Friday, September 29, 2017

The Adulterer, Part VI: Blood and Gore

Literary references or allusions aside, there are in fact a number of thematic elements which seem to recur across the length of Mercy Otis Warren’s The Adulterer whose prevalence and significance ought to be marked. Perhaps the most striking – in the context of Warren’s larger body of work as well as in the immediate – is the frequent use of blood-based imagery. Indeed, Warren’s sanguinary fixation is in some ways a defining element of the tone and style of her freshman attempt at political theatre. To some degree, this was surely intended to achieve an immediate, visceral effect. Confronted by characters who spoke of drenching their sword, “In the tyrant’s blood, then on the pile / Of bleeding freedom, pour the rich libation [,]” a contemporary reader would surely have been struck by the vibrancy – if not also the ghoulish brutality – of the image. Taken as a whole, however, there would seem to be something more to Warren’s often gory style of verse than a simple desire to shock or unsettle. Variations upon the image of blood and bodily harm that occur within the text of The Adulterer appear to fall within a set of fairly cohesive moral themes. Employed to convey a sense of personal sacrifice, destruction and loss, or hard-won triumph, these motifs were arguably intended to help illustrate the dangers facing contemporary Massachusetts, those factors that urged action over extended deliberation, and the means by which innocent suffering could eventually be redeemed. 

Consider, by way of explanation, the first of the three motifs named above – i.e. blood as symbolic of willing personal sacrifice. Brutus and Cassius in particular speak often and freely of the glory and nobility of shedding blood for one’s country, generally in the context of personal frustration over Servia’s ongoing plight. Act I, Scene I contains but the first of many such instances. Therein, Brutus seeks to rouse his countrymen to overcome their fears by declaring,

‘Tis not a conquest, merely, leads to fame.
The attempt enobles. Yes, the suffering patriot
Towers while he bleeds and triumphs while he dies.

In his estimation, is seems, shedding blood in the act of rescuing a suffering people renders a person something more than merely human, even if the act itself fails. Indeed, failure – in the form of death – appears to Brutus an even surer claim to victory – or fame, or ennoblement – than success. In this, Brutus – and through him, Warren – appears to reveal something about the Patriot understanding of the relationship between morality and action. Brutus is willing to fight and to suffer – to bleed – whether or not he achieves his stated goal. What matters to him, therefore, more than the goal itself would seem to be the conviction behind it – the reason for the attempt rather than the outcome of the attempt. In the mind of Brutus and his contemporaries, then, to act rightly is to act with conviction, with blood as the most personal – most vital – symbol thereof. 

This conviction would seem to be confirmed by a later affirmation uttered by Brutus’ in Act II, Scene III. “That man dies well who sheds his blood for freedom,” he declares, roused to anger following the massacre of his fellow citizens at the hands of Bagshot’s soldiers. Again, the outcome appears less celebrated than the motivation that seeks it. Brutus does not declare to his fellow citizens that the man who “shed his blood for freedom” lives well, or that, having won freedom, the misery endured in the process will have been justified. “That man dies well,” he says, rather seeming to admit that an uncertain outcome should not deter one from acting, and suffering, in pursuit of said outcome. Fellow Patriot Junius voices his agreement with Brutus later in the same scene when he states that, “He, who bleeds in freedom’s cause, expires illustrious.” The cause, it seemed, matters more than its fulfilment to Warren’s benighted Servians, and blood – one’s own blood – is evidently the symbol they most closely associate with personal fealty to the same. Thus, The Adulterer finds Brutus in Act V, Scene I, alone, dejected, professing to his beloved Servia, “I’ve waked and wept and would have fought for thee, / And emptied every vein, when threatened ruin.” Though he does not speak the words, the implication of death – of willing suicide in defence of the motherland – is clear enough in this vow. Even when the loss of life in not in the offing, however, blood serves the same symbolic purpose – i.e. a sign of one’s dedication and loyalty. 

Act V, Scene III – the finale of The Adulterer – shows the young and optimistic Servian Marcus very much in this mode. Stirred by the selfless words of his countryman Brutus, Marcus declares that, “In such a cause, pleased could I bare my bosom, / And pour my choicest blood [.]” While one may debate the precise meaning of the phrase “choicest blood,” the willingness to suffer death declared by characters like Brutus and Junius is notably absent. Marcus, it seems, is entirely willing to bleed for his country, but not so willing to die. Perhaps this is meant to symbolize his optimism – willing to suffer for the land of his birth, he yet envisions a time when Servia and its inhabitants will not be subject to the will of a self-aggrandizing tyrant. Granted, death is not completely absent from the thoughts of young Marcus. When Brutus advises him that wealth and power could yet be his upon an embrace of Rapatio and his coterie of sycophants, Marcus scorns the very idea. “Better live a poor man [,]” he affirms, “And die so too [.]” And yet, a willingness to die in poverty and obscurity for having rejected temptation is a thing apart from embracing death in the cause of freeing one’s country. 

While his countrymen seem resigned to fight for the sake of fighting – to shed blood for a cause they know to be just without necessarily believing they will meet with success – Marcus joins his readiness to suffer bodily loss with an evident conviction that the years to come may hold some hope. Asserting to Brutus his aforementioned belief that dying unknown and honest is better than living celebrated and corrupt, Marcus accordingly declares that, “Though hate and malice / May shoot their shafts against me, better thus / To make my exit, while the soul with comfort / Reviews the past and smiles upon the future.” Granting once again that the difference between fading into obscurity and expiring illustriously for the cause of freedom is rather vast, it is nonetheless remarkable that Marcus seems capable of envisioning the future at all, let alone one that he might smile upon. His fellow Servians rarely appear capable of seeing past the end of their own machismo – a noble death is the most they are capable of imagining for themselves, and the bloodier the better. And yet, despite his optimism – perhaps Warren’s attempt to add a glimmer of hope to the proceedings – Marcus draws the same symbolic connection between personal conviction and personal suffering. He, too, would willingly shed blood for his country, as it seems would every one of Warren’s Servians who think themselves a Patriot.

As discussed above, however, blood did not only symbolize willing personal sacrifice within the text of The Adulterer. Indeed, it quite often seemed to represent something altogether unwilling and unwelcome – i.e. the loss and destruction of innocent life. In this mode, blood stands in for needless slaughter, the brutal impulses that cause it, and the injustice that attends. Consider, to that end, a passage from Act II, Scene I. Having witnessed the death of an innocent Servian youth at the hands of one of Rapatio’s supporters – a reference to the killing of one Christopher Seider (1758-1770) by a Boston Customs House official named Ebenezer Richardson – Cassius recounts the scene to an anguished Brutus, concluding that, “One youth, unhappy victim fell – he lies / Reeking in gore, and bites the hated ground.” As a stand-in for blood, the word “gore” is here used to indicate needless suffering rather than voluntary sacrifice. The youth in question was not a willing casualty – he did not offer his blood in service of a particular cause – but rather an “unhappy victim” whose sacrifice was inflicted from without. Thus, whereas the image of blood often seemed to connote fealty and integrity in the context of the struggle between Patriots like Brutus and Cassius and their oppressor Rapatio, at other times it seemed to represent the damage daily done to the people of Servia by unopposed tyranny. The response offered by Brutus to the cited passage would seem to confirm this characterization. “Oppression strews / Her earliest paths with blood [,]” he exclaims, “Gods! are we men? / And stand we still and bear it? Where’s our sense?” Far from symbolizing personal conviction, here blood appears to signify both the barbarism of Rapatio and his cohorts and the failure of men like Brutus himself to offer resistance.

Subsequent instances arguably sharpened the rhetorical distinction between Warren’s uses of blood as symbol of personal covenant and blood as marker of oppression and failure. Act II, Scene III, for instance, finds Brutus lamenting the willingness of men to draw the blood of their neighbors at only the slightest urging. Though unnamed, he points clearly enough to Rapatio as the cause of such behavior in suffering Servia. “Deaf to the call of nature pleading in him,” he declares, the villain,

Imbrues his hands in blood – ten thousand join him.
The soldier heated by the cursed example,
His poniard whets,
And swear to fill these streets with blood and slaughter.

In this instance, the blood being shed is connected to a specific individual or group – i.e. the Governor who imbrues (or stains) his hands with it or the soldiers who whet (or sharpen) their poniards (or daggers) to draw it. It is not, however, their own blood that these people seek to extract. While Patriots like Brutus, Cassius, and Marcus speak of emptying their veins and bleeding for their country, here the vital fluid is being drained as a consequence of the actions or moods of a separate party. This can be particularly inferred from context – as part of a reflection upon the thoughtlessness of man, the invocation of blood and slaughter by Brutus thus takes on an aspect of waste and pointlessness. Rapatio’s hands are stained with the blood of his subjects, not because they volunteered to suffer for their country but because he sought to impress his will upon them. The soldiers follow suit out of heated temper, visiting their rage upon a people who neither asked for nor deserved it.

            The difference between bleeding nobly and bleeding piteously, it seemed, was essentially a matter of choice. Those who elect to bleed – Brutus, Cassius, and their Servian compatriots – wear their blood with pride. To them – and evidently to Warren – it symbolized the willingness of the individual to bear up under the threat of death in pursuit of something sacred. Those whose hemorrhaging was forced upon them, however, gained no such exaltation by being so drained. Far from towering while they bled, these innocents reeked with the gore that was drawn from their bodies. Their suffering was not heroic, but rather synonymous with carnage – even cannibalism. Act II, Scene IV expressed the latter, wherein Brutus describes the wounds of his slain countrymen as speaking to, “The sport of every ruffian, / Who plays with death and thirsts for freemen’s blood.” So too did a passage in Act III, Scene I, which saw Cassius pronounce these same murdered Servians the, “Unhappy victims to inhuman ruffians; / Who wish to drink this country’s richest blood, / And crush expiring freedom [.]” Within the context of The Adulterer, it would appear that blood unwillingly extracted was tantamount to the most wretched crimes imaginable. And this appeared to be true whether it adorned the streets upon which those innocents formerly resided, or marked the person of the parties responsible. Thus did Junius express his outrage at the slaughter of his countrymen in Act II, Scene III by stating that, “The inhuman soldiers stamp the hostile ground, / His garments stained with blood, / The streets of Servia sweat with human gore.”      

            Even the villains of Warren’s The Adulterer conform to this symbolic association, and in so doing give it strength. Rather than characterize their efforts to maintain control over Servia, and the suffering inflicted as a result, as unfortunate and unintended, Rapatio and his minions speak quite frankly of – indeed, seem to revel in – the unwilling blood they have drawn. Thus, in asking his supporters to falsely affirm that they have been the victims of a foul conspiracy, the Governor of Servia demands they swear, “That long before that night, / In which we snuffed the blood of innocence, / The factious citizens, urged on by hell, / Had leagued together to attack the solider [.]” As depicted by Warren, Rapatio makes no effort to equivocate, obscure, or minimise what he and his clique have done – rather, he makes their crime viler yet by admitting it so freely. And while the phrase “the blood of innocence” is not spoken with anything like the reverence attributed to it by Brutus and his compatriots, the connotation for the audience remains the same. Indeed, it is reinforced.

Consider, in that vein, a passage from Act IV, Scene III. In the midst of an extended monologue, Hazelrod attempts to explain the regard he feels for his master Rapatio by declaring of him,

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

Not only were Warren’s villains characterized by their opponents as thirsting for blood – as might an animal who responds to the urgings of its nature – but they themselves believed that the suffering they inflicted formed a key part of their own prestige. Act V, Scene II saw Hazelrod again draw this connection, this time in the form of a reassurance to an imprisoned ally. Addressing the jailed E___r – a stand-in for the aforementioned Ebenezer Richardson – the Lord Chief Justice promises him that,

            You therefore
            Shall one day leave this dismal tenement,
            Again with pleasing scenes of blood and carnage,
            To glut our vengeance – yes – by heaven we swear [.]

Laying aside the implications of the cartoonishly evil persona Warren attributed to the character of Hazelrod – a matter for another time, rest assured – his symbolic usage of words like “blood,” “bleeding,” and “carnage” is very much in keeping with the motif established by more virtuous characters like Brutus and Cassius. Whether celebrated or mourned, therefore, blood that is unwillingly drawn within the context of Warren’s The Adulterer possesses the connotation of some of the vilest crimes imaginable. By lamenting the very thought of it, Patriots like Brutus, Junius, and Marcus affirm their status as men of compassion, integrity, and honor. And by revelling in the promise of it, Rapatio and his minions make known the extent of their depravity, cruelty, and viciousness.  

Friday, September 22, 2017

The Adulterer, Part V: Bardolatry, contd.

The aspect of The Adulterer evidently drawn from Hamlet, meanwhile, is not a character – or even a piece of dialogue famously uttered by a character – but rather a general scenario. In Act I, Scene IV of the latter, the titular Prince of Denmark encounters what appears to be the ghost of his departed father upon the ramparts of the royal castle, Elsinore. Uncertain at first, Hamlet eventually follows the ghost to a private conference, at which point he is informed of his father’s murder at the hands of his brother and successor Claudius. Hamlet is shocked to hear it, struck by the ghost’s plea to be revenged, and resolves to

Wipe away all trivial, fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter.

Among the most famous scenes in the play, Hamlet’s encounter with this paternal apparition sets in motion nearly everything that follows – from the accidental death of foolish Polonius, to the suicide of maddened Ophelia, to the final bloodbath that claims Hamlet himself. And yet, the unmitigated catastrophe that the appearance of the ghost ultimately portends begs certain questions as to the significance of its claims. 

The spirit appeared to speak the truth. By all indications, Claudius did kill his brother the king. And in point of fact, he did marry the slain monarch’s wife Gertrude, and did seize the vacated crown in place of his grieving nephew. Hamlet’s desire to seek revenge, therefore, was seemingly founded upon wholly justifiable outrage. That being said, the result was surely far from what either he or his murdered father desired. By the time the curtain closes upon the final scene of Hamlet, nearly every principle character is dead. Some are killed mistakenly, others driven to take their own lives, and the rest slain either because they were the targets of Hamlet’s single-minded desire for revenge or collateral victims of the same. However valid the ghost’s complaints, therefore, and however earnest Hamlet’s intention, the result could hardly be described as a restoration of the former status quo. In consequence, it seems fair to question the nature of that first spectral meeting. Was that truly the ghost of Hamlet’s father, or some sinister spirit that had merely assumed his form? And yet more intriguing, was it the ghost’s intention to lead Hamlet down the path of ruin, or was the destruction that followed wholly the result of the Danish Prince’s foolishness, singlemindedness, or general lack of prudence? Shakespeare offers no simple answer, though his consistent practice of probing the depths of the human spirit – and the flaws he perceived therein – may perhaps be taken as a signal of his intention.

Warren’s The Adulterer, while once again failing to attain – or perhaps even attempt – the summit of Shakespeare’s verse, his talent for characterization, or his dazzling imagery, nevertheless seemed to borrow from Hamlet the basic outline of the scene cited above. In Act II, Scene I of the former, Patriots Cassius and Brutus express to each other their mutual sorrow upon being informed of the death of an innocent Servian youth by a supporter of Rapatio. In response to Brutus claiming that he would gladly die, “Could but my life atone and save my country [,]” Cassius urges him to, “Live to rescue virtue [,]” by relating to him a spectral encounter of the previous night. His father’s ghost, it seemed, had visited him, and made such demands as a departed father was wont to do. “Cassius attend [,]” the apparition began,

Where is that noble spirit,
I once instilled – behold this fair possession
I struggled hard to purchase, fought and bled
To leave it yours unsullied – Oh defend it,
Nor lose it but in death.

Understandably startled by the vision, Cassius relates that he then swore to defend that which had been left to his care, “And e’er I’ll lose it, meet ten thousand deaths.” Granted, there is much that separates this mere recollection of an ethereal visitation from the far more visceral sight of Hamlet listening attentively to the hellish lament of his father’s ghost. Cassius, for one, is not the principle character in The Adulterer. The narrative does not pivot upon his actions or intentions, and nor does the scene described by him to Brutus function as much more than a particularly colorful exhortation. It doesn’t set in motion the undoing of the principle character or his cause, and it isn’t freighted with the same ambiguity as is Hamlet’s visitation with his spectral progenitor. It is, therefore and undeniably, a less significant scene.

That being said, it is hardly insignificant. The base circumstances, for instance, are generally quite similar. In both cases, the ghost of a father visit his son, bewails the state into which the world has fallen, and requests his progeny to make things right. In fairness, the outward nature of these requests would seem to vary considerably. The forebear of Cassius seems most concerned by the extent to which his native Servia – for which he “fought and bled” – has suffered since his death. Defend it, he commands his son, as might a father who seeks to protect in death what he had earned in life. Hamlet’s father, meanwhile, chiefly addresses himself to distinctly personal matters. What seems to trouble him, more than the depth to which Denmark might sink under the leadership of the usurper-king Claudius, is the fact that he was killed before he could account for the sins he had committed in life, and that his brother – “A wretch whose natural gifts were poor / To those of mine” – has taken his place in the marriage bed of Queen Gertrude. “Let not the royal bed of Denmark be / A couch for luxury and damned incest [,]” he admonishes his son, lest his priorities be at all mistaken. In spite of the general exhortation delivered to Cassius and the specific grievances names to Hamlet, however, the connection between their respective spectral visitations is perhaps more than merely circumstantial.

Besides murder, over which the old king has every reason to be perturbed, the principle crimes that Hamlet’s father hurls at his brother Claudius have to do with the supposedly “unnatural” quality of the new king’s marriage to the aforementioned Gertrude. “Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,” the ghost declares of his brother, whom he further claims, “Won to his shameful lust / The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.” Again, it seems his anger is aroused more by the thought that his wife has been somehow soiled than that his throne has been usurped. Consider, however, the nature of the thing. Claudius captured his brother’s crown and his brother’s wife with a single act of fratricide – he married Gertrude, and thus took her slain husband’s place as King of Denmark. Far from a simple marriage partner, then, Queen Gertrude may be seen to represent the kingdom itself, to which Hamlet’s father pledged himself and lesser Claudius cannot fail to spoil. Claudius is thus an adulterer in both the literal and figurative senses – his place upon the throne and in the bed of Gertrude is unnatural, unholy, and doomed to ruin. Now consider Warren’s antagonist, Rapatio. Has he not stolen what the father of Cassius worked so hard to defend, Servia itself? By his “marriage” to the land – as its governor – does he not diminish its virtue? Is he not, then, the titular adulterer? Though Warren does not make clear how it is that Rapatio became governor – through merit, favoritism, or trickery – her depiction of the man would seem to indicate that usurpation is not beneath his dignity. And while it is Brutus, rather than Cassius, that leads the charge against the continued perversion of Servian rights, other scenes make clear that Brutus feels the same sense of fealty to his forebears, though he was spared a direct confrontation with the same.

Observe, to that end, a speech delivered by Brutus in Act I, Scene I of the Adulterer. While reflecting, alongside Cassius, upon the plight of Servia at the hands of cruel Rapatio, Brutus declares,
 
I sprang from men who fought, who bled for freedom:
From men who in the conflict laughed at danger;
Struggled like patriots, and through seas of blood 
Waded to conquest. I’ll not disgrace them.

Shortly thereafter, upon the arrival of fellow citizens Junius and Portius, Brutus offers another meditation on the sense of obligation he feels to those that preceded him in defending the liberties that Rapatio presently threatens. “By all that’s sacred!” he cries,

            By out father’s shades!
            Illustrious shades! who hover over this country,
            And watch like guardian angels over its rights:
            By all that blood, that precious blood they spilt,
            To gain for us the happiest boon of Heaven;
            By life – by death – or still to catch you more,
            By Liberty, by Bondage. I conjure you.

Evidently, though he managed to avoid a direct visitation by the ghost of one of his predecessors, Brutus is nonetheless conscious of exactly those things that the spirit of Cassius’ father made known to his son, and feels exactly the sense of obligation that Cassius determined to swear. In consequence, though his place in the parallel scene is filled by Cassius, Brutus otherwise seems to embody the Hamlet archetype, as adapted to the context of The Adulterer. He feels driven by a sense of filial duty to avenge – or at least remedy – the abuses done to his patrimony by the figurative usurper Rapatio, he is not infrequently melancholy and anxious, and he seems given to indecision. The key difference between the two – indeed, the difference between Hamlet as a piece of art and The Adulterer as a piece of political commentary disguised as art – is rather the object of their quests and their respective relationships to it.

Whereas Hamlet seeks to avenge the death of his father and rid his mother of her adulterous lover, Brutus’ aim is somewhat more abstract. Though it may fairly be argued that his forebears represent his departed father and Servia his benighted mother, his desire to restore to its proper place the rights that he and his fellow citizens regard as their collective birthright is of a different quality than Hamlet’s determination to seek personal revenge. The Prince of Denmark is motivated by filial duty – his father has been killed, his mother despoiled – and he thus allows his emotions to guide him to often unfortunate ends. Brutus conversely expresses his intentions by way of an abiding love of country. He wishes to redeem his suffering homeland – his “mother” – from a sense of duty and devotion, and aims to redeem the sacrifices of his forebears – his collective “father” – by rescuing the thing that they sacrificed for from the clutches of a cruel and covetous autocrat. Brutus – like Hamlet – does not always see matters clearly. He seems to vacillate between seeking bloody revenge and pursuing a course of forbearance and rectitude. He talks at length, and acts but rarely. And when success seems within his grasp, he accepts it thoughtlessly, more eager to claim victory than verify it. Nevertheless, he avoids Hamlet’s greatest follies by moderating his passion. It is not, after all, a parent’s life or their virtue he seeks to redeem, but the life and virtue of his country. In this he is not alone, and it is perhaps this sense of solidarity that keeps Brutus from allowing his fleeting impulses to make a bad situation worse.     

Granting the extent to which The Adulterer deviates from Hamlet ­– in large part embodied by the differing circumstances and responses of their respective protagonists – it doubtless bears asking why Warren evidently believed that the allusion served her. Why, in short, did she appear to refer to elements of the tragedy of the Prince of Denmark in her theatrical representation of the plight of contemporary Massachusetts? What purpose could it – or indeed, references to Julius Caesar or Macbeth – have served? The most likely answer to these questions is perhaps also the most intuitive – i.e. because that is what authors do. Indeed, it is what artists do. In attempting to communicate with their audience – whether in the 16th, 18th, or 21st centuries – a novelist, playwright, painter, or musician often freely references, adapts, or replicates some element of a pre-existing work. They do this to pay homage, to celebrate the art that they themselves enjoy, or to connect with their readers, listeners, and viewers in ways that take advantage of their experiences and expectations. Sometimes they seek to short-circuit an emotional or atmospheric trigger by way of a kind of shorthand. Replicating a scene from a well-known piece of literature within their own work, for example, may effectively harness the connotations of the former to the advantage of the latter. In other cases, artists may seek to manipulate audience expectations by using familiar elements to establish a sense of comfort and equilibrium that may then be shattered for the purpose of narrative or emotional payoff. References and allusions, in short, form part of the essential language of creative expression, along with things like color, tempo, intonation, or diction. To allude, therefore, is to seek to connect with an audience upon a common plain of experience.

Warren’s use of Shakespeare as a frequent reference point in The Adulterer certainly falls within this realm. Not only was she familiar with the works of the Bard of Avon, but she doubtless understood that her prospective audience was similarly conversant. Shakespeare, therefore, represented a type of shorthand between author and reader – a means by which the two might communicate more efficiently and effectively than otherwise. Indeed, Shakespeare likely represented the most common shorthand available among citizens of late 18th century Massachusetts, save perhaps for the Bible. By giving her antagonist the name of Brutus, therefore, Warren could reliably depend upon her readers to make the connection to the tragic hero of Julius Caesar and calibrate their expectations accordingly. By putting words in the mouth of her villain Rapatio that resembled those famously uttered by the vile and scheming Lady Macbeth, she could hope to harness the feelings her audience likely nurtured about the latter towards more effectively characterizing the former. And by drawing similar associations between filial duty, adultery, and revenge as were depicted in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Warren could endeavor to conjure audience impressions of the Danish Prince and his motivations in service of establishing the disposition and intentions of her own protagonist. In this sense, strange as it may seem, Warren’s use of Shakespeare is perhaps the most relatable element of her first foray into political drama.

However important Joseph Addison’s Cato may have been to the Founding Generation, and to Warren in particular, in its sober celebration of personal integrity, it is not at present a widely renowned – or even widely known – piece of theatre. Productions of Cato are not mounted yearly in cities around the world, it has not been widely adapted to television or the cinema, and its characters and expressions have not become part of the common lexicon of everyday vernacular English. It has hardly been lost to time, of course, though neither has posterity seemed to celebrate it much. In consequence, though Cato’s influence upon the form and substance of Warren’s The Adulterer is both pronounced and highly significant, the average 21st century reader will likely pay it little heed. Shakespeare, on the other hand, is as vital in 2017 as it was in 1773. Festivals that celebrate the Bard of Avon and his work are a regular feature of the cultural life of most countries in the English-speaking world, and countless expressions coined by Shakespeare – from “all’s well that ends well” to “wild good chase” – have since become a integral components of spoken and written English. Far beyond the national poet of England itself, William Shakespeare has become the national poet of an entire linguistic culture.

While this hardly represents any kind of revelation, it should serve to give pause to those interested individuals who struggle to connect with the events and personalities of the American Founding. Though it may be something of an oddity that the most accessible point of reference between an 18th and 21st century reader of The Adulterer appears to be a set of plays originally written and performed in the 16th and 17th centuries, it is nonetheless the truth. And in that truth, there is something infinitely precious. Mercy Otis Warren, as the above examination has hopefully shown, wrote for an audience that was – like herself – literate in the works of Shakespeare. Her references to Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet were not indulgent flights of artistic fancy, but techniques by which she sought to more effectively communicate with her readers. Though over two hundred years have passed since then, this is hardly an unrecognizable gesture. She was doing in 1773 what artists working in a variety of mediums have since attempted across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries – i.e. adapting, alluding to, or directly referencing characters, scenes, or plotlines from the works of Shakespeare. And in the process – though certainly without intending to – she has made it possible for someone born nearly two centuries after Warren died in 1814 to in some way grasp both her own frame of reference as well as that of her audience. She liked Shakespeare. They liked Shakespeare. So do countless people living in the English-speaking world today. That commonality – that shared reference point – presents a tremendous potential entry point into a deeper and more vital understanding of The Adulterer, the American Founding, and the personalities that shaped each of them.

Friday, September 15, 2017

The Adulterer, Part IV: Bardolatry, contd.

   As to content, The Adulterer appears to borrow from or allude to a number of Shakespeare’s dramatic works, though to a lesser degree than in relation to form or style. That being said, the few allusions that may be positively identified remain significant in the manner by which they attempted to connect narrative or personal tropes common to the Shakespearean canon to the events and personalities of 1770s Massachusetts.

Take, for instance, Warren’s highly sympathetic portrayal of the character Brutus. This erstwhile Servian Patriot is in effect the protagonist of The Adulterer. The anguish he feels over the state of his country is made abundantly clear - indeed, the lament he shares with Cassius for benighted Servia is what opens the play, effectively setting the tone for what follows – and his motivations are never presented as anything less than sincere and genuine. That being said, the historical figure after whom he is named was possessed of a rather complicated legacy. Marcus Junius Brutus, as cited previously, was one of the chief conspirators in the plot to assassinate Julius Caesar and a co-commander against Caesar’s angered allies at the Battle of Philippi (42 BC). While his former friend Marc Antony (83 BC-30 BC) was quick to defend the nobility he perceived in Brutus and saw to the respectful disposal of his remains, subsequent observers were far less kind. As the Roman Republic transitioned into the Roman Empire under the authority of the slain Caesar’s adopted son Gaius Octavius (63 BC-14 BC), Brutus became an object of scorn and vilification. Not only was he considered a traitor to Caesar himself – since deified by the Roman Senate – but to the whole of Roman civilization. Later chroniclers – with the exception of essayist Plutarch (46-120) – were similarly unkind. Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), author of one of the most famous literary depictions of the historical Brutus, even went so far as to portray him in his Divina Commedia, published in 1321, as doomed to languish in the ninth circle of Hell alongside fellow assassin Cassius and Judas Iscariot.

Anyone reasonably conversant in the history of the ancient Roman civilization – i.e. those citizens of Massachusetts who had received the standard 18th century classical education – would have been aware of these characterizations of Brutus. At best he presented in most historical accounts as noble but credulous, and at worst he was portrayed as vile and disloyal. Why, then, would Warren have named her tragic hero after such a figure? What connotations did she hope to summon by granting her protagonist the name of one of history’s most famous assassins? The answer, as hinted at above, has everything to do with the works of William Shakespeare. The historical Brutus, as it happened, was the also principle character in his neoclassical tragedy Julius Caesar. Though cajoled – some might say manipulated – by Cassius into joining the conspiracy against his friend and mentor, Shakespeare’s Brutus is an exceedingly complex character who constantly grapples with dueling loyalties to the Roman state and to his former benefactor. Once the deed is done, Brutus proceeds to be haunted by Caesar’s ghost; his attempt to save Rome from the tyranny of a demagogue is turned against him by the wily Marc Antony; he becomes an enemy of the state; he loses what few of his allies remain. In spite of what he believed to be the noblest of intentions, it appears as though his actions have doomed himself and his countrymen in equal measure. And yet, at the moment of his suicide, Brutus seems to take some degree of solace in the outcome he has witnessed. “I shall have glory by this losing day,” he avows, “More than Octavius and Mark Antony / By this vile conquest shall attain unto.”

This is the version of Brutus to which Warren’s protagonist most clearly hews. Neither traitor nor dupe, the protagonist of The Adulterer is a man of integrity and conviction who nonetheless grapples with the conflicting impulses of his conscience. At times he feels in his heart a powerful need for retribution upon those who have wronged him, though he resists its urgings in favor of patience, resolution, and a respect for the rule of law. At times he feels compelled to act, to defend Servia from its enemies, by a deep and abiding sense of patriotism, yet he rarely seems to know precisely what it is he ought to do. And upon finally taking action and being met with an outcome that has all the outward appearances of victory, he too easily fails to question the depth of what he and his allies have achieved. This abiding complexity, tendency towards internal conflict, and unquestionably noble intentions are eminently Shakespearean in their basic dimensions. As with the Bard’s tragic hero, Warren’s Brutus is a creature of emotion whose honor and integrity are rooted in the love he feels for his country. His failings are plain enough, but they never detract from the quality of his character or the purity of his intentions. Thus, as with the protagonist of Julius Caesar, the heroic lead in Warren’s The Adulterer is cast as an object of compassion, admiration, pity, and regret.

Clearly, knowledge of the historical Brutus alone would not have prepared audiences in Massachusetts to identify with or feel sympathy towards his Servian namesake. Doubtless many of them were aware of the former’s role in the history of ancient Rome, perhaps even to the point of identifying him as potential symbol of anti-monarchical or pro-republican sentiment. That being said, a people familiar with Shakespeare – which, as discussed, Warren’s intended audience almost certainly was – would doubtless feel a far greater affinity for the character that Shakespeare so skillfully rendered. The Brutus of history was more an icon than a man – emblematic of treachery, conspiracy, lost causes, or noble failures. There was little warmth in the many retellings of his deeds, and little attempt to attribute moral complexity to the decisions he made. Shakespeare’s Brutus was comparatively vital and human, and Julius Caesar a far more affecting chronicle of his last days than even Plutarch’s relatively generous biography. Desirous of eliciting a particular response from her audience – outrage, grief, reflection, etc. – Warren was therefore well-disposed to settle upon Brutus as the name and the inspiration for her brooding hero. Though history had ascribed to the designation all manner of symbolic importance, Shakespeare alone had made it fit for a man who struggles against the forces of history, human weakness, and his own impulses in search of a brighter day for the country he loves.      

In addition to this particularly weighty allusion to one of the great tragic figures of the Shakespearean canon, The Adulterer also contains what appear to be references to famous scenes from both Macbeth and Hamlet. As to the former, two scenes (Act I, Scene II and Act III, Scene IV) offer snatches of dialogue from Rapatio that bear a strong thematic resemblance to Lady Macbeth’s famous “Unsex Me Here” monologue from Act I, Scene V. By way of a refresher, said oration is delivered by the wife of the title character in the form of a sinister plea, by which she hopes to summon the ability to carry out whatever means are necessary to see her husband’s visions of royal succession come to pass. Even by the standards of the Bard of Avon – which are obviously quite high – it is a tremendously effective and visceral piece of writing, full of bodily imagery and hellish allusions. “Come, you spirits [,]” the lady first invokes,

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, your murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry, "Hold, hold!"

From within this passage, several things ought to be marked out for later comparison. First, the manner in which the character addresses herself to a vague group of “spirits,” combined with the ill deeds she seems intent on carrying out, leave a definite impression that Lady Macbeth is not seeking solace by communing with the angels. Rather, it appears that she seeks to invoke the embodied darkness to which the Christian God stands fundamentally opposed. Also worth noting is the exact nature of her plea. She does not ask for something to be done in her behalf – for an old man to die, some accident befall him, etc. Rather, she asks that her own sense of mercy and compassion be stripped away so that she can achieve the desired ends herself. Thus, by asking that some part of herself be extracted or destroyed so that she can serve a larger purpose, Lady Macbeth engages in what is essentially a very twisted act of self-abnegation. 

While Warren does not quite reach this pinnacle of lyric expression in the cited passages of The Adulterer, the general circumstances thereof are notably similar. Act I, Scene II sees Rapatio alone in his home, musing upon the ills that the Patriot cause has visited upon him and girding himself to seek revenge. Working up from bitterness to passionate hatred, the Governor of Servia soon enough resolves that,

            If there is any secret sympathy,
            Which born and bred together, they may claim,
            I give it to the winds -- out! out! vile passion,
            I’ll trample down the choicest of their rights
            And make them curse the hour that gave me birth;
            That hung me up a meteor in the sky,
            Which from its tail shook pestilence and death

Note in these verses Rapatio’s desire to be rid of that part of himself which he finds burdensome to his desired purpose. He seeks revenge for the humiliation that the Patriots have visited upon him – a reference to the real-life Governor Hutchinson’s encounters with mob violence in August, 1765 – and willingly casts “to the winds” whatever sympathy he may be made to feel for having been born and raised in the same country as his hated enemies. Look, too, at the comparison he makes between himself and a meteor, whose tail bring forth “pestilence and death.”  While it may be something of a stretch, a comparison to a passage from the Bible’s book of Revelations appears to speak to Rapatio’s infernal intention. Said passage, from chapter eight, verses ten and eleven, reads, “There fell from heaven a great star burning as a torch, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood, and many men died of the waters [.]” Reading a falling star as a meteor and the poison wrought by Wormwood as “pestilence and death,” it would seem that Rapatio – and thus, Warren – sought to characterize his birth as equivalent to the Biblical apocalypse.

The relevant dialogue from Act III, Scene IV, while somewhat less emphatic, nonetheless seems to spring from the same core sentiment. Referring to the Patriots, whose efforts at seeking recompense for their suffering has reached the peak of its success, as “Mistaken wretches [,]” Rapatio next declares, “Come cunning be my guide, / Beleagued with hell -- Come all those hateful passions / That rouse the mind to action [.]” While in this instance the Governor of Servia seems intent on summoning the will to visit cruelty upon his countrymen, rather than dispelling whatever virtues might prevent him from doing the same, the net result is essentially unchanged from Act I, Scene II – Rapatio seeks to act against his subjects without remorse, seems to doubt his ability to do so, and attempts to summon the will. Lady Macbeth’s plea – though expressed with greater art – is very much on this same order. As she sought to shut out her sense of remorse, so Rapatio flung his feelings of fellowship to the heedless gale. As she asked to be filled, “From the crown to the toe, top-full / Of direst cruelty [,]” he bid welcome to, “All those hateful passions / That rouse the mind to action [.]” And as her invocation of nameless spirits and “Murdering Ministers,” and her plea for the cover of, “The dunnest smoke of hell [,]” evoked a decidedly demonic quality, the parallel he seemed to draw between his arrival on earth and its final ending lent a unequivocal, all-consuming darkness to the subject at hand.

Thus – with admirable subtly, if not admirable skill – Warren appeared to invoke one of the most notorious aspects of one of the notorious characters in the contemporary canon of Western literature. Rapatio did not repeat the lines first penned by Shakespeare for Lady Macbeth – which are likely too gendered to be successfully grafted onto a male character – but rather expressed the same basic sentiment in the same basic context. Lady Macbeth sought to deny the primacy of her kindness, mercy, and compassion – qualities doubtless thought to be womanly, hence the need to be “unsexed” – in order to act in a decisive manner upon the vision of her husband attaining the throne of Scotland. Duncan, King of Scotland and object of her murderous intent, was her countryman – nay, her sovereign lord – to whom she ostensibly owed love, fellowship, and fealty. Her intention to destroy him, therefore, and her consequent willingness to let the utmost darkness take possession of her body and her soul, is a truly monstrous thing. That her outsized ambition is the essence of sinfulness is made clear by her ultimate fate – driven mad by guilt, she ends her own life. Rapatio, meanwhile, endeavored to banish the sympathy he might have felt for his fellow Servians and call to himself the darkest impulses possible in order to quash the latent insurrection of the so-called “Patriots” and preserve his office thereby. As Governor of Servia, he has been bestowed a sacred trust – the fate of his countrymen is his to determine, and their rights his to protect or to deny. His declared intention to trample upon that which his fellow Servians hold dear, and his willingness to associate his existence with death and destruction, is thus cause for horror and revulsion. Granted, the audience is not shown what fate yet awaits cruel Rapatio – he goes unpunished as of the final scene. A familiarity with Shakespeare, of course, and with one of his most enduring characters in particular, would surely have furnished an answer. Only one manner of outcome could lie ahead for a character so self-consciously vile. 

Friday, September 8, 2017

The Adulterer, Part III: Bardolatry

            Notwithstanding the influence of English playwright Joseph Addison upon the character and content of Mercy Otis Warren’s The Adulterer – noted in the previous entry in this series – the style and the text of the play are also marked by certain parallels to the works of another prominent English dramatist whose canon was widely performed and admired in contemporary British America. The artist in question was, of course, one William Shakespeare (1564-1616). Ever-popular, ever-relevant, and seemingly ever-present anytime an English speaker sets pen to paper, it should come as little surprise that Shakespeare was in some way present in Warren’s earliest attempt at political satire. She was, after all, a highly literate woman. Doubtless she had read his work, though a 1750 law passed by the Massachusetts General Court would have prevented her ever taking in a performance. Nevertheless, it bears some explanation as to how she sought to utilize certain elements of the accepted Shakespearean style and why she felt such allusions might be useful.

            To begin, it bears noting the extent to which the works of Shakespeare continued to be performed across the Anglo-American world during the middle-to-late 18th century. Despite the brief ban on most forms of theatre at the behest of Puritan authorities during the Interregnum (1642-1660), the Restoration (1660-1688) witnessed the re-emergence of Shakespeare’s works as both objects of popular enthusiasm and subjects of royal patronage. By the middle of the 18th century – after a period in which producers and actors reacted to what they considered to be dated language and static staging by freely adapting works like The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream into operas that better suited the popular taste – this unchallenged centrality in the canon of English theatre was further reinforced by the coupling of Shakespeare’s original text with the emerging Georgian Era (1714-1830) fascination with celebrity. Star actors like David Garrick (1717-1779) and Charles Macklin (1690-1797) nightly plied their trade at London’s Drury Lane and Covet Garden theatres, not infrequently staring in the same plays on the same night – so high was the demand for quality productions of “the Bard’s” newly restored works. By the early 1740s, a full quarter of the plays being yearly performed in Britain were the product of Shakespeare’s quill, and in 1769 the aforementioned Garrick succeeded in organizing a celebration of Shakespeare’s two hundredth birthday in Stratford-upon-Avon. By the 1770s, the celebrated author of Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet had unquestionably been embraced as the national poet of the British people and had become the premier influence on contemporary English theatre.

            Granting that the above description may not seem to bear much relevance to the popularity of Shakespeare in 18th century colonial Massachusetts, it nevertheless ought to be remembered how closely contemporary Americans’ tastes in music, art, and literature followed those of their British cousins. Certainly there were American composers, painters, and playwrights of the period who developed unique forms, patterns, and models of expression, but they tended to be in the minority. Most American-born painters either studied in England or consciously sought to imitate popular English styles, largely in response to the tastes of an audience that had developed its aesthetic sensibilities by studying prints of the works of prominent English artists. Popular music in the colonies was similarly influenced by the established European Classical model, which formed both the basis of listener expectation and the framework of practitioner education. American theatre was no exception to this trend. Of the earliest productions put on by a professional troupe of actors in British America – that of English theatre manager William Hallam (1712-1758) – the majority were of English extraction. Hallam had been forced to leave London following a declaration of bankruptcy in his competition with the aforementioned David Garrick, and set about organizing a tour of the Thirteen Colonies and the British West Indies in order to recoup some of his losses. Together with his brother Lewis, Hallam brought professional productions of some of the most popular plays in contemporary Britain – The Beaux’ Stratagem and The Recruiting Officer by Irish playwright George Farquhar (1677-1707) and Hamlet, Richard III, and The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare – to theatres in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. Even the first play of American origins to be put on by professional actors in British America – The Prince of Parthia by Thomas Godfrey (1736-1763) – was a neoclassical tragedy in the mold of Julius Caesar or Coriolanus and was acted by Hallam’s English-trained performers.

            Of course Massachusetts was never the beneficiary of any of these early experiments in American professional theatre. As mentioned above, the General Court – motivated by much the same quality of Puritan censoriousness that had prompted similar measures during the English Interregnum – passed a law in 1750 barring the production of plays of any kind within the boundaries of the colony. Not only does this account for the absence of Hallam’s troupe from Boston – one of the larger settlements in contemporary British America – but it also seems to point towards the manner in which Mercy Otis Warren’s own works were intended to be consumed. After all, why would she have chosen the form of theatrical drama for her attempt at social commentary if she knew The Adulterer would never be performed? The answer, quite simply, is that more people read plays in mid-to-late 18th century British America than saw them staged. Not only is this attested to by documentary evidence of personal ownership of early Folio and Quarto editions of Shakespeare by individual colonists – private citizens, mind, not actors, producers, or playwrights – as early as the 1690s, but the dialogue of prominent members of the Founding Generation was frequently interspersed with quotations from or references to the works of the same.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), for example, was known to recommend the reading of Shakespeare as both a lesson in the finer points of English composition and – in the case of King Lear – an exemplar of the value of filial duty. Massachusetts native John Adams (1735-1826) was no less struck by what he perceived to be the utility of Shakespeare’s work to the occasions and challenges of daily life. Pages from his diary – a practice he kept up throughout his life – nearly burst with passages from The Merry Wives of Windsor, Timon of Athens, and Henry VIII, and letters sent to and received from his wife Abigail (1744-1818) were often accompanied by choice citations. Granting the John and Abigail Adams may conceivably have witnessed performances of Shakespeare prior to the 1750 ban, their obvious and casual familiarity with the text of Shakespeare would seem to indicate that they read the works of the Bard far more often than they ever saw them staged. Taking John Adams as a fair approximation of the kind of audience Mercy Otis Warren hoped to touch with her own work – circa 1773, a reasonably successful, educated, middle class lawyer – it would therefore seem a realistic assumption that her ideal audience possessed both the means and the tastes to recognize and appreciate allusions, parallels, or references to the works of Shakespeare when they encountered them in the works of others.

            The actual forms which The Adulterer’s particularly Shakespearean elements took were several, of both a structural and textual nature. In terms of the former, many scenes of Warren’s tragedy end with a rhyming couplet, and every act ends with the Latin word exeunt – save the last, which ends with the phrase exeunt omnes. The use of rhyming couplets as a form of punctuation at the end of a scene was exceedingly common in the works of Shakespeare, though he was also known to introduce rhyme into the dialogue of certain characters in order to convey specific personality types or represent a sense of artifice. A famous example of a scene-ending couplet can be found at the conclusion of Act II, Scene I of Macbeth, wherein the titular character, intent on murder, announces upon hearing the chiming of a clock, “Hear it not Duncan; for it is a knell / That summons thee to heaven or to hell.” Compare that to the last line of Act I, Scene II of The Adulterer, in which ruthless Rapatio resolves in a double couplet, “Over fields of death; with hastening step I’ll speed / And smile at length to see my country bleed: / From my tame heart the pang of virtue sling, / And mid the general flame like Nero sing.” While, as aforementioned, Shakespeare did not solely confine his application of rhyme to the ending of a scene, the use of such couplets was, and is, a readily identifiable trademark of the Shakespearean style of verse. For Warren’s purpose, therefore, employing rhyming couplets as scene-ending punctuation was an easy way to conjure the feeling or mood of Shakespeare in the minds of her audience.

            The aforementioned use of exeunt and exeunt omnes were similarly typical of Shakespearean scripting, though they admittedly enjoyed a currency that extended beyond the lifetime and works of the Bard of Avon. Taken from the third-person, plural, active form of the Latin verb exeo (to leave), exeunt means essentially “they leave,” and was a common form of stage direction – indicating that a group of characters should depart the scene – among Elizabethan dramatists. Exeunt onmes, meanwhile, with the addition of the third-person, plural, active form of the word omnis (all, every), means “they all leave,” and was often used to conclude the final scene of a particular play. Again, Shakespeare was far from the only playwright of his era to make use of this style of stage expression – a cursory survey of some of the works of contemporaries Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) and Ben Johnson (1572-1637) make this abundantly clear. And there were also a number of 18th century dramatists who continued its use as a standard piece of written stagecraft – the aforementioned George Farquhar, for instance, or fellow Irishman Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816). Nevertheless, Warren’s use of the same possessed a significance not usually enjoyed by those of her predecessors or contemporaries. Whereas Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer or Sheridan’s The School for Scandal were always meant to be performed – thus making their uses of exeunt essentially invisible to the audience – Warren’s The Adulterer was always meant to be read. The audience of Warren’s freshman theatrical effort would thus have been exposed to the stage direction as well as the verse, just as they had been when reading the works of Shakespeare. Noting the use of exeunt and exeunt omnes in The Adulterer, the impulse to comparison would doubtless have been felt by those who read it – i.e. Warren’s play was overtly Shakespearean in form, and perhaps aspired to be Shakespearean in tone and significance as well.   

            Another common feature among The Adulterer and the works of William Shakespeare is their shared use of what’s called blank verse. Essentially a poetic form that utilizes unrhymed but specifically measured lines, this style of lyrical expression was famously utilized by writers like Shakespeare, his friend and contemporary Christopher Marlowe, and English poet and polemicist John Milton (1608-1674). Shakespeare in particular used a form of blank verse structured on what’s known as an iambic pentameter, wherein each line is divided into ten alternating syllables, five stressed and five unstressed. Thanks in no small part to the efforts and innovations of Shakespeare – who later began to deviate from the strict use of measured syllables, and introduced looser and more varied rhythms as a result – blank verse went on to dominate the style and form of English poetic expression for several centuries after his death. Indeed, by the time The Adulterer was published in 1773, it was still the most popular lyrical form in the realm of English poetry, thanks in no small part to its re-popularization by Milton’s Paradise Lost. Non-poetic blank verse, however, had largely fallen out of favor. Some of the most popular plays in the 18th century Anglo-American world, like the aforementioned Farquhar comedy The Beaux’ Stratagem or Sheridan’s The Rivals, were written in free and unrestricted dialogue, and attempts to write drama in the style popularized by Shakespeare were most often attempted in the spirit of purposeful allusions or imitations. The aforementioned ­Cato, a Tragedy by Joseph Addison – a neoclassical drama on the order of Julius Caesar or Coriolanus – very much falls within this sphere.

            Arguably, so too did Warren’s The Adulterer. Granted, the verse therein does not strictly follow the framework of iambic pentameter. Some lines are short, composed of one or two words, while others contain nine, eleven, or twelve syllables instead of the prescribed ten. Nevertheless, the piece is unmistakably written in verse. It is not a skillfully wrought as Macbeth, say, or Hamlet – it doesn’t trip off the tongue, as it were, in nearly so delightful a manner. The intention, however, is plain enough. Owing to the popularity of comedic works written in far more informal and naturalistic language, it would surely have seemed sensible of Warren to pen her scathing denunciation of the Massachusetts ruling elite as a farce or a comedy of errors – barbed, yes, but uncontrived. That she instead went to the effort of writing The Adulterer in verse would seem to signify an objective beyond the ordinary. More than simply communicating a partisan message to her fellow countrymen, Warren made a point of structuring that message in a very particular way. While this may have represented an attempt at emulating Addison rather than Shakespeare, the familiarity of Warren’s countrymen with the works of the Bard of Avon would seem to recommend the latter. Viewing The Adulterer through the lens of its Shakespearean pretensions, an 18th century audience may well have applied – consciously or otherwise – their internalized assumptions about tragedy, heroism, and pathos to Warren’s first attempt to represent the same. 

Friday, September 1, 2017

The Adulterer, Part II: War of Words

            By the standard established heretofore in this series, I’ll grant that a piece of theatrical satire strikes a rather odd contrast to my usual fare. I stand by the choice, of course. What comes next, I am confident, will prove a fascinating discussion. Nevertheless, I feel the need to explain the sort of approach I intend to make. The Adulterer, after all, is a piece of literature. In consequence, there will be much talk of meaning and characterization in what follows, as well as symbolism, narrative, theme, and subtext. A discussion of such things is made necessary by the fact that the document in question is not a plain recording of – or reaction to – certain historical events as they occurred. Rather, it is an interpretative response – an attempt by Warren to communicate an idea or an emotion that reflects upon certain facts, all through the medium of creative allegory.

I justify wading into this dense and thorny area – to myself as well as to anyone else – by maintaining that there is much to learn about Warren’s understanding of events in 1770s Massachusetts within the text of The Adulterer. Not only does it represent her personal reaction to the plight her country suffered, but it would also seem to constitute an attempt on her part to shape the public conversation that followed by encouraging similar reactions from among her beleaguered countrymen. That she used satire – so often a medium of outrage, by which the powerless vent their anger at those in power – to attempt this is telling. And so too are the themes, names, and symbols she chose – telling of what her ultimate aim might have been, of the nature of her audience, and of their shared conception of the challenges they then faced. How she chose to express herself, in short, is in this context equally as important as precisely what it is she said. If such things are of little interest to you – if, like me, you shunned school lessons in English because you didn’t like being told how to correctly interpret a given piece of art – then by all means feel free to excuse yourself for the next little while. We shall soon enough return to our regularly scheduled programming. In the meantime, however, we shall press on. To begin, it would seem prudent to outline the plot of The Adulterer. Thereafter, in this first entry, I’d like to highlight a few noteworthy aspects of form and discuss some of the ways that Mercy Otis Warren used language and subtext to build meaning into her work.

As noted previously, the play is a fairly compact five act satire whose setting and characters were meant to symbolize late 18th century Massachusetts and its various inhabitants. The land depicted is named Servia, with its governor called Rapatio. An unabashed tyrant, Rapatio seeks to enrich himself and his followers by extinguishing his fellow Servian’s stubborn love of freedom. The piece opens with an extended conversation between Patriots and citizens Brutus, Cassius, Portius, and Junius which sees the four men loudly lament the sorry state of the country as compared to its illustrious beginnings. The spirits of their forefathers would weep to see what Servia has become, the four of them agree, and it therefore falls to them to make right what has gone so wrong. The scene then shifts to the home of Rapatio, who curses the Patriots and vows revenge for indignities he earlier suffered at their hands. Rapatio’s Secretary of State, Dupe, then enters, praises his superior, and begs to be remembered when the man comes into the full extent of his power. This basic dichotomy – Brutus, Cassius, and their friends and allies as a noble, beleaguered people arrayed against the self-consciously ruthless Rapatio and his various sycophantic deputies – forms the narrative spine of what follows. Scenes thereafter accordingly alternate between the laments, frustrations, and exhortations of the Patriots and the unreservedly vile machinations of Rapatio and his clique.

Brutus and Cassius next witness the death of an innocent youth by one of Rapatio’s supporters, Portius arrives and urges the need for revenge, and Brutus calms him with words of prudence and wisdom. Rapatio, consulting with the commander of Servia’s military – one Bagshot – then curses the riotous behavior of the Patriots and plots a violent response to increasing popular agitation. The next scene sees Brutus reflecting upon the cruelty of human existence, only to be interrupted by first Cassius, and then Portius and Junius, all of whom alert him of the recent murder of their fellow citizens by Bagshot’s soldiers. The three scenes that follow then show Brutus and his allies as they mourn their fallen countrymen, express their desire for revenge, and ultimately resolve to demand of Rapatio that the soldiers be removed from Servia’s streets. A meeting between Rapatio and some Senators is next depicted, wherein the latter entreat the former to recall the offending soldiers before the beleaguered masses take matters into their own hands. Raptio claims he must speak to Bagshot before making any such decisions and Bagshot advises that Rapatio back down – “Honor says, stand -- but prudence says, retire.” Rapatio reluctantly agrees with this advice, returns to the Senators, and makes known his ostensible commitment to heal the breach between the government and people of Servia. Having been informed of this outcome, Brutus celebrates what appears to be the peaceful resolution of an incipient crisis.

The next four scenes focus either on Rapatio or his various subordinates as they express their contempt for the common people of Servia or the devotion they feel towards their leader. This sequence begins with Rapatio, his brother Meagre, his brother-in-law Limput, and a soldier whose name is rendered as P____p, then introduces another soldier named Gripeall, then becomes a monologue for Rapatio – wherein he attempts to banish his conscience – before finally shifting into a second monologue, this time for the Lord Chief Justice character Hazelrod. A third monologue follows, whereby Brutus once more laments the state of his country and its people and begs the “powers divine” to render some aid against so reprehensible a foe as Rapatio has proven. The next scene finds the accused murderer of the innocent youth mentioned earlier – named E____r – awaiting the judgement of his countrymen in his cell. He complains of being put up to the task by Rapatio and his supporters and then abandoned, at which point Hazelrod appears to reassure him that the entire cohort is working to see him released. The final scene then commences: Brutus, dejected and discouraged, encounters a young Patriot, the previously unseen Marcus. Marcus, eager and earnest, professes his desire to be of some aid in the rescue of their country, to which Brutus advises that persistence and integrity are the best remedies anyone can seek. Refuse preferment, and allow monsters like Rapatio to be, “Crushed in the ruins they themselves have made,” he declares, and a brighter future will yet dawn upon benighted Servia.       

            While certainly not the most compelling piece of dramatic expression ever penned by human hand, The Adulterer was – in 1773 – and remains significant in ways that have little to do with the quality of its text or the rendering of its characters. Indeed, its various constituent elements – character names, elements of style, overt and subtextual references, etc. – seem at times about as important to its author’s intentions as the narrative itself. Yes, it does essentially retell the events of 1770 in Boston, during which the looming crisis between the American colonies and the Crown reached its lowest point to date. And yes, it does present Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson – as Rapatio – and his various allies – as Limput, Meagre, Bagshot, Hazelrod, et al. – as unabashedly greedy, vicious, conniving, and merciless. But these could hardly be considered revelations. The Boston Massacre (March 5th, 1770) was by 1773 a cause for mourning and resentment across Massachusetts – recognized, in fact, by the observance of Massacre Day between 1771 and 1783. There was surely little Warren could add to what had been said already to deepen the sense of bitterness and loss her countrymen already felt. And as to Hutchinson and his clique of colonial officials, a great number of Warren’s fellow citizens were doubtless already convinced by the time that The Adulterer was published that every officer of the Crown from Governor down to custom’s clerk was as vile and reprehensible as it was possible for a human to be.

In consequence, then, the purpose of The Adulterer was likely not to convince its intended audience of the brutality of British behavior in America or the cruelty and callousness of colonial officialdom. It would rather seem probable that Warren’s aim was to simultaneously confirm her viewers’ assumptions as to the state of government in Massachusetts and direct them towards a reaction or a perspective that she felt to be most appropriate. This, she seemed to attempt by a number of means. The first and most obvious of which was through the aforementioned use of certain specific references and stylistic elements. Some of these components likely functioned as code-words of a sort, whereby the initiated could be made aware of the playwright’s sympathies. Others appeared to operate on the level of making the subject matter at hand – i.e. the recent calamities suffered by the people of Massachusetts – amendable to the tastes of the contemporary theatre-going public. Each served to facilitate Warren’s ultimate goal – though not always harmoniously – of provoking a particular response among her audience by representing familiar events through a slightly skewed lens.

Take, for example, the quotation Warren chose to include at the beginning of the piece, from Act II, Scene III of English playwright Joseph Addison’s Cato, a Tragedy. It read in full,

Then let us rise, my friends, and strive to fill
This little interval, this pause of life
(While yet our liberty and fates are doubtful)
With resolution, friendship, Roman bravery,
And all the virtues we can crowd into it;
That Heaven may say it ought to be prolonged.

Notwithstanding the content of it – though doubtless it would have struck many in Warren’s intended audience as particularly relevant to their as-yet unresolved plight – the choice of its inclusion says a great deal about the mood of what followed and to whom The Adulterer was supposed to be addressed. Addison (1672-1719), a statesman, essayist, and general man of letters, was among the most famous public personalities of late Restoration and early Georgian Britain, with Cato – written in 1712 – as by far his most popular and influential published work. Set during the last days of Roman Senator Cato the Younger, the play depicted the twilight of the Roman Republic through the words and deeds of perhaps its last implacable defender. Against the backdrop of the imminent arrival of Julius Caesar, Addison’s Cato meditates on such themes as individual liberty, monarchism, republicanism, logic, and personal conviction, culminating in the titular character’s decision to commit suicide rather than live in a world dominated by the will of a single individual.  

Celebrated by members of both the Whig and Tory political factions in contemporary British politics, Addison’s Cato notably served to stir Thomas Gordon (1691-1750) and John Trenchard (1662-1723) to pen a series of essays under the title Cato’s Letters which collectively denounced the corruption and tyranny the two men perceived as having crept into the practice of government in Britain. As discussed in weeks past, these essays were themselves a potent influence upon the thinking and writing of the Founding Generation, though Addison’s original play was inarguably an even greater source of affection and inspiration. Among men like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington, there appeared to be no single piece of literature upon which more affection was heaped. Washington in particular was exceptionally fond of the play, quoted it often, and even requested a performance for his men while they camped at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in the winter of 1777-1778. In Washington’s eyes, it seemed, Addison’s tragic hero was the very embodiment of virtue, self-sacrifice, and integrity. As Cato resolved to cleave to his convictions even in the face of death, so did Washington frequently declare that he would rather dispose of the honors and offices made available to him and retire in obscurity, secure in the knowledge that he had done what his conscience demanded. Granting that few of Washington’s fellow Americans attempted to live the lessons imparted by Addison’s Cato to quite this extent, the play and its title character were undeniably objects of great reverence and inspiration throughout much of British America in the latter half of the 18th century.

Warren’s quotation from Cato, therefore, was likely intended to both reflect the affection she felt for a piece of literature that had served as a personal inspiration and also act as a kind of signal to those among her audience who were similarly inclined. That said quotation precedes the text of The Adulterer doubtless speaks to the importance its author attached to this objective. Before a single line of her own creation reached the ears of the viewer, they were first to be made aware that Warren was fond of Addison’s greatest creation, that she valued its message, and that she believed some portion of it might effectively preface what she herself had to say. To that end, those among her audience who were likewise devotees of Addison’s tragic hero would surely have kept the fact of the quotation – and all that it suggested – in mind as The Adulterer commenced. The entire work, in effect, existed in the shadow of Cato.  While this might not have been the most flattering critical comparison, it was one which Warren seemed keen to invoke. And in so doing, she essentially set the stage for what followed – a tragedy in the style of Addison, in which virtue was confronted by corruption and tyranny, a hero grapples with the dictates of his conscience, and a great people are brought low by the ambitions of a single man.       

The names that Warren chose for the various characters featured in The Adulterer are similarly indicative of the kind of narrative she intended to portray and the various virtues and vices that formed the core of its moral dynamic. The aforementioned governor of beleaguered Servia, for instance, was named Rapatio. Doubtless audiences were meant to perceive an association with words like “rapacity” – aggressive greed – and “rapaciousness” – excessively grasping or covetous – and to attach these characteristics to the character itself. Before he even opened his mouth, then, the antagonist of Warren’s narrative was already marked out as a man of excessive, clutching, perhaps even destructive avarice. The various members of Rapatio’s retinue were for the most part also given names that connoted negative character traits. Hazelrod, for instance, was another term for a length of birch – a “switch” – with which a contemporary parent might have administered a beating to their child. The moniker bestowed upon the Secretary of State of Servia – Dupe – was meanwhile surely meant to evoke an image of credulity or foolishness, Rapatio’s brother Meagre was doubtless named as such to imply a fundamental personal inadequacy, and military officer Gripeall to denote one who finds fault in everything he sees. Combined, the overall impression of the antagonists of The Adulterer would therefore seem to be one of pettiness, self-indulgence, querulousness, and imprudence. 

The protagonists of The Adulterer – representative of the oppressed people of Servia – were blessed with comparatively unoriginal designations, though they were no less significant to the general impression Warren seemed eager to convey. Brutus, the ostensible hero of the piece, shared his name with both the semi-mythical founder of the Roman Republic, Lucius Junius Brutus (???-509 BC), and Marcus Junius Brutus (85 BC-42 BC), assassin of Julius Caesar. Both namesakes were exceedingly important figures within the history of republican Rome, and perhaps more importantly within the context of 18th century political philosophy. Symbolic both of the overthrow of a corrupt monarchy – the semi-legendary Roman Kingdom – and the slaying of an unabashed tyrant, Brutus was among the many Roman pseudonyms deployed by 18th century Anglo-American essayists who wished to denounce corruption or plead for a return to some lost age of virtue. Cassius, another Patriot of Servia and friend to Brutus, possessed a similar pedigree. Gaius Cassius Longinus (85 BC-42 BC) was another of Caesar’s assassin’s, and along with his co-conspirator Brutus had attained a degree of reverence among 18th century admirers of classical republicanism for his failed attempt to hold back the tide of encroaching tyranny. By naming her two central protagonists after these illustrious figures, Warren no doubt hoped to evoke these very same connotations – of virtue, conviction, and opposition to despotism.

Another friend and ally of Brutus was the aforementioned Junius. In addition to possessing another self-consciously Roman name, Junius also shared his moniker with an otherwise unknown essayist who contributed a number of letters to London’s Public Advertiser between 1769 and 1772. Among the various topics that these letters discussed, a large number were directed towards both informing the British public of the nature and history of their rights under the English Constitution as well as drawing attention to the various instances in which the contemporary governments of the Duke of Grafton (1735-1811) and Lord North (1732-1792) had infringed upon those selfsame rights. Corruption, it seemed, was the great sin of these redoubtable public servants, along with a lack of respect for freedom of the press and a persistent abuse of the royal prerogative, and the self-styled Junius took it upon himself to alert his fellow citizens to the crimes he believed were being perpetrated in the name of Parliament, the Crown, and the British people. The letters were well received and widely re-printed, and at the same moment that Parliament was actively grappling with a group of recalcitrant colonies on the outskirts of the Empire over similar accusations of corruption, the infringement of established liberties, and the prerogatives of the Crown. Warren’s invocation of the name Junius in her 1773 satirical drama, therefore, was surely intended to pay tribute to – and express solidarity with – this unknown but highly-regarded polemicist whose chosen cause seemed to align quite closely with that of the citizens of British America.

The final two Patriots of Servia to feature in The Adulterer were called Portius and Marcus. Likewise possessing typically Roman designations – Warren’s identification of colonial Massachusetts and the Roman Republic is hardly in doubt – these characters also happened to share the names of the Cato’s sons in Joseph Addison’s aforementioned tragedy. The Portius and Marcus of Cato open the play with a dialogue concerning the ruins to which the two believe Julius Caesar has reduced the Roman people – “Is there not some chosen curse,” Marcus laments, “to blast the man/Who owes his greatness to his country’s ruin?” Marcus is later slain while attempting to foil an attempted betrayal of his father by men he thought to be his allies – “Thy brother Marcus acts a Roman’s part,” Cato remarks upon being informed – and Portius is present upon his father’s self-inflicted demise. As with the quotation from Addison cited above, Warren’s use of these two specific names for characters in her own theatrical meditation on virtue and corruption was doubtless intended as both a form of tribute as well as a kind of signal to her audience. Those familiar with the tragedy Cato would surely have recognized them, marked their significance, and inferred something about the message of The Adulterer and the intentions of its author. This was most assuredly Warren’s objective, to invoke the weight that Addison’s greatest work carried among her countrymen and direct it towards the realization of her own particular literary ends.