A Parting Shot

When the Continental Congress included a ban on theatrical performances in its 1774 resolution against "every species of extravagance and dissipation," it seemed for a while that the delegates had unwittingly aided the enemy. Patriots felt bound to observe the ban while British occupying forces ignored it, thus turning the theatre into a vehicle of Loyalist propaganda. In Boston, for instance. General John ("Gentleman Johnny") Burgoyne transformed Faneuil Hall, the Patriot meetinghouse, into a playhouse. There he mounted productions of his own works, notably the scurrilous anti-American satire The Blockade of Boston. (Justice was poetically served, however, when the British actor-soldiers were unceremoniously routed from the stage in mid-performance last January by news of an American attack on their Charlestown strong-hold.) Burgoyne is now gone from Boston, but another parting shot was recently fired at his Blockade. The Blockheads, a merciless farce that celebrates the ignominious British evacuation of Boston, was published in pamphlet form last month and is now being widely read.

Although the play was published anonymously, the author is believed to be Mrs. Mercy Otis Warren, 47, whose previous work is thought to include three other anonymously published (and unperformed) anti-British satires--The Adulateur (1772), The Defeat (1773) and The Group (1775). Although Mrs. Warren has never publicly claimed authorship of these plays, her reticence may be attributed to feminine modesty. A friend and confidante, Abigail Adams, explains that Mrs. Warren fears that severe satire may be "incompatible with that benevolence which ought always to be predominant in a female character."

The Blockheads is certainly not benevolent; the satire is savagely cruel and frequently obscene. In the opening act, British officers and Loyalists with names like Shallow and Dupe are trapped in a garrison surrounded on three sides by Rebel forces and on the fourth by the sea. They face a "curs'd alternative, either to be murder'd without or starv'd within." With unmistakable relish, the playwright proceeds to detail the physical and moral collapse of the besieged enemy. Britain's sons of Mars, "the terror of the world," become mere "skeletons, our bones standing sentry through our skins." Speeches about an honorable defeat give way to scatological laments over the breakdown of their bodily functions. The play concludes with "huzzas for America" as the bony "blockheads" scramble aboard British ships for safety --"vomiting, crying, cooking, eating, all in a heap."

Some critics of the play argue that such a splenetic satire could not possibly have been written by a woman--particularly a woman of Mrs. Warren's station. Mercy Warren, however, has reason to be angry. Her brother, James Otis, once among the most brilliant lawyers arguing the patriotic cause, was hit on the head by a Crown officer and has never fully recovered his sanity.

Mrs. Warren's patriotic fervor has been further reinforced by her close association with several of the country's most prominent politicians. The Plymouth home of Mercy and her husband James Warren, who is now serving as president of Massachusetts' Provincial Congress, has been a meeting place for such leaders as Samuel and John Adams. An enthusiastic admirer of Mrs. Warren's satires, John Adams has encouraged her to wield her pen freely and "let the censure fall where it will."

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