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In the days before Lillian Hellman and Gertrude Stein, Mercy Otis Warren wrote and published plays, poems, and other writings that supported independence in a time where women, if they wrote at all, were relegated to writing about religious matters.
In the days before Lillian Hellman and Gertrude Stein, Mercy Otis Warren, born in Massachusetts in 1728, was a political writer, propagandist and playwright of the American Revolution. Born to a family descended from the earliest pilgrim settlers, Otis Warren wrote and published plays, poems, and other writings that supported independence in a time where women, if they wrote at all, were relegated to writing about religious matters.
Mercy’s father, while he was not an educated man, wanted his two sons to have an education and hired the Reverend Jonathan Russell to prepare them for college. Having obtained no formal eduction, Mercy was allowed to study the same curriculum as her brother James, except for Latin and Greek, which she read in translation.
In 1754, she married James Warren, who had studied at Harvard with her brother. In 1765, Warren was elected to the House of Representatives, where he served continuously until 1778, eventually becoming speaker of the House and president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, which had moved to Watertown during the British occupation of Boston. A radical and outspoken activist, he became an active leader in local revolutionary politics.
Mercy used her literary talent and background for the revolutionary cause. She wrote numerous letters and poems, which she published anonymously in newspapers. Her most effective efforts at propaganda were a series of satirical plays—the first plays written by an American woman. They appeared in newspapers and as pamphlets, instead of being performed, because Puritan Boston had laws against staging plays and did not have a theater until 1794. Three political plays have been identified as hers: The Adulateur (1772), The Defeat (1773), and The Group (1775), although the only play she acknowledged authorship of was The Group. All three focus on the moral evil of the Tory (Loyalist) administration in Massachusetts, its hypocrisy, crass ambition, warmongering, and the unjust policies of its arch villain, Governor Thomas Hutchinson. In her biting satires, Warren calls Hutchinson “Rapatio,” to contrast him to the self-sacrifice, heroism, and virtue of the patriots. The best of the three is The Group, printed in the Heath Anthology in full, a brilliant defense of the patriot cause. Instead of staging debates in this play, Warren offers a series of dialogues among Tory sympathizers and turncoats, many of whom were connected to her family, in which they drop their public masks to reveal their dishonorable choices and reprehensible designs. Although her use of blank verse and allusions to Greek and Roman politics lend the plays a “tragic” tone that later critics found “grandiose,” their savage satire was an effective propaganda tool.
In 1805, Otis Warren wrote, The History of the American Revolution. Between July and August of 1807, 10 letters from John Adams, and six from Mercy were published concerning the sharp comments about his overly passionate nature in her book. This caused a rift of friendship between Otis Warren and the Adamses that lasted until 1812.
Plays attributed to Mercy Otis Warren:
Her plays include:
The Adulateur, a five-act play, published in 1773
The Defeat, excerpts from a play, published 1773
The Group, a three-act play, published in 1775
The Blockheads, a three-act play, published in 1776, shortly after the British withdrew from Boston
The Motley Assembly, a farce, published in 1779.
The courage and intelligence of Mercy Otis Warren gave women a voice in not only the fight for women’s rights, but the fight for independence from the tyranny of 18th century monarchical rule. She takes her place among founding females that include Abigail Adams, and Betsy Ross.
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