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.
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