similar treatment. The departing natives, having sought refuge in lowland swamps and other areas devoid of natural resources, then quickly fell victim to disease and starvation while the Plymouth colonists suffered from the accompanying loss of reliable partners in the burgeoning fur trade.       

  

            Relations between contemporary Native Americans and the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony proved about as destructive. Competition over access to valuable European trade goods led to increased competition between already embittered rivals like the Pequot and the Mohegan, a development skillfully exploited by both the English colonists that had settled in New England and the Dutch in the Hudson Valley. As the Europeans jostled for advantage in the fur trade, their native allies increasingly sought to sabotage one another in an attempt to attain a dominant position in the regional power dynamic. By the 1630s, this struggle had led to increasing encroachment by Plymouth and Massachusetts settlers on Pequot land, raids by Pequot allies on English villages in what had been Pequot territory, and retaliatory attacks by English colonists on the Pequot themselves. By 1638, the so-called “Pequot War” had seen an alliance of New England colonies and their Narragansett and Mohegan allies almost completely destroy the Pequot, with the surviving warriors either turned over to their victorious rivals or reduced to slavery in Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, or Barbados. Although the Wampanoag – longstanding allies of the New England colonists – came out ahead in this particular conflict, it was only a matter of time before they suffered a similar fate as a result of their relationship with the European newcomers.

Despite repeated promises of friendship and mutual defense, Wampanoag chief Metacomet (1638-1676) became embroiled in a dispute with the government of the Plymouth colony in the 1660s after his brother and predecessor Wamsutta (1634-1662) was arrested by Plymouth authorities for selling land to exiled Rhode Island founder Roger Williams. Aware of Metacomet’s grievances towards the growing English colonial presence in formerly Wampanoag territory, and alerted to rumours of a planned native attack on the vulnerable villages of the New England interior, authorities in Plymouth had him brought to trial in 1675 to answer the charge of fomenting war. While eventually forced to concede that there was little hard evidence to validate suspicions as to Metacomet’s supposedly belligerent intentions, Plymouth officials did see to the arrest and execution of a trio of Wampanoag implicated in the death of the native interpreter John Sassamon (1600-1675). The ensuing exchange of raids and sieges occupied the better part of the next three years, resulted in approximately three thousand native casualties, and ended with the death of Metacomet and the destruction of a dozen colonial settlements. The Narragansett and the Wampanoag – both former allies of the Plymouth Colony – were almost completely eliminated as independent entities, and survivors of the defeated tribes were once again carried off into slavery in New England and the Caribbean. Known to history as King Phillip’s War (1675-1678) after the name by which Metacomet was commonly known among the population of New England, this early conflict remains among the bloodiest and most devastating of the entire European colonial era.     

            Bearing all of the above in mind, the cited memorialization by Cassius of the glory of Servia’s – i.e. Massachusetts’ – founding might now be more clearly understood for the selective retelling that it truly is. Though it doubtless served Warren’s intended purpose of inspiring her countrymen to a defence of their threatened liberties by recalling to them the legacy that current events were then threatening to despoil, the facts of New England’s founding were hardly cause for such rapturous veneration. The “noble ancestors” of Warren and her Massachusetts compatriots could be said to have lived and died for freedom only if one applies the term selectively. While the founders of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies certainly departed England for North America for the purpose of freely exercising their chosen faith, they also showed themselves to be about as willing to persecute non-conformists as the Anglican authorities from whom they themselves had fled. The unorthodox, the sceptical, and the radical all suffered at the hands of the aforementioned colonial governments – whether by exile or execution – with a special hatred seemingly reserved for members of the Quaker faith. At the same time, while it cannot be denied that 17^th century New England suffered extensively at the hands of its Native American neighbors – approximately one thousand colonists were killed over the course of King Phillip’s War alone – said indigenous peoples neither instigated the associated conflicts nor ultimately profited from them. Though the Wampanoag and the Narragansett were among the first indigenous peoples to offer assistance to the settlers of the Plymouth colony in the early 1620s, both had been almost completely destroyed by the end of the 1670s at the hands of this same community of English transplants. Meanwhile, after helping to encourage increased competition and conflict between the Pequot and their traditional rivals in the 1630s, the settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony ultimately brought about this tribe’s eradication and enslavement by the end of 1638.

            Even Warren’s assertion that the people of Servia/Massachusetts scorned to, “Roll in affluence, if that state / Was sickened over with the dread name of slaves” fails to entirely capture the complexity of New England’s colonial past. Assuming that this passage was intended to convey the unwillingness of the founders of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth to easily submit to Crown authority out of a sense of caution and jealously for the rights and liberties that they had secured for themselves, some credit is due to the notion at its heart. The first settlers of what by the 1770s had become the Province of Massachusetts Bay had indeed departed their English homeland out of a refusal to acquiesce to the spiritual supremacy of the Church of England. The relationship between the colonies that they subsequently founded in North America and the Crown under which those colonies were chartered was consequently and understandably given to tension and suspicion, particularly as concerned the enforcement of commerce regulations – the Navigation Acts (1651, 1660, 1663, 1670, 1673) – and the continued refusal of Puritan authorities in Massachusetts Bay to permit the local establishment of the Church of England. The events of the English Civil War (1642-1651), the establishment of the Commonwealth (1649-1660), and the eventual Restoration (1660-1685) further complicated matters by both temporarily weakening Parliamentary oversight of the England’s colonial empire in North America – thus permitting individual colonies to broaden the scope of their various prerogatives – and heralding the ascension of a particularly activist monarch who sought to streamline colonial administration.     

       

Charles II (1630-1685) took a far greater interest in colonial affairs than his father Charles I (1600-1649) ever had, with a focus on eliminating waste, enforcing existing law, and resolving longstanding conflicts or inconsistencies. From this perspective, New England was ripe for reform. The aforementioned Navigation Acts were being continually flouted by merchants who had grown accustomed to trading with agents in other English colonies, the colonies of other European powers, or those European powers themselves. The Massachusetts Bay Colony also continued to refuse the Anglican Church the right to establish itself in the territory of the former, with the government thereof stubbornly resisting all attempts at accommodation. The Plymouth Colony had meanwhile yet to formally secure a governing charter – having existed for forty years on nothing more than a land patent – the ownership of land in what is now Maine was being disputed by multiple grantees, and the New Haven Colony (est. 1638) was actively harboring Edward Whalley (1607-1675) and William Goffe (1605-1679), two of the so-called “regicides” that had sentenced Charles I to death in 1649. Seeking to eliminate all of these problems at a single stroke, Charles II and his ministers set about revoking the charters of the various colonies in New England so that they could be collectively reconstituted under a single, centralized government. The charter of Massachusetts Bay, granted by Charles I in 1629, was consequently annulled in June, 1684.

The resulting union of colonies – established in 1686 as the Dominion of New England – proved something less than the ringing success that Charles II and his ministers might have hoped. Owing to his death in 1685, the unpopularity of his brother and successor James II (1685-1689), the ensuing overthrow of the Stuart dynasty – subsequently referred to as the “Glorious Revolution” – and the rather heavy-handed rule of the Dominion’s appointed governor Sir Edmund Andros (1637-1714), Crown authority in New England essentially collapsed in 1689 following popular revolts in Boston and New York City. While most of the affected colonies successfully reverted to their previous charters – indeed, Connecticut claimed never to have recognized the Dominion government – Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay subsequently found themselves in something of a quandary. As mentioned previously, Plymouth had no charter to fall back on, and popular opposition to the restoration of the 1629 charter of Massachusetts Bay – in no small part awakened by the break with Puritan rule witnessed during the years of the Dominion – placed the government thereof on shaky legal ground in attempting to re-establish its authority. In consequence, agents from both colonies spent several years petitioning the newly-installed joint-monarchs William III (1650-1702) and Mary II (1662-1694) to grant them new charters. Aware that the recreation of the previous government in Massachusetts Bay would almost certainly result in the Puritan elite once again asserting their accustomed hegemony – to the detriment of the Church of England, of which they were now the Supreme Governors – William and Mary thus determined instead to combine the two petitioning colonies under a single charter as the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691.               
     

            Returning once more to the cited speech by Cassius, the extent of Warren’s rhetorical streamlining becomes clearer still. Though she attempted to assure her fellow countrymen that their shared ancestors had scorned the wealth and preferment presumably offered by the Crown in exchange for the submission of their accustomed liberties, the facts of the matter paint a far more complicated picture. Far from rejecting affluence, the ministers and merchants of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth doubtless understood that freedom from external regulation was in fact crucial to securing the wealth and well-being of their respective colonies. Acquiescing to the Navigation Acts – and in a larger sense to the authority of Parliament – would have surely reduced the profit margins of New England traders by restricting their market access and increasing the number of tariffs they would be obliged to pay. Historical rejection of Crown authority, therefore, had perhaps about as much to do with prosperity as it ever did with principle. And furthermore, as the aftermath of the Dominion of New England would seem to demonstrate, even principle had its breaking point.

Granting that the relevant authorities in Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay sought to re-assert their accustomed modes of government rather than usher in a wholly new one, the fact remains that both colonies spent the latter years of the 1680s actively seeking out royal sanction. This was, of course, in spite of the numerous conflicts Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay had endured over the course of their existence vis-à-vis the Crown, the generally obstinate character of New England’s Puritan leadership, and the rather unabashed power grab that was the Dominion experiment. At a moment of crisis, and notwithstanding the fact that the English monarchy and its government had often shown themselves to be either suspicious of or hostile to the entire New England colonial project, contemporary authorities in Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay turned to royal validation as a source of stability and support. From resisting close official oversight, they had taken to inviting it. Thus, for the first time in its existence as an independent entity, Massachusetts Bay became a Crown Colony, with a Royal Governor and Crown-appointed officers. The Puritan grandees responsible may not have sought this outcome, but in light of the weakness of their position – on uncertain legal ground and in the midst of the North American theatre of the Nine Year’s War (1688-1697) – they would have been exceedingly short-sighted not to have foreseen it. The result, while constituting a status far from the “dread name of slaves” to which Warren referred, was neither the rapturous, hard-fought freedom to which text of The Adulterer so often alluded.            

The Adulterer, Part VIII: Blood and Gore, contd.

            At this stage, one might fairly question the nature of Warren’s sanguinary fixation. As a function of style, it certainly sets apart her literary efforts from those of her fellow Founders. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, used the word “blood” once in the course of his A Summary View of the Rights of British America, once in his Kentucky Resolutions, and three times – counting the use of the word “bloody” – in his First Inaugural Address.  The eighty-five essays that make up the Federalist Papers – penned by  Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison – meanwhile contain the word “blood” or “bloody” a scant fifteen times. The Adulterer comparatively makes use of these same words a staggering thirty-two times over the course of five acts. The figurative image of blood was clearly of value to Warren, in a way that simply wasn’t the case for some of her more prominent compatriots among the Founding Generation. And while the various implications and symbolic significances utilized within the text of The Adulterer have been thus far discussed at length, it perhaps remains to be determined what, if anything specific, Warren was driving at. Why, in short, was blood such an important motif for her? Was it merely a matter of taste, or was there a point which she felt its rhetorical use helped her to make?

            To begin, it certainly bears repeating the obvious. As writers and artists have been aware of since time immemorial, audiences can be made to react very strongly to imagery that taps directly into their physical sensitivities. Show someone the image of a severed head, and they while almost certainly respond more instinctually or emotionally than they would if presented a picture of, say, a felled tree. Similarly, descriptions that play upon common feelings of vulnerability, fear, or repulsion often seem to resonate more powerfully with people than their more abstract or plainly descriptive equivalents. Warren’s use of blood, gore, carnage, and general physical suffering no doubt sprung in part from this idea. The subject of her first attempt at explicitly political theatre was of tremendous significance to the daily context of its intended audience, though not everyone who happened to read a copy of The Adulterer was likely to approach the topic with the same passion quite clearly nurtured by Warren herself. As is all too familiar here at the dawn of the 21^st century, there were doubtless people living in Massachusetts in the early 1770s who did not consider themselves to be politically engaged. Content to live their lives concerned only with the needs of the moment, they doubtless determined to leave matters of policy and political economy to those possessed of the training, interest, and inclination.

At the same time, it also bears remembering that no small portion of the population considered their loyalty to the Crown and to Parliament as holding greater personal sway than any fears they might have entertained as to the status of their rights and liberties. Thus confronted with indifference and hostility, Warren may simply have determined to deploy certain rhetorical devices within the text of The Adulterer in order to better reach her countrymen. Not everyone cared about the purported behavior of the Governor or his supporters, or about the edicts of Parliament upon the taxation of a relatively short list of goods. But most people could be made to feel insecure, or horrified, or disgusted. They could be shown a severed head, in short, and made to despise the party responsible. Granted, this sort of sensationalism is hardly foolproof. Sometimes people are cynical; sometimes they are detached. Sometimes they don’t like feeling as though their emotions are being manipulated. But, more often than not when shown something visceral, they simply react. While her exact intentions almost certainly ran deeper than that, it would nonetheless be short-sighted to hold Mercy Otis Warren as being entirely above the use of such a time-tested tool of artistic expression.

That being said, her aim was almost definitely more than to achieve a degree of “shock and awe.” As her later work strongly attests, Warren was both engaged with the political and social events unfolding around her and eager to affect the outcome of the same. She did not write simply to convey information – she was not a journalist, in short. Rather, she wrote in order to express a particular point of view, promote a particular course of action, and generally move the world she inhabited in what she believed to be a constructive direction. The Adulterer was surely in keeping with this attitude. The events represented therein – the killing of Christopher Seider or the Boston Massacre – were already well-known by the time of its publication in 1773. For that matter, so were the various transgressions of colonial governor Thomas Hutchinson. The purpose of the play, therefore, was assuredly not to inform – not to point to something that people might not have seen – but rather to offer a potential course of action. In so doing, Warren effectively wove together the events of recent years into a kind of object lesson in moral behavior. Blood was perhaps the most prominent figurative element therein, doubtless chosen for its ability to elicit an emotional response.

In the framework of The Adulterer, blood – in whatever context – arguably represents life itself. It is the most precious thing any individual can possess, and the most costly thing anyone stands to lose. Care must be taken, then, preciously how and when blood is shed. A person who bleeds willingly for the sake of principle thus demonstrates both the depth of their conviction and the value of the thing itself. Conversely, someone who extracts the blood of the innocent in the name of ego is guilty of destroying something of unparallelled value. Just so, the blood shed by a forebear in order to secure a legacy for their offspring represents a tremendous responsibility for all those that claim to enjoy the fruits thereof. And when faced with a such a tyrant as would callously snuff out human life, it may become just to bleed them dry – precious though even their life might be in essence, the loss of it could well save many more. What Warren was driving at, therefore, was arguably the characterization of the struggle then ongoing between British authority in Massachusetts – as represented by Governor Thomas Hutchinson – and the increasingly radical and organized political opposition as a matter, not of taxes and legislative prerogatives, but of life and death. To that end, The Adulterer seems designed to shift the debate away from notions of law, and precedent, and inherited rights – though rights do form a large part of the vocabulary of Patriots resistance to Rapatio’s machinations – and towards a far more fundamental moral quandary. People had died, Warren pointed out – and they were dying, and they would yet die. The only question that mattered, therefore – the only question worth answering – was what were the people of Massachusetts going to do about it?

In fact, The Adulterer seems to provide an answer. Upon the aforementioned massacre of Servian civilians, Brutus attempts to rouse an assembly of his countrymen in in Act III, Scene I by describing what stands before them in their quest for justice. “We’ll rescue freedom,” he says,

            Yes, thy wounds my country

            Shall soon be closed and from the precious gore,

            Which stains the streets shall spring a glorious harvest.

            Now is the crisis; if we lose this moment,

            All’s gone forever – Catch the happy period,

            And boldly hurl oppression from her basis.

Here, it seems, Warren’s bloody visions of self-sacrifice, suffering, obligation, and revenge cohere into a kind of moral imperative. While acknowledging the blood that has been shed already – a loss of life which cannot be undone – Brutus recasts the horror of, “The precious gore, / Which now stains the streets” as the possible prelude to something “glorious.” Just as he and Cassius feel the weight of the sacrifice rendered by their ancestors and endeavor to see it justified, Brutus here seems to be expressing a similar sense of obligation as concerns the innocents slain at the hands of Rapatio and his minions. Fulfilling that obligation, he asserts, will summon forth a “harvest” – i.e. the bountiful realization of much time, and effort, and suffering – which will serve to ensure that all who died in the course of its achievement will not have perished in vain.

            The period within which this harvest might be realized, however, is unfortunately a fleeting one. “Now is the crisis [,]” Brutus asserts, “If we lose this moment, / All’s gone forever [.]” The significance of this exhortation seems quite plain enough. Rather than simply chronicle the suffering and lamentations of her fellow citizens of Massachusetts, or draw attention to the iniquities and moral lapses of the ruling elite thereof, Warren sought to spur her countrymen to action. Much had been lost, she admitted – through the medium of Servia and her ill-starred Patriots – but that loss could be made good by those who yet drew breath. As of 1773, many people in Massachusetts had been harshly disabused of their former loyalty to the British Crown – by being taxed, garrisoned by soldiers, and shot down in the streets. And while the resulting anger would surely have lingered a good deal longer with those already inclined to doubt British intentions – Samuel Adams (1722-1803) for example, and his infamous Sons of Liberty – it was almost certainly bound to fade among the general population in the absence of further incidents. Notwithstanding that the so-called Boston Tea Party (December, 1773) and its disastrous aftermath were yet on the horizon, it surely appeared to Warren as though something needed to be done before her fellow countrymen no longer felt so keenly that their repeated injuries were in need of redress. Act, she therefore insisted, before the opportunity has passed – “Catch the happy period,” and make good the suffering that Massachusetts has been made to endure.

As to what the moment required, however, Warren’s hero was somewhat more equivocal. “Boldly hurl oppression from her basis [,]” he declares to his fellow Servians in a rather bloodless directive compared to his and his cohorts’ usual fare. And yet, context again supplies a deeper meaning. As Portius declared his intention to drench his sword in the blood of a tyrant, and as he, Cassius, Brutus, and Junius jointly pledged to pave the streets of Servia “with many a human skull” in quest of liberty for their homeland, there would seem to be no mistaking the intention behind the phrase “boldly hurl oppression.” If Rapatio was the seat of oppression in Servia, then Brutus was commanding his fellow citizens to seize the man and cast him from his lofty perch by whatever means they could. In consequence, the cited plea effectively joined together three of the moral implications Warren attached to the image of blood in the context of The Adulterer – i.e. it acknowledged the horror of innocent suffering, characterized that suffering as a form obligation, and located the fulfillment of that obligation in the justifiable infliction of additional suffering upon the party (or parties) ultimately responsible.

While it may be somewhat irregular – by the terms previously set for discussions herein undertaken – a brief glance past the publication of The Adulterer into the 1780s would seem to bear out the characterization presented above for Mercy Otis Warren’s particular interpretation of all things sanguinary. Specifically, the pamphlet entitled, Observations on the New Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions – written by Warren in response to the proposed constitution presented by the Philadelphia Convention in September, 1787 – exhibited a similar rhetorical fixation with blood, suffering, self-sacrifice, and obligation. In laying forth her position against the adoption of said constitution, for example, Warren described her countrymen as a people, “Who have braved the power of Britain, weathered the convulsions of war, and waded thro’ the blood of friends and foes to establish their independence and to support the freedom of the human mind [.]” These, “Brave Sons of America,” she continued,

Have purchased it with their blood, and have gloried in their independence with a dignity of spirit, which has made them the admiration of philosophy, the pride of America, and the wonder of Europe.

Capping off this paean to heroic self-destruction, Warren further declared that,

On these shores freedom has planted her standard, dipped in the purple tide that flowed from the veins of her martyred heroes; and here every uncorrupted American yet hopes to see it supported by the vigour, the justice, the wisdom and unanimity of the people [.]”

Whether weaving allegory or polemic, it seemed, Mercy Otis Warren conceived of the struggle between liberty and tyranny in terms of life, and death, and blood, and suffering.

In the cited passages of Observations, as from the lips of Brutus and his Servian brethren, blood is invoked alongside words like “brave,” “freedom,” “glory,” “dignity,” “pride,” “martyr,” and “justice.” Thus, like her creation Brutus, Warren seems inclined to characterize the suffering of her fellow Americans in the cause of liberty as a heroic, ennobling thing. The “standard of freedom,” she rhapsodized, was, “Diped in the purple tide that flowed from the veins of her martyred heroes [.]” There is in this a distinct echo of the Act V, Scene I lament of Brutus, who, “Waked and wept and would have fought for thee, / And emptied every vein, when threatened ruin.” But whereas Brutus offered to make this noble sacrifice, Warren reminds her readers in Observations that the defenders of America already have, and it thus fell to their countrymen to see that their suffering was justified. In this, and in her contention that the veterans of the late Revolutionary War had, “Purchased [independence] with their blood [,]” Warren also echoed the claims of characters like Cassius’ ghostly father that bodily sacrifices – i.e., bloodshed, suffering, and death – in the name of noble causes constituted a form of obligation. As the forebears of the Servian Patriots built a legacy for their offspring out of blood and toil – “Behold this fair possession [,]” the aforementioned spirit exhorts his son, “I struggled hard to purchase, fought and bled / To leave it your unsullied – Oh defend it – so too did Warren’s Observations portray the suffering and death endured by the “martyred heroes” of the Revolution as a form of moral debt that only, “The vigour, the justice, the wisdom and unanimity,” of their countrymen could pay off.

Further on in Observations, in the midst of a numbered list of specific objections to the proposed constitution, Warren again made use of the image of blood as a rhetorical device. In this case, in the seventeenth of eighteen resolves, she declared that the provision ensuring the adoption of the new system of government upon the ratification of only nine of thirteen states represented, “A subversion of the union of Confederated States,” and in fact, “May be a means of involving the whole country in blood.” The most obvious implication of this phrase is that Warren believed the imposition of the proposed constitution upon the whole of the United States after only a fraction of its citizens had approved of the same would likely result in some manner of civil unrest, further needless suffering, and death. Consider, by way of comparison, the cited assertion of Brutus that Rapatio, “Imbues his hands in blood” by prizing his own position above the lives and liberties of his fellow Servians, or the way that Junius describes soldiers responsible for killing innocent civilians as having their garments, “Stained with blood [.]” As the protagonists of The Adulterer used blood as a metonym for the unnatural cruelties that the Servian ruling elite were willing to indulge, their creator Warren appeared to use the same terminology to lay the responsibility for further suffering squarely at the feet of those who would support the ratification of the proposed constitution. The country would be “involved in blood,” she declared, and the most dedicated supporters of the proposed constitution would be the cause.  
    

            Granting that it may not represent conclusive validation for the assertions put forward herein as to the symbolic significance of blood in Mercy Otis Warren’s The Adulterer, the cited passages from her later Observations present a potentially intriguing coda to the call to arms evidently embodied by the former. Not only, it appears, was Warren inclined to characterize the mounting struggle between Crown authorities and the local political opposition in pre-Revolutionary Massachusetts as a matter of life and death, but she seemed disposed to adopt the same basic moral framework when later discussing the post-Revolutionary contest between supporters and detractors of the proposed federal constitution. In both instances she was almost certainly endeavoring to utilize a particular rhetorical technique to move her countrymen to action, though this should not necessarily be taken to render moot the personal or cultural significance of the act. That in at least two instances fifteen years apart Warren was given to describe the crises she perceived facing her countrymen as a matter of the utmost importance – of blood, and suffering, and sacrifice – may well indicate that she tended to view what others characterized as political, economic, or philosophical questions through a distinctly moral lens. Furthermore, that she believed her countrymen would respond to what she wrote in the manner she intended would seem to suggest – unless she was wholly and completely out of touch with the people whose passions she confidently attempted to rouse – that a moral characterization of the events of the American Revolution and its aftermath could and did coexist with more abstract examinations of philosophy, or law, or history.

Bearing this in mind, The Adulterer would appear very much of a kind with Common Sense by Thomas Paine (1737-1809). Like Warren, Paine was given to expressing his disdain for the reigning political order in distinctly moral terms. And while Common Sense attacked the very concept of monarchical government rather than a particular manifestation thereof – i.e. the administration of Thomas Hutchinson in Massachusetts – and brought to bear a number of logistical arguments in attempted to make a case for American independence, its author was given to a form of expression not at all unlike that seen in the text of The Adulterer. On the subject of monarchy, for example, Paine declared that it was, “A form of government which the word of God bears testimony against, and blood will attend it.” In a similar vein, avowing that America only stood to suffer by being dragged into conflicts between European powers, Paine asserted that, “The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'TIS TIME TO PART [.]” And on the subject of reconciliation between Britain and America, Paine avowed that his heart had turned against it after the Battles of Lexington and Concord (April 19^th, 1775), whereupon,  

I rejected the hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh of England for ever; and disdain the wretch, that with the pretended title of FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE, can unfeelingly hear of their slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul.

Warren might well have struggled to craft a more fitting pronouncement from the lips of her own Brutus or Junius. And while there is much more besides in Common Sense that unites it in tone and outlook with Warren’s The Adulterer – Paine’s description of Britain as a “Barbarous and hellish power,” for example – their shared use of blood as a signifier of life itself, and its loss, and the villainy of those who would discount its value, would seem more than adequate to make the case.

            The Adulterer, as its fixation upon blood, and gore, and sacrifice, and revenge arguably attest, was therefore likely intended to function as an instrument of moral persuasion – to act upon the sentiments of its audience, rather than their reason. And like Common Sense, it was written at a time of great turmoil – i.e. the aftermath of the Boston Massacre – which it sought to harness for the purpose of achieving redress for injuries sustained by the people of Massachusetts. As Brutus exhorted his fellows to, “Catch the happy period [,]” so Warren doubtless sought to rouse her own suffering countrymen by means of visceral imagery and emotive language. In this, The Adulterer stands distinctly apart from certain other publications of the period whose focus and tone were decidedly academic. By way of example, Jefferson’s aforementioned Summary View – published in 1774, in the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party – or even the Declaration of Independence – published in 1776, after over a year of open conflict between Britain and the Colonies – appear somewhat more concerned with the nuances of English legal history and Enlightenment political theory than with attempting to provoke a moral reaction to decidedly immoral behavior.

And yet, though the authors of the Declaration seemed inclined to characterize the separation of the Thirteen Colonies from Great Britain as resulting from the breach of a long-established contract while Warren compared Hutchinson and his supporters to cannibals and murderers, their respective efforts should not be seen to stand opposed to one another. Both approaches – the intellectual and the emotional – served to forward the cause of protecting and promoting the lives and liberty of the contemporary American people. Polemicists like Paine and Warren made use of language, and rhetoric, and the sensibilities of their audience to rally the people to a realization of the true stakes of the crisis then unfolding around them. They blasted complacency and unthinking loyalty, mourned the suffering and the losses that had callously been inflicted, and exhorted their fellow citizens to salvage what they knew to be their birthright. At this stage, a theorist like Jefferson – or John Dickinson or James Wilson, for that matter – steps forward and offers to an audience now much inflamed a potential plan of action. “Boldly hurl oppression from her basis [,]” Warren’s Brutus declared, and well that he might have done so. But such an appeal required structure and direction if ever it were to be acted upon. Jefferson’s Summary View, Wilson’s Considerations, or the Declaration itself thus provided the legal and philosophical framework for redress. By channelling the popular moral condemnation aroused by works like Warren’s The Adulterer, these explorations of theory and precedent helped give form to the exhortations raised by the former. In consequence, while The Adulterer ought indeed to be thought of as a thing apart from some of the more theoretical or academic works of the period – in which philosophers were quoted and grievances were itemized – it was also distinctly complimentary to the same.               

The Adulterer, Part VII: Blood and Gore, contd.

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.