THE GROUP: A FARCE
Directed by Kristin Heckler
Dramaturgy by Melody Brooks
No Mercy From Mercy
by Melody Brooks
Mercy Otis Warren's unexpected education uncorked, if not a genie then arguably a genius of the literary arts. She produced an enormous amount of writing. In addition to her plays and 1,300 page history of the revolution, there are dozens and dozens of letters and poems written to and sometimes at the behest of, a number of the most prominent men and women engaged in the cause of revolution. Warren's own engagement went beyond the written word. She hosted these leaders at her home in Plymouth where political strategy was discussed and determined and she contributed liberally to the conversations. When she talked, men listened. Among the surviving
letters are many from the most prominent people of the day seeking Mercy's opinion and advice, or praising her literary talents. John Adams took a particular interest in Warren, encouraging her to use her facility with verse to benefit their shared cause. She obliged. Combining her knowledge of classical history with a flair for the theatrical, she composed a series of dramatic satires: The Adulateur, The Defeat, The Group, The Blockheads, that she published anonymously in the patriotic press. It would have been foolhardy for her to publish this material under her own name, even if she were not a woman. These were no-holds-barred attacks on prominent supporters of Crown policy, most notably Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Thomas Hutchinson, for whom she had a particular loathing, believing (as did many of her compatriots) that he had betrayed his American birth for the prospect of personal advancement. Hutchinson is thinly disguised as "Rapatio" of “Upper Servia" in the first of these satires, The Adulateur; is killed off in The Defeat and referenced again in The Group.
The satirical farce was a popular dramatic form of the time and Warren wielded her pen like a knife. Although modern audiences might have trouble following the classical allusions and matching the play's characters to the local personages being skewered, Warren's contemporaries would have known exactly what was being communicated. After publishing The Group in 1775, she seemed to fear that she had gone too far. Both John and Abigail Adams reassured her. He noted that "...The business of satyr is to expose vice and vicious men as such to this scorn..." And from Abigail, "I observe my friend is laboring under apprehension, lest the severity with which a certain Group was drawn, was incompatible with that benevolence which ought always to be predominant in a female character...satire in the hands of some is a very dangerous weapon; yet...when truth is unavoidably preserved, and ridiculous and vicious actions are alone the subject, it is so far from blamable that it is certainly meritorious."
Warren sent The Group in sections to her husband who it seems, had commissioned it! He didn't keep it to himself, writing on January 15, 1775 to John Adams:
"Inclosed are for your amusement two Acts of a dramatic performance composed at my particular desire. They go to you as they came out of the hand of the Copier, without pointing or marking. If you think it worth while to make any other use of them than a reading, you will prepare them in that way & give them such other Corrections & Amendments as your good Judgment shall suggest."
John Adams did indeed think it worthwhile and the play was published in January 1775 in the Boston Gazette and the Massachusetts Spy. Montrose J. Moses in a 1918 collection of early American plays claims it was published "on the day before the Battle of Lexington" but in a letter to Adams in 1814 Warren reminds him that he "committed it to press the winter before Lexington battle". Moses is referring to the pamphlet version printed in Boston that April; the New York and Philadelphia versions contained only the two scenes that appeared in the newspapers. The Boston pamphlet cover attests "As lately Acted and to be Re-Acted to the Wonder of all Superior Intelligences, Nigh Head Quarters at Amboyne." This is the only indication that The Group might have been performed at the time it was written (as it was "near headquarters", it is fun to think that perhaps the Continental Army performed it for their own amusement.)
So well did her husband and his friends maintain Warren's anonymity that, long after the Revolution, when she had already published work in her own name, she was required to seek John Adams' help in proving her authorship. She wrote to him on July 10, 1814, only a few months before her death:
"My next question, sir, you may deem impertinent. Do you remember who was the author of a little pamphlet entitled, The Group? To your hand it was committed by the writer. You brought it forward to the public eye. I will therefore give you my reason for naming it now. A friend of mine, who lately visited the Athenæum, saw it among a bundle of pamphlets, with a high encomium of the author, who, he asserted, was Mr. Samuel Barrett. You can, if you please, give a written testimony contradictory of the false assertion." Adams responded:
"What brain could ever have conceived or suspected Samuel Barrett, Esquire, to have been the author of "The Group"? I could take my Bible oath ...That there was but one person in the world, male or female, who could at that time, have written it; and that person was Madam Mercy Warren, the historical, philosophical, poetical, and satirical consort of the then Colonel, since General, James Warren of Plymouth, sister of the great, but forgotten, James Otis."
In a subsequent letter to Warren, after she had sent him the original Dramatis Personae because he could no longer remember whom all the characters were representing, Adams, informed her that he had been to the Athenæum (a library in Boston), and written down the original names of the people satirized. This copy is still in the possession of the library.
The two plays included in her 1790 collection eschew the satirical and use Warren's classical knowledge to draw analogies to the American Revolution, and in particular to highlight women--virtuous, republican women at least--in the role of revolutionaries and activists. She apparently hadn't lost her touch, receiving a letter from Alexander Hamilton dated July 1st, 1791: "It is certain that in the 'Ladies of Castile', the sex will find a new occasion of triumph. Not being a poet myself, I am in the less danger of feeling mortification at the idea that in the career of dramatic composition at least, female genius in the United States has out-stripped the male."
With a review like that, it is time to celebrate Mercy Otis Warren as truly the first U.S. female playwright, and not just a useful tool in the propaganda machine of the Revolution.
letters are many from the most prominent people of the day seeking Mercy's opinion and advice, or praising her literary talents. John Adams took a particular interest in Warren, encouraging her to use her facility with verse to benefit their shared cause. She obliged. Combining her knowledge of classical history with a flair for the theatrical, she composed a series of dramatic satires: The Adulateur, The Defeat, The Group, The Blockheads, that she published anonymously in the patriotic press. It would have been foolhardy for her to publish this material under her own name, even if she were not a woman. These were no-holds-barred attacks on prominent supporters of Crown policy, most notably Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Thomas Hutchinson, for whom she had a particular loathing, believing (as did many of her compatriots) that he had betrayed his American birth for the prospect of personal advancement. Hutchinson is thinly disguised as "Rapatio" of “Upper Servia" in the first of these satires, The Adulateur; is killed off in The Defeat and referenced again in The Group.
The satirical farce was a popular dramatic form of the time and Warren wielded her pen like a knife. Although modern audiences might have trouble following the classical allusions and matching the play's characters to the local personages being skewered, Warren's contemporaries would have known exactly what was being communicated. After publishing The Group in 1775, she seemed to fear that she had gone too far. Both John and Abigail Adams reassured her. He noted that "...The business of satyr is to expose vice and vicious men as such to this scorn..." And from Abigail, "I observe my friend is laboring under apprehension, lest the severity with which a certain Group was drawn, was incompatible with that benevolence which ought always to be predominant in a female character...satire in the hands of some is a very dangerous weapon; yet...when truth is unavoidably preserved, and ridiculous and vicious actions are alone the subject, it is so far from blamable that it is certainly meritorious."
Warren sent The Group in sections to her husband who it seems, had commissioned it! He didn't keep it to himself, writing on January 15, 1775 to John Adams:
"Inclosed are for your amusement two Acts of a dramatic performance composed at my particular desire. They go to you as they came out of the hand of the Copier, without pointing or marking. If you think it worth while to make any other use of them than a reading, you will prepare them in that way & give them such other Corrections & Amendments as your good Judgment shall suggest."
John Adams did indeed think it worthwhile and the play was published in January 1775 in the Boston Gazette and the Massachusetts Spy. Montrose J. Moses in a 1918 collection of early American plays claims it was published "on the day before the Battle of Lexington" but in a letter to Adams in 1814 Warren reminds him that he "committed it to press the winter before Lexington battle". Moses is referring to the pamphlet version printed in Boston that April; the New York and Philadelphia versions contained only the two scenes that appeared in the newspapers. The Boston pamphlet cover attests "As lately Acted and to be Re-Acted to the Wonder of all Superior Intelligences, Nigh Head Quarters at Amboyne." This is the only indication that The Group might have been performed at the time it was written (as it was "near headquarters", it is fun to think that perhaps the Continental Army performed it for their own amusement.)
So well did her husband and his friends maintain Warren's anonymity that, long after the Revolution, when she had already published work in her own name, she was required to seek John Adams' help in proving her authorship. She wrote to him on July 10, 1814, only a few months before her death:
"My next question, sir, you may deem impertinent. Do you remember who was the author of a little pamphlet entitled, The Group? To your hand it was committed by the writer. You brought it forward to the public eye. I will therefore give you my reason for naming it now. A friend of mine, who lately visited the Athenæum, saw it among a bundle of pamphlets, with a high encomium of the author, who, he asserted, was Mr. Samuel Barrett. You can, if you please, give a written testimony contradictory of the false assertion." Adams responded:
"What brain could ever have conceived or suspected Samuel Barrett, Esquire, to have been the author of "The Group"? I could take my Bible oath ...That there was but one person in the world, male or female, who could at that time, have written it; and that person was Madam Mercy Warren, the historical, philosophical, poetical, and satirical consort of the then Colonel, since General, James Warren of Plymouth, sister of the great, but forgotten, James Otis."
In a subsequent letter to Warren, after she had sent him the original Dramatis Personae because he could no longer remember whom all the characters were representing, Adams, informed her that he had been to the Athenæum (a library in Boston), and written down the original names of the people satirized. This copy is still in the possession of the library.
The two plays included in her 1790 collection eschew the satirical and use Warren's classical knowledge to draw analogies to the American Revolution, and in particular to highlight women--virtuous, republican women at least--in the role of revolutionaries and activists. She apparently hadn't lost her touch, receiving a letter from Alexander Hamilton dated July 1st, 1791: "It is certain that in the 'Ladies of Castile', the sex will find a new occasion of triumph. Not being a poet myself, I am in the less danger of feeling mortification at the idea that in the career of dramatic composition at least, female genius in the United States has out-stripped the male."
With a review like that, it is time to celebrate Mercy Otis Warren as truly the first U.S. female playwright, and not just a useful tool in the propaganda machine of the Revolution.