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Oh! My poor country!
. . .-When will it be,
When high-soul'd honor beats within our bosoms,
And calls to action-when thy sons like heroes,
Shall dare assert thy rights, and with their swords
Like men, like freemen, force a way to conquest
Or on thy ruins gloriously expire.-
-Cassius, from The Adulateur, in The Massachusetts Spy, April 23, 1772
In this excerpt from a fictitious theatrical production, Patriot writer Mercy Otis Warren created a unique persuasive message that helped polarize attitudes toward royal government in Massachusetts and energize support among those who were tired of protest. It was the second of five such pieces that appeared in Boston newspapers between 1772 and 1775. The first was couched as an advertisement in The Massachusetts Spy and mimicked the format of other reports and advertisements for concerts and entertainments at home and abroad that commonly appeared in the newspapers. The ad, however, included a novel feature: "As a specimen of the work, we have extracted the following passages" (March 26, 1772). Readers were treated to a sneak preview, something like today's movie trailers, including two scenes from a hypothetical performance, which featured the main villain, Rapatio, and his key aide, Hazlerod, in one scene, followed by an excerpted speech by the hero, Cassius. In this sketch and the others to follow the characters and events directly reference the newspaper content in which they are embedded. Fictitious characters with obvious reallife counterparts engage in fictitious speech acts that explain and amplify "real" events reported by the newspaper. As a result, a radical narrative of villains and heroes is created that becomes nearly impossible for opponents to refute. In this essay, I analyze Warren's "dramatic sketches" (Mercy Warren Papers) from the perspective of her intended audience of newspaper readers, arguing that these distinctive rhetorical texts are best understood and appreciated if read within the context of their newspaper publication.1
Over the past thirty years or so, a fair amount of attention has been paid to the life and works of Mercy Otis Warren. One of a handful of women who can claim the label "Founding Mother" (Roberts 37), she was at the center of the radical anti-British movement in Massachusetts.2 Scholars have noted Warren's fine intellect and wide-ranging...