"'Tis pity that when laws are faulty they should not be mended or abolisht": Authority, legitimations, and honor in Aphra Behn's The Widdow Ranter

Velissariou, Aspasia

Aphra Behn's tragicomedy The Widdow Banter, or, The History of Bacon in Virginia was staged posthumously in November 1689, but it was most probably written in 1688.1 Although by the summer of 1683 the Whigs had suffered total defeat, the ideological and theoretical repercussions of the political discourses constructed at the time of the Exclusion Crisis were inescapable. They had set a number of fundamental discursive premises that effectively circumscribed much of the subsequent political problematics. In this sense, while The Widdow Ranter is obviously not part of the Tory propaganda drama of the early 1680s, it is inscribed, nonetheless, in the crucial political debate on government, its origins, and the prospects of resistance that originated in the Exclusion Crisis.2 This debate and its ramifications implicated theoretical discourses and social practices in interrogation, or, conversely, reconfirmation of received notions of authority.

In the context of the remarkable polarization of the political ideologies in the 1680s, and notwithstanding Behn's Tory partisanship, The Widdow Ranter is exceptional. It makes a number of concessions to conceptions of government normally associated with oppositional politics and, in this sense, defies reductive Whig-Tory ideological distinctions. The play is a complex and deeply contradictory text; while reinscribing conservative notions of political legitimacy, at the same time it challenges the concept of lawful authority. Behn problematizes the origins of authority, its principles of legitimacy, and the position of the individual in the face of an incompetent or absent authority. In a gesture that to a certain extent interrogates her unrelenting support of the monarchical order, she considers the possibility of individual reaction as an alternative origin of political legitimacy when lawful power is either absent or abusive. Individual resistance in the form of populist leadership, embodied in Bacon, emerges as this alternative. Behn, however, wants to show that power which draws its strength from popular mobilization constantly undermines its basis. The people as a possible origin of political legitimation are clearly incompatible with her fiction of legitimacy, which incorporates resistance only in the form of doomed heroic action. Crucial to her vision of a political order, which, for all its deficiencies, is essentially correct, is the choice of a heroic rebel whose ethics of honor serves, in the last analysis, as stabilizer of the very order that his political action seeks to counter.

The plot of The Widdow Ranteris based on the popular British uprising in Virginia in 1676 led by Nathaniel Bacon, the son of an English squire, who, having lost his fortune by extravagance, was sent by his father to the colony (1674) in order to repair it. In Virginia Bacon bought a plantation and within a year he became a councilor. Because he, like others, was suffering the raids of the natives without being sufficiently protected by the colonial government (the defense issue being a chronic problem in the colony) he headed volunteers in the war against the Indians without commission by Sir William Berkeley, the governor. Although twice declared a rebel by Berkeley, he gained enough popular support to be able to seize Jamestown and force the governor to flee the town, which he burnt to the ground. The rebellion was put to an end by Bacon's death from fever, followed by harsh reprisals on his supporters.3

From the rebellion we can derive two discursive points of specific interest to my argument. First, in his Manifesto, Bacon, in an impressive rhetorical display, justifies his cause as follows:

If to plead the cause of the oppressed, If sincerely to aime at his Majesties Honour and the Publick good without any reservation or by Interest, If to stand in the Gap after soe much blood of our dear Brethren bought and sold, If after the losse of a great part of his Majesties Colony deserted and dispeopled, freely with our lives and estates to indeavour to save the remaynders bee Treason God Almighty Judge and lett guilty dye. (278; emphasis added).4

Second, in the commissioners' report to the Privy Council, made after their investigation in Virginia, Bacon is described as making use of the language of "Libertyes": "He pretended and hosted what great Service hee would doe for the country in destroying the Comon Enemy, securing their Lives and Estates, Libertyes," called by the commissioners "such like fair frauds" (qtd. in Todd, Gender 55). Both the Manifesto and the commissioners' description highlight elements in Bacon's rhetoric that render it similar to the hero's own political discourse in Behn's play, while simultaneously demarcating her discursive indebtedness to the historical Bacon's language.

What emerges from this account of Bacon's political discourse is a compound of an appeal to the people, reminiscent of the Commonwealth rhetorics, and an unequivocal statement of allegiance to the King underscored by his refusal to be called rebel.5 As will be shown later, in the language of her fictional Bacon Behn retains and underscores the historical Bacon's loyalty to the King, insisting also on his disavowal of the identity of rebel. Understandably, she erases those rhetorical staples, such as "Liberties and Properties," that in the 1680s typified Whig political discourses, and relegates them to the language of the corrupt Justices of Peace. She emphatically inscribes, however, the important Whig principle that defines the right to self-- preservation and to the protection of the common good as legitimating agent of political initiative and resistance. The individual's right to (self) defense circumscribes Bacon's discursive position when confronted with the counter-argument of sedition put forward by the colonial authorities. Nonetheless, it is eventually negated by the dying hero who reconfirms absolute allegiance to the lawful power, however abusive. Allegiance is offered, at the end, as the only available position of the subject in the political order. By the same token, "duty" as the marker par excellence of the subject's relation to a legally constituted hierarchy erases Bacon's political and verbal indebtedness, albeit vestigial, to what amounts to a contract theory of government.

In the play Bacon's confrontation with the deputy governor Wellman and colonel Downright condenses the political problematics of the play, with the exception of the colonial issue that briefly appears earlier. Bacon turns in Whimsey and Whiff, who had been bound by the "Rabble," to the authorities so as to be punished for their attempt to murder him. In a gesture that typifies his continuous distancing from, and therefore undercutting of, his only source of power, that is, the people, Bacon orders them to retire. Typically also he invokes self-defense as a justification for his arresting them, but Wellman responds to his accusations by claiming the common character of his crime (taking arms) and theirs (attempted murder): acting without commission. Their exchange is worth quoting at length:

BACON 'Tis very well Explain'd Sir,-had I been Murder'd by Commission then, the Deed had been approv'd, and now perhaps, I am beholding to the Rabble for my Life:--

WELLMAN A fine pretence to hide a Popular fault, but for this once we Pardon them and you.

BACON Pardon, for what? By Heaven I Scorn your Pardon, I've not offended Honour nor Religion:

WELLMAN You have offended both in taking Arms,

BACON Shou'd I stand by and see my Country ruin'd, my King dishonour'd, and his Subjects Murder'd, hear the sad Crys of widdows and of Orphans.You heard it Lowd, but gave no pitying care to't. And till the war and Massacre was brought to my own door, my Flocs, and Herds surpriz'd, I bore it all with Patience. Is it unlawfull to defend my self against a Thief that breaks into my doors?

WELLMAN And call you this defending of your self?

BACON I call it doing of my self that right, which upon Just demand the Councill did refuse me. If my Ambition as you're pleas'd to call it, made me demand too Much, I left my self to you:

WELLMAN Perhaps we thought it did,

BACON Sir you affront my Birth,-I am a Gentleman, And yet my thoughts were humble-I wou'd have fought under the meanest of your Parasites

DOWNRIGHT Tis fear'd Sir, under this pretence you aim at Government:

BACON I scorn to answer to so base an accusation, the height of my Ambition is, to be an honest Subject.

WELLMAN An honest Rebell, Sir- (II.iv.77-106)

From this crucial passage there arises a number of interrelated issues pertaining to the proper end of government and the position of the subject in the face of a political authority that does not meet its end. This problematics was central to the political debate following the Exclusion Crisis but still current in the days of James II. Here, as in other passages, Behn interrogates received notions of lawful authority, the intransigence of law with regard to individual political agency, and explores the fine distinction between legitimate resistance and sedition. Her critique, however, only partly challenges received notions of class, property, and colonial expansionism since these function essentially as potent legitimating agents of political authority in the unstable and fluid context of Virginia. Precisely because Behn clearly perceives all three factors as constitutive of sociopolitical legitimacy, the notion of authority she constructs must be explored in connection with these ideological presuppositions.

Behn's perception of property as legitimate access to authority and its consolidation is seemingly contradictory arising out of the need to take into account colonial specificity. Although she acknowledges that ownership of property in the form of large estates is the sine qua non for the possession of authority, Behn constantly draws attention to the distinction between men of "birth," such as Bacon, and the upstarts of the Council. As

Friendly explains to the newcomer Hazard by way of introduction to the Virginian system,

this Country wants nothing but to be Peopled with a well-born Race to make it one of the best Collonies in the World, but for want of a Governour we are Ruled by a Councill, some of which have been perhaps transported Criminals, who having Acquired great Estates are now become your Honour, and Right Worshipfull, and Possess all Places of Authority; there are amongst'em some honest Gentlemen who now begin to take upon'em, and Manage Affairs as they ought to be.

HAZARD Bacon I think was one of the Councill.

FRIENDLY Now you have named a Man indeed above the Common Rank, by Nature Generous; Brave, Resolv'd, and Daring. (Li.105-114)

This instance is typical of Behn's insistence on the traditional British classification of rank in which birth, heredity, and landowning naturalize rule by status through the identification of honor (in the form of ancestry) with inherited virtue.6 Bacon's nobility, in the sense of both birth and gentlemanly behavior, sets off the baseness of the Councillors by serving as the signifier of quality. Quality, nevertheless, can no longer easily function as a fixed category in the colonial context, which is flexible enough to include upstarts in positions of authority. The recurrent references to "Rank and Quality," therefore, expose the ideological dysfunction of the traditional class system while, at the same time, they serve as its constant stabilizers.

Behn presents the majority of the Virginian authorities as former criminals and of base origins (Dunce was a farrier and a forger, Timerous an "Excise-man," Dullman a tinker, Boozer a pickpocket and informer, etc.). In this sense, she is in accord with the historical record of the shocking effect made on the English by the upstarts who were administering the colony and by a confusion of rank impossible in the metropolis (Todd, Works 452n).7 The destabilization of the English status system that conceives of sociopolitical leadership as innate and hereditary is exposed in Timerous's claim that he is a man of "Rank and Quality" because he is "one of the Honourable Council, next a Justice of Peace in Quorum, Cornet of a Troop of Horse ... and Church-warden" (III.i.20-22). Thus "Quality" is disconnected from birth; in the colonial reality it is wealth (which buys "great estates," and therefore prominence) that deconstructs traditional classifications.

Much as birth is parodied in the language of Behn's "low" characters, such as Flirt, who says that she is a "Gentlewoman" because her father was a "Barronet, but undone in the late Rebellion" (I.i. 187-88), it still retains all its ideological legitimating force. Although the estate as a marker of the rightful possession of political power may have collapsed, the distinction between the upstarts and the gentlemen is maintained insofar as people of low "extraction" in authority are in desperate need of social legitimation. Hence the ideological significance of the opening scene, which throws into relief this distinction by contrasting the upstarts with members of the English gentry, such as Hazard and Surelove, both younger brothers. Hazard, after having squandered his small fortune in England, came to the New World to make his fortune precisely like the historical Bacon. In this case, the colony functions as the locus of opportunity for both lowborn people and young penniless gentlemen, but by no means as a leveller of rank.

Friendly suggests to Hazard that there is always the chance for young brothers "to pick out a Pritty Livelyhood here...as well as in England" (I.i.77-78) by taking sexual advantage of women or by fortune hunting preferably among gentlewomen or young heiresses. Untypically for Behn, here male sexual and economic opportunism that commodifies women is not criticized insofar as hereditary status has to be established in the face of colonial class mobility.8 Status should determine, authorize, and legitimate the subject's agency all the more so because colonial hierarchies are vulnerable to the conflation of rank. Because the latter makes even more urgent the projection of an essentially correct and morally upright hereditary system of privilege, Behn constructs an idealized version of the rebel-hero whose bravery and generosity are the natural attributes of his ancestry. The inheritance of land, which forms the economic backbone of the system in England, is nonetheless complicated by the colonial reality.

Bacon's attitude to property is selective because it is determined by his colonial position. His encounter with the Indian king is crucial, for it forcefully inscribes the complex relationship between colonial property and inheritance created by colonial right, and Indian sovereignty grounded on the original possession of native land. After asserting his essential pacifism, Bacon invokes his "Country's good" that forced him to fight his "Friends."9 The king's counter-arguments, however, are difficult to refute precisely because they raise the issue of European colonialism and treachery:

KING Yet tho' I'm young I'm sensible of Injuries; And oft have heard my Grandsire say-That we were Monarchs once of all this spacious World; Till you an unknown People landing here, Distress'd and ruin'd by destructive storms, Abusing all our Charitable Hospitality, Usurp'd our Right, and made your friends your slaves.

BACON I will not justify the Ingratitude of my fore-fathers, but finding here my Inheritance, I'm resolv'd still to maintain it so, And by my sword which first cut out my Portion, Defend each inch of Land with my last drop of Bloud. (II.i.10-18)

From this passage there arise two opposing claims of the "natural" right to sovereignty centering again on the nature of legitimation that the play constantly calls into question. The choice of the word "Monarchs" is doubly significant: it amplifies the absolute and incontestable nature of the Indians' right to their "World," and, at the same time, it suggests monarchy as that form of government that matches "this spacious World." In the context of the recent political debate between the Tories and the Whigs about the origins of government this argument is double-- edged, considering Behn's monarchical politics. Monarchy is the original form of government that began in the father, and therefore it draws its legitimacy from the ancient institution of patriarchal rule. This political proposition-typically used as the core of legitimation of absolute monarchy in Filmer and other Tory writers of the 1680s-is based on the historical origin of this form of government. A number of Whig political thinkers, such as William Penn, James Tyrrell, John Locke, and others, conceded the idea of absolute monarchy as the first form of government. 10 They provided a theory of historical development, however, in which absolute monarchy, by virtue of its antiquity, was only appropriate to the first stages of humanity, and, significantly also, to the contemporary primitive world.11 The Indians in America were in fact used by Locke and Tyrrell as an example of a primitive people who, inhabiting a vast and thinly populated land and being poor, live under patriarchal rule.12

The king's argument of the Indian legitimate right to sovereignty is therefore based on its ancient origin, as indeed is his own rule. In this sense, he correctly talks of the Europeans as usurpers of native right. On the other hand, the principle of the origin of authority as a justification for its continuation is no longer self-evident because it had been a contested political notion for a number of years. At the same time, however, the Indian king grounds his case on precedence as constitutive of the Indian right to sovereignty. In the context of the competing claims of Whigs and Tories on the notion of historical precedence in which each party sought to appropriate for itself the constitutional and legal history of England in order to justify its own version of rule, this argument is more difficult to refute: it suggests the antiquity of custom as validation of an original right.13 Therefore, Bacon quickly brushes aside the king's just protest against imperialist aggression and uses his inheritance right as a legitimate origin of his own authority.

Bacon's speech succinctly describes the full circuit of English economic expansionism and the concomitant rationalization of colonial rule. His seizure of a land that rightfully belongs to the natives, skillfully masked by the phrase "finding here my Inheritance" (emphasis added), reinscribes the possession of property as a legitimating agent. This time, however, the latter disguises expansionist aggression by naturalizing the colonialist right to the appropriation of native land. Appropriation of land from its original owners by force normally does not confer title.14 In the colonial context, however, occupation and cultivation of native land convey title since Indian land does not constitute legitimate property. Therefore, occupation creates right and this, in its turn, lawful defense; by the same token, the latter engenders war for the protection of land against its original owners. That this war in reality draws its legitimacy from conquest is suggested by the word "slaves" used by the Indian king to describe his people's subjection to the Englishman's "fore-fathers." Ironically it is also confirmed by Bacon himself: in his self-contradictory statement his war is for the protection of a land which his "sword...first cut out."15

In the ensuing battle (IV.ii.) Bacon will kill the king and accidentally his own beloved, queen Semernia, who had fought in male disguise. Derek Hughes observes that "Bacon's pursuit of Semernia provides Behn's greatest critique of the adulterer as liberator," and that her death by his hand, due to misrecognized identity, emphasizes the alienation that informs sexual and cultural relationships in the play (372).16 Even so, Bacon's violence co-exists with, and is finally superseded by, his nobility, underscored by his final gesture to fight with the betrayed king on "equal terms" (29). As Fearless says, "his Romantic humour will undo us" (44), but it is precisely Bacon's romantic humor that rescues him from the charge of violence. At the same time, it is his heroic ethics vested in his language of honor that Behn uses to provide the ultimate argument for his claim to lawful authority. Bacon's case against the Indians is essentially just because of his romantic attachment to bravery and generosity. Predictably the defeated party, i.e. the king, fully recognizes the moral superiority of the aggressor in a scene where the cowardice of his fighters, whom he significantly now calls "slaves" (7), is contrasted with Bacon's nobility. Over his dead body Bacon says he "cou'd weep over the Hero I my self destroy'd" (62-63).

Bacon's heroics in this particular scene, however, is predominantly anchored in the justification, and exoneration, of his war as "just Revenge" (13) for the protection of property that was violated by the natives. Maintaining one's property by sword is lawful defense. The same argument will be used later by Bacon in his confrontation with Wellman and Downright: "Is it unlawfull to defend my self against a Thief that breaks into my doors?" (II.iv.89-90). Bacon's discourse is predicated on two politically charged notions of the 1680s, namely, "property" and "defense," and on their intrinsic connection. Steven Zwicker points out that "the rhetorical fervor surrounding the language of property was vivid in the Exclusion Crisis and yet more heated in 1688 when this language was exalted to a `revolutionary principle'" (145-- 146). Property was ascribed a theoretical status central to the Whig polemics against patriarchalist theories that assumed the King's original holding of all property. Having granted absolute monarchy as the original government, the typical Whig argument is that, because of the increase of population and goods and the introduction of complicated relationships of property, people had to invent laws for its maintenance and regulation. The prevalent economism of Whig political theory is obvious in the fact that the protection of property is assigned as the origin of law and the end of government. Consequently it is the development of property relations that decides what form of government is better fit to serve them. More importantly, it is the degree to which a government successfully provides the protection of property as well as the lives and liberties of the subjects that validates its sovereignty.17

This Whig rationale of the end of government is implied in Bacon's justification of his taking arms without commission: the protection of lives, liberties, and properties.18 Behn, however, does not allow her hero to mouth these three words that are inscribed in contemporary political language as Whig staples. Instead, she paraphrases in the same way that she opts for the "Country's good" (II.i.4) instead of "the common good," another Whig slogan. These words, nonetheless, obsessively mark dramatic speech, taking on different signification according to the speaker. At times, they are consigned to the language of the Virginian Council as hypocritical slogans, the choice of the insidious Dunce for delivery being a telling gesture:

DUNCE By an order of Council.... Whereas Bacon, contrary to Law and Equity, has to satisfie his own Ambition taken up Arms, with a pretence to fight the Indians, but indeed to molest and enslave the whole Colony, and to take away their Liberties and Properties. (III.ii.125-30)

Other times, they sound fake and arrogant as on Timerous's lips when he talks of the "Rabble": "To Stake our Lives and Fortunes against their nothing" (II.iv.54). The preservation of "Lives" and "Fortunes" (I.ii.106) as Bacon's achievement figures also in Whiff s argument with Whimsey with regard to the precise nature of his crime. Finally, they are invested with some dignity in the language of the decent Downright, who represents Bacon's rebellion as a threat to their "Fortunes," "Honours," and "Lives" (I.ii.30-31).

The compulsive reiteration of this discourse of life-propertyliberty by virtually all the parties involved suggests the ideological potency of these notions, inescapable even for the Tories. In their theoretical counter-attack, they, too, presented themselves as the defenders of the liberties, originating in Magna Carta. Therefore, a common preoccupation with the same notions, such as liberties, property, law, etc., formulates a bipartisan vocabulary, while opposing interpretations form a competing political ground.19 In this sense, Behn's discursive indebtedness to the current political vocabulary, far from signifying a rigid party affiliation, allows for a multiplicity of meanings depending on the moral rectitude of the speaker. What marks ideological partisanship, and in this case Behn's, however, is the notion of the people. The people as the "rabble" was constructed by the Tories as the major threat to the traditional hierarchy of the church and state. It follows that their preservation from the tyranny of popular government could best guarantee the security of the subjects and their properties.20 Therefore, Behn's stereotypical Tory anti-populism is that catalyst which stabilizes the politics of the play in the conservative position of unequivocal loyalty to the political hierarchy. As will be shown later, her anti-populism, signified by the refusal of the morally upright Downright to speak to the "Rabble"-"What Men of Authority dispute with Rake-Hells? 'tis below us Sir" (II.iv.52-53)-will determine the political closure of a story of subversion.

Nonetheless, the protection of lives, liberties, and properties that forms the end of government persists as a problem where the government cannot fulfil its end. From the outset, Friendly's description of the colonial government's mismanagement of trade and its general ineptitude in protecting the colonists from Indian raids raises exactly this issue: "For at this time the Indians by our ill Management of trade, whom we have Armed against Our selves, Very frequently make War upon us with our own Weapons" (I.i.95-97).21 Bacon's central position that it is the subject's right to defend himself, and the welfare of his fellow beings, when the government fails to protect them is, therefore, voiced by other characters. Friendly in fact legitimates his action; that Bacon lost patience in waiting for a "Commission," which had been postponed out of fear of his ambition, serves as a further justification. As Friendly says, Bacon deserves to be treated as a "Conquerour" rather than as a "Traytor" (II.i.131). Interestingly, a similar rationale is articulated by Whiff, his uxuriousness granted, when he repeats his wife's argument that "what [Bacon] has done was for our defence" (I.ii.11-12).

Consequently, Bacon appears to have a strong case for himself that cannot be easily countered by the Virginian authorities. The case is that if the end of government cannot be attained, then lives, liberties, and properties have to be protected by some other means. Inept government is presented as no government at all: insofar as authority is void the subject is forced to political reaction. Janet Todd correctly observes that Behn here, as in Oroonoko, places her hero's actions "within a vacuum of authority" since Sir William Berkley, the governor and deputy of Charles II, does not appear in the play. As she suggests, this is a dramatically poignant gesture because Bacon appropriates a certain royal authority (Gender 50), which is central to the construction of Behn's heroics. Todd's remark is significant in another important sense. The vacuum of authority serves as a testing ground for her. Without betraying her royalist allegiances, she positions her hero dangerously close to the notion of the consent of the many as the basis of government.

This delicate balance, suspended in the end, is temporarily retained on the basis of self-defense as a contradictory notion: on the one hand, it is dictated by the need for personal security and, on the other, it involves self-activation that often borders dangerously on unauthorized action. In Bacon's words "self-- defense," not only as the subject's right, but also as obligation, authorizes his resistance to the Indian aggression insofar as the absence of authority suggests the subject's release from obligation. In this context, the shift attempted by Downright from the issue of the right to (self) defense to sedition (II.iv.103) is politically wise. In line with the Tory perception of self-defense as instrumental in the resistance theory, both Downright and Wellman interpret self-defense as rebellion: "a specious device to resist legitimate authority, a cover for ambition and greed" (Zwicker 143).22 More importantly, Behn's decisive move in clearing her hero of all suspicion that he may be somewhat inspired by the notion of consensual government is his individualist attitude to authority. If Bacon's revolutionary politics were consistent then the next step would be the dissolution of government and the reversion of power to the people. But that would be tantamount to admitting the people as the origin of power and, consequently, their right to rebellion, a politically unacceptable position not only for Behn but, significantly also, for the overwhelming majority of the Whigs.23 Because the people cannot operate as the origin of power they simply serve to set off the inherent nobility of the hero and underscore his essential isolationism.

Even so, Bacon's position is vulnerable to a legitimate objection. The King's deputy may be absent, but there is a lawful authority represented by the Council, however degraded. Therefore, to the question of whether or not it is lawful to punish one's enemy is added another crucial one: Is the equation of an inept authority with the lack of authority truly valid? The real issue here is not so much what legitimates political action-in the civil war both parties (Bacon and Downright) claim that they fulfil the proper end of government-but who decides what constitutes a lawful political authority. The answer given by the Councilors is tautological: they are the lawful authority because the law has defined them as such. So they provide a definition of lawfulness in its strictest, legalistic sense. To their logic, therefore, acting with or without commission is of primary importance. The act of authorizing a subject to perform an action constitutes in itself the essence of their authority and, at the same time, it both consolidates and reproduces it:

WELLMAN But all knew what we must expect from Bacon if that by Lawfull Authority he had Arriv'd to so great a Command as Generall, nor would we be huft out of our Commissions. (I.ii.16-18)

Commission as an engine of power through manipulation is also evident in Dunce's ploy to offer Bacon a commission for General in order to entrap him. At the same time, it is offered as an important means for the distribution of power amongst the subjects and, therefore, for the allocation of positions of power in the colony; hence Friendly's proposal to the newcomer, Hazard, to present him to the Council "for a Commission" (I.i. 137). "Commission" functions as an empty signifier that acquires meaning in accordance with the interested politics of the authorities. In Wellman's equation of Bacon's unauthorized action, with the murder attempted by Whiff and Whimsey, lack of commission serves as the letter of the law. According to their logic, Bacon's demand of a commission is suspect because, as Downright says, it is a cover for ambition (I.ii.19-20).

In Hazard's remark that "then it seems all the Crime this brave Fellow has committed, is serving his Country without Authority" (I.i. 132-33) the essence of a lawful action (serving the Country's good) and the legalistic form of it (with or without authority) are contrasted, but the antithesis is not resolved. Behn's text constantly interrogates the moral and practical validity of this antithesis questioning the tautology by which legitimate action is that which is legalistically constituted. Law arises as a thorny issue, not in itself, but by virtue of its connection to people in authority. Behn's problem-"can a temporary break of law for the sake of an essentially just cause constitute a capital offence?"-cannot be resolved in the context of her politics. An affirmative answer would signify adherence to the legalities of a corrupt authority. The opposite stance would imply that people in authority remain in a position of power only as long as they serve the public good, which is the scope of the power given to them.24 That, however, would admit both the contract theory and the possibility of resistance. Thus, her probing into the nature of law, legitimation, and lawfulness is necessarily open-ended.

In the following exchange between Whiff and Whimsey the latter uses a legalistic language as a maneuver to score a point:

WHIFF ... but is it Lawfull to hang any Generall?

WHIMSEY Lawfull, yes, that 'tis Lawfull to hang any Generall that fights against Law.

WHIFF But in what he has done, he has serv'd the King and our Country, and preserv'd all our Lives and Fortunes.

WHIMSEY That's all one, Brother, if there be but a Quirk in the Law offended in this Case, tho' he fought like Alexander, and preserv'd the whole world from perdition, yet if he did it against Law, 'tis Lawful to hang him; why what Brother, is it fit that every impudent fellow that pretends to a little Honour, Loyalty and Courage, should serve his King and Country against the Law? No, no, Brother, these things are not be suffer'd in a Civill Government by Law Establish'd.... (I.ii.102-13)

Whiff echoes the recurrent argument that claims the end of an action (fighting for the King and country) as an a posteriori legitimation of this very action, thus implicitly identifying law with the essence of justice. By contrast, Whimsey employs the usual tautology between law and lawfulness, turning the word "Law" into a transcendental signifier. In this context, qualities such as bravery and patriotism are by definition suspect unless authorized. But because "Law," for all its transcendental status, has to become a functional principle it is the civil government "by Law Establish'd" that transcribes it into power.

The same disjunction in law as formality, on the one hand, and as the essence of justice, on the other, also emerges as the central problem in another instance, with an important addition, voiced by Chrisante: Are laws eternally established? What if they no longer correspond to new demands put forward by a changing reality?

FRIENDLY And faith it goes against my Conscience to lift my Sword against him [Bacon], for he is truly brave, and what he has done, a Service to the Country, had it but been by Authority.

CHRISANTE What pity 'tis there should be such false Maxims in the World, the Noble Actions how ever great, must be Criminall for want of a Law to Authorise 'em.

FRIENDLY Indeed 'tis pity that when Laws are faulty they should not be mended or abolisht. (I.iii.121-28)

Chrisante raises the problem of the subject's position where the laws cease to function as bonds to the civil society because they are not flexible enough so as to correspond to, and therefore contain, shifting notions of individual political initiative. Those rules are "false" that are unable to look into the motives of an action (honorable in Bacon's case) and draw the analogous distinctions in the essence ofjustice. She sees legal terms such as "Criminall" for what they truly are, namely, sheer legalities that depend on an intransigent law for their definition. The implication is that laws are not made for themselves but to serve society. When faulty, as Friendly argues, they either have to change, or be abolished. Nonetheless, the change or abolition of laws, although marking urgency, remains at the level of wishful thinking. This problematics, however much it touches the core of a crucial argument, ceases precisely because it is already circumscribed by legalistic notions of loyalty. One has to remember that Friendly, who voices perhaps the most radical statement in the whole play, is that person whose opportunism was exposed at the beginning. As he had explained to Hazard, despite his admiration of Bacon, he intended "to be of the Contrary Party, that I may make an Interest in our new Governour" (I.i.134-35). Law, therefore, remains fixed in its legalistic sense because only in this sense can it serve the game of power that a legitimate authority initiates for its continuation.

To revert to the initial question of who is the legitimating agent of an action, for the Virginian authorities the answer is unequivocally "the law." As a legally constituted body they represent, by definition, a lawful political authority. With regard to Bacon, however, his politics obfuscate the case. Being the leader of a popular uprising against a clearly inept and debased authority it is reasonable that Bacon should name "the people" and their good as the legitimating force par excellence. Nonetheless, although his enemies are aware of the love and support of the people as a source of power for Bacon-"the people worship him" (I.ii.65)-he simply does not seem to capitalize on it. His politics are populist insofar as he acts in the name of the people-the people subsumed under "the Country's good"-- but in no way does he implicate them in his decision-making. Therefore, the people, far from figuring as the subject of politics, serve as intensifier of Bacon's charismatic leadership.

Brag's description of his rise to power is paradigmatic of Bacon's populist relation to the people: "But the noise of his danger has so won the hearts of the Mobile, that they encrease his Train as he goes, and follow him in the Town like a Victor" (II.iv.39-41).25 At this point, Behn's vocabulary, drawing on the Roman heroics of valor, underscores a dynamics between the leader and the people in which the latter are represented as blindly following (Train) a solitary hero. The essentially sentimental manner in which the "Mobile" relate to Bacon is central to the populist character of his leadership; at the same time, however, it shows the precariousness of their support. Behn's anti-popular stance, thrown into relief by the constant use of the word "Rabble," is predicated on an important Tory commonplace: the radically unstable and unreliable "nature" of the people.26 Significantly, the only instance in which the word "people" appears in the text as an agency is used to expose their fatal unpredictability:

FRIENDLY How now Major; what, they say Bacon scar'd you all out of the Council yesterday: What say the People?

DULLMAN Say? They Curse us all, and Drink young Frightall's Heath, and swear

they'll fight thro Fire and Brimstone for him.

FRIENDLY And to morrow will hallow him to the Gallows, if it were his chance to come there. (III.i.1-6)27

The reduction of the people to an unthinking mass, which, as such, is inherently dangerous, is also implicit in Bacon's own treatment of them. Behn places him in a position in which he is constantly shown either to prevent the violence of his followers or to distance himself both physically and morally from them.28 In either case he treats his people as mere appendices to his personal authority and not as the source of his own political legitimation. Therefore, he repeatedly undercuts his real basis of power precisely by figuring as the leader of an amorphous mass. For this reason, however, he makes himself vulnerable to the charge of anarchy. The Tory staple of mob rule as synonymous with the dissolution of society and the destruction of all human bonds surfaces in the. language of the Council. Both Whimsey (I.ii.6-9) and Dunce (III.ii.150-53) picture Bacon as a prospective murderer of themselves and of their children, a violator of their wives, and a destroyer of Jamestown. From this phantom of total anarchy the rebel emerges as "Lord and King." However base the speakers are, their monstrous exaggerations of Bacon's intentions, should he prevail, reinforce Downright's charge of Bacon with sedition. Bacon is unable to counter this precisely because he allows himself to be inscribed by the discourse of his adversaries. In his crucial confrontation with Downright and Wellman the overdetermination of his position by their principles of lawfulness is typified by his assertion that his highest ambition is to be an "honest Subject." Insofar as he insists on this claim, then, his case appears contradictory, and his pretence to a legitimate cause collapses; therefore he is truly guilty of usurpation of authority.

Through Bacon, Behn's aim is to project a type of political ethos meant to contrast with, and transcend, the power politics of personal interest that informs the position of the majority in the Council. In this sense, Bacon's isolationism with regard both to the "Rabble" and to the deceitful practices of the authorities is instrumental in the construction of an essentially moral politics. Her hero's commitment to avision of honorable politics is clearly out of place in a context of political corruption, baseness, and compromise. An integral part of this vision is Bacon's belief in the essential moral uprightness of language based on a supposed organic correspondence between words and things (Todd, Gender 53-54).29 To him, the word of honor signifies precisely this, because it embodies this inherent link in a paradigmatic manner. As a result, for example, he trusts the Council's invitation to appear on his own in front of them so as to receive the long-awaited commission. When Dareing incisively comments that this invitation is yet another one of their deceitful politics, Bacon scolds him by invoking the "honorable" nature of the Gentlemen of the Council (II.i.60-65).

Bacon's credulity, however, far from being unconvincing, serves to distinguish him from a debased version of politics current in Behn's era, too. His belief "in a kind of transcendental politics, true for all times and places" (Todd, Gender53) is clearly an anachronism on the part of the dramatist, considering the political intrigues of the 1680s. The anachronism lies precisely in Behn's assumption that politics ought to be identified with morality. This idealistic vision can no longer be substantiated at the end of a century that witnesses the emancipation of politics from religion and ethics (Sharpe and Zwicker 8-9). Its motto could be Bacon's moral statement "let him that acts dishonorably fear. My Innocence, and my good sword's my guard" (II.06-77).

Behn draws on the classical tradition of heroic honor to construct a mythical politics in which the search of personal glory represents political motivation. As Friendly says of Bacon, he "fancies it easy for Ambitious men, to aim at any Pitch of Glory, I've heard him often say, Why cannot I Conquer the Universe as well as Alexander? or like another Romulus form a new Rome, and make my self Ador'd?" (I.i.116-19). Bacon's discourse of heroic drama that articulates the love for a woman with personal honor foregrounds his belonging to the tradition of a glorious individualism that cannot conceive the self outside its personal ethics. In the false belief that he has lost the battle, and having accidentally killed his beloved queen-"There ends my Race of Glory and of Life" (V.240)-Bacon, like another Hannibal, takes poison, that "noble Remedy for all the ills of Life" (V.287-88).30

His suicide for the loss of his honor is offered as the appropriate closure for a fiction of a strictly personal conception of politics, essentially old-fashioned. The absurdity of his death implicitly recognizes the unrealistic nature of his political stance as a working principle of authority. Consequently, his legacy to his men reiterates and finally fixes the position of the subject as that of duty and allegiance to the authority, however corrupt or deficient. Significantly Behn makes him appropriate for his self-- criticism the very words used all along by the Council to describe his motives: "-now while you are Victors make a Peace-with the English Councel-and never let Ambition-Love-or Interest make you forget as I have done-your Duty-and Allegiance ..." (V.306-08). For all its radical insight into the nature of authority and its overall skepticism concerning conservative definitions of legitimacy, the play closes with the restoration of traditional order, albeit improved. Dareing, the General of Bacon's army, asks pardon for their disobedience, which is instantly granted by Wellman. Whimsey and Whiff are compelled to forfeit their positions in the Council, which will be filled by the former rebels. The fact that they are called now "Gentlemen of Sence and Honour" (V.390) by Wellman may sound ironical considering how contested these terms had been. This discursive gesture signifies that the linguistic fixing of meaning, precisely like legitimate action, can only be authorized by the lawful authority. The play comes full circle by reinscribing the definition of political legitimacy that it set out to deconstruct, exposing thus the limits of Behn's venture.

1See Frederick M. Link (Aphra Behn. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1968) 80; Maureen Duffy (Introduction. Aphra Behn: Five Plays. London: Methuen, 1990) xii; Janet Todd, Introduction 7:287. References to the text of the play are to volume 7 of Todd's edition of The Works of Aphra Behn: act, scene, and line numbers appear parentheticallv in the essay.

21n my reading of the political discourses that inform the play, John Locke's Two Treatises of Government (published with the date 1690 on its title-page) is also included, although it was in circulation before the end of 1689, several months after Behn's death in April of that year. The thesis that both Treatises were written to justify the events of 1688, however, has been proved fallacious, and there is a general agreement

that the greater part of both books was written during the period 1679-83, the main dispute being whether the Second Treatise dates from 1679 or 1681. In this sense Locke's theory of government is an organic part of the theoretical continuum produced during the Exclusion Crisis, and, as such, it is considered in the context of my argument. For a concise treatment of the dating of Two Treatises, see J. R. Milton's "Locke's Life and Times" (The Cambridge Companion to John Locke. Ed. Vere Chappell. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997) 5-25.

31 have taken this account of Bacon's progress, and the contemporary pamphlets and documents I use subsequently, from The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606-1689 (Ed. Warren M. Billings) 244-46 and 280. For a treatment of the historical sources of this play and for its considerable historical accuracy, see Charles L. Batten Jr.'s "The Source of Aphra Behn's The Widdow Ranter" (Restoration and Eighteenth Century Theatre Research 13.1 [1974]: 12-18), and Janet Todd, Gender5l-54. Both agree that Behn might have read a contemporary pamphlet, "Strange News from Virginia" (1677), the more accessible of several accounts of Bacon's story. Batten convincingly argues that it is safe to conclude that Behn must have used as her main source the report of the King's Commission, "A True Narrative of the Late Rebellion in Virginia, by the Royal Commissioners, 1677," something that Todd also conjectures.

+The eis marked by the recurrent use of certain keywords such as "safety and

defence," "Interest and Estates," "the country's good," "libertie" and the waste of "blood" (Billings 277-79). A similar vocabulary is used by frontier planters in a petition to Berkeley for help against the Indians (Billings 267).

5See, for example, Bacon's closure of his Manifesto. "Judge therefore all wise and

unprejudiced men who may or can ... attempt the country's good, their vindication and

libertie without the aspersion of Traitor and Rebell... and how much wee abhorre those bitter names, may all the world know that we doe unanimously desire to represent our ... grievances to his most sacred Majesty as our Refuge and Sanctuary" (279).

6See chapter 4 of Michael McKeon's The Origins of the English Novel, 1660-1740 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1987). In English Drama, 1660-1700 (ch. 1),Derek Hughes traces a shift in the drama from an aristocratic world-view, which assumes an identity between hereditary social place and innate virtue, to the disjunction between the individual's interior self and his/her social place. After 1688, this disjunction is prominent in Jacobite and Whig dramatists alike, Shadwell and Cibber exempted. I believe that in The Widdow Ranter Hughes's "what are you?" (denoting the social self) coexists with the "who are you?" (denoting the interior self) in the figure of Bacon, whose heroic isolationism foregrounds his interiority.

7Behn's treatment of the Virginian authorities is overall historically accurate. In his Manifesto, Bacon invites people to "observe the sudden rise of their Estates composed with the Quality in which they first entered this Country... and lett us see wither their extractions and Education have not bin vile . . .let us consider their sudden advancement" (278).

8The exchangeability and objectification ofwomen is further underscored by Bacon's seizing them as captives for ransom. The male aggressive language of plunder, voiced by his lieutenants, is, however, silenced by Bacon's gentlemanly treatment of them.

9The hero's friendly feelings for the Indians serve to set off his inherent generosity that will be fully displayed in the ensuing battle with the Indian king. By contrast, as Billings notes, the historical Bacon was renown for his "antipathy towards the natives" that made him popular amongst the planters (245). See also Bacon's own callous description of his onslaught against the natives ("Nathaniel Bacon's Victory over the Indians, April 1676," 267-69).

10William Penn traces "the first foundation of Civil Government in the joynt agreement of several Families from whence arose the Institution of Cities .... Now as in the first part of Government in Families, the Authority stood in one, viz. in the Father of the Family; so they usually chose one for the Government of joynt Families, who thence were called Kings" (2); see also James Tyrrell 35,47,60, 73-74, 77,83;John Locke, Two Treatises of Government II, ch. VIII, especially J105 and 106; and Henry Neville 86-87. This historical argument is employed to score a significant point against contemporary theories of absolute monarchy based on the arbitrary will of the prince.

For example, after having given an account of "the original of Monarchy" Penn notes that "when the Primitive Simplicity and Integrity of the first Ages began to wear out, and that those Kings did extend and advance the Authority they derived from their Predecessors, but lost their Equity and Justice," hereditary monarchy turned into "Tyranny" because it relied on the "Will" of the monarch and not on law (2). For the intrinsic connection between absolute monarchy and tyranny, also see Locke 11 ff 16268, 199-200, and Neville 88-90.

11 In An Essay upon the Original and Nature of Government, The Works of Sir William Temple, Bart. (1672), William Temple, after having noted that "single arbitrary dominion seems to have been natural to Asia and Afric" (1: 4), suggests the suitability of absolute monarchy to such areas of the world: in

countries thin inhabited ...where ... the people are poorer... and where ambition and avarice have made no entrance, the desire of leisure is much more natural, than of business and care; besides, men ... use their sense a great deal more than their reasons; examine not the nature or the tenure of power and authority; find only they are fit to obey, because they are not fit to govern. (5).

For a similar argument see also Tyrrell 113, 120, and Locke I, sec. 130; II, secs. 105, 108.

12See Locke II, secs. 30,41,43,46,49,105,108 for the political and economic primitivism of the American Indians paralleled by the stages of development once traversed by the Europeans. In his preface to Patriarcha non Monarcha (M), Tyrrell points out that "the exercise of an absolute unlimited Power... can create no other Idea in mens minds, than what the barbarous Indians have of those terrible Gods they worship"; see also 109-112,120.

13See J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century. I am indebted to this classic book for the following-necessarily simplifying-account of an extremely complicated issue. The idea, which was formulated by common lawyers such as Coke in the end of the sixteenth century (32), and remained prevalent throughout the seventeenth, was that common law was custom; and, on that basis, posited its "immemorial" character: Common law-and with it the constitution-precisely like custom, originated in time beyond memory (36). On this legal premise, the doctrine of the ancient constitution was constructed, which, as Pocock emphatically states, "was not a party argument put forward ... as a means of limiting the king's prerogative: it was the nearly universal belief of Englishmen" (54). Nonetheless, the vast majority of Whig writers-for example, Tyrrell, Algernon Sidney, William Pety and William Atwood, with the notable exception of Locke (187-88, 237-38)-used the concept of the ancient constitution in their polemics against Filmer's thesis that custom was turned into law by some superior power. In arguing for law and liberties as immemorial, they sought to disprove the Filmerian thesis that both originated in the will of the original sovereign, i.e. Adam, and are therefore subject to the king who, by patriarchal right, is his heir (187-90). In this sense, the king may repeal parliament, common law, and liberties at will (213). To counter this view, the Whigs provided a reading of English history according to which the Norman Conquest is not admitted (since conquest confirms the will of the conqueror, i.e. William, as the origin of English laws), the Commons precedes the "Conquest," and the various charters, such as Magna Carta, were simply reconfirmations of the ancient liberties. Despite royalist counter-attacks, such as Robert Brady's rigorous critique of the Whig anachronistic reading of history (206-09), the ancient constitution doctrine survived in the Whig ideology well into the eighteenth century. See also Neville's characteristic passage in Platus Redivivus 121-24; and Henry Care's English Liberties: Or, The Free-Born Subject's Inheritance (1682), which declares of Magna Carta "that this Charter is for the most part only Declaratory of the principal grounds of the Fundamental laws and Liberties of England; no new freedom is thereby granted, but a Restitution of such as lawfully they had before" (19).

Aln the Whig polemics against James, who, as rumored, intended to reclaim those lands that originally belonged to the Catholic church, the loss of the right to property is tantamount to slavery, and property taken by force does not entail the aggressor's right of possession (Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics 202-03). The Whig emphasis on consent, however, does not apply to their colonial ideology.

15For an excellent analysis of the European rationalization of colonialism and Locke's justification of colonial sovereignty in America in Two Treatises as typical of contemporary views see chapter 5 of James Tully's An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993), and Herman Lebovics 252-66. In Patriarchs, Tyrrell voices a number of points similar to Locke's views in ch. 5 of Two Treatises. Tyrrell's Eurocentric assumption is that the Indians are a primitive people because they "have all the Country in common" (111 ) and thus "no distinct propriety in Land." Therefore they have no governments such as "among us," whose main end is to decide disputes over property (120). In the absence of a "European" type of

government, the settlers' appropriation of native land without consent is absolutely legitimate considering also the fact that this land is "waste":

These planters have divided this unoccupied land .... It is an injury... in any Indian who is at peace with them ... to break up this enclosure, or take away anything that is there planted without the consent of the owner. For since the owner hath possessed himself of this land, and bestowed his labour and industry upon it ... he hath no right to take away this land from the owner. (112)

See also 100, 109, 110,113. In this context the planters' war against the natives for the protection of their property is considered "lawful" defense.

16Hughes points out that the liberation of Lady Fancy and the two Julias (The False Countand The Lucky Chance) involved servitude or rape, but in this play the lover, also, becomes a murderer.

17See Richard Ashcraft, "The Two Treatises." Tyrrell's view of "the nature and original of Propriety" from which follows that "there must be laws made to maintain this Propriety" (114) is typical of the Whig evolutionary model:

For as where a Country is thinly peopled, and produces all the necessaries for life only by the labour of the Inhabitants in hunting fishing, and the like imployments of that life which we call barbarous .... and that the People do

neither need nor desire those superfluous things that others doe ... so likewise where the People are more than the Country can well maintain from its own Products, there will presently arise a necessity of division of lands ... and of Trade abroad. (113)

On these evolutionary premises the historicity of absolute monarchy is turned into a political anachronism on the basis of its incompatibility with the sophisticated forms of civil government demanded by the increase of wealth, trade, and capital investment, such as a representative body. In Britannia Languens: Or, a Discourse of Trade (1689), William Petyt analyzes the incompatibility of contemporary absolute monarchies, "where... the conditions of Men are little better than that of Brutes," with trade since the latter requires "Freedoms" for its improvement (142). For a typical instance of Whig economism, also see Neville 85, 87, 93-95, 110, 113.

18For the end of government as the preservation of the common good, that is, of the people's lives, liberties, and properties, and for these three notions as the Englishmen's "Fundamental Rights" see, for example, Penn 4, 5, 7, 8, and especially his tract "England's Great Interest in the Choice of the New Parliament; Dedicated to all FREEHOLDERS and ELECTORS" (1681); Neville 85-86, 93, 110, 126-28, 130-131; and Care 22, 23, 24, 30. See also Tyrrell, who, as many other Whigs, based his theory of government on the law of nature given by God and identified with "one good or effect, viz. the common good and preservation of Mankinde" (15); see also 17,26,29, and especially 107. From the law of nature stems as a "natural right" the right to selfpreservation (25, 26, 43, 114-15, 147, 234-35). For the Whig natural law theory as a counter to Filmer's version of natural law see Ashcraft, "The Two Treatises" 48-52. For Locke's justification of government only insofar as it protects man's natural rights (especially those of life and property) that derive from the fundamental law of nature that humanity ought to be preserved (Second Treatise), see the following essays in John Locke: Critical Assessments, vol. 2: W. von Leyden, "John Locke and Natural Law," 3-15; John W. Yolton, "Locke on the Law of Nature," 16-33, and especially 27-30;James W. Byrne, "The Basis of the Natural Law in Locke's Philosophy," 52-62. Locke's idiosyncratic position in the natural law tradition and the problem of whether or not his whole work shows inconsistencies in his use of that concept has been the object of much debate among Lockean scholars; see, for example, all the above essays as well as Shadia B. Drury, "John Locke: Natural Law and Innate Ideas," 2: 84-97 and J. W. Gough, "James Tyrrell, Whig Historian and Friend ofJohn Locke" 1: 128- 35. For an excellent analysis of Locke's non-centrality in relation to his contemporary Whig political writers, see Martyn P. Thompson, "The Reception of Locke's Two Treatises of Government, 1690-1705, 1:100-09.

19See, for example, Berkley's remonstrance for outlawing Bacon in which notions such as "properties," "the law," and "safety" are instrumental in declaring him a traitor, with one important addition: the charge that he might be "tending to take away al Religion," a typical Tory charge against extreme Whigs ("Berkley's `Declaration and Remonstrance,' May 29, 1676," 271).

20For Tories as the defenders of Magna Carta and for their antipopulism in their propaganda war see Tim Harris's London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II.- Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987) 114, 130-38,151, and Ashcraft, "The Two Treatises" 67-77, for the Tory counterattack which aimed at destroying the Whig ideological and exclusive appeal on "the people." The first objective was to demonstrate that the principle of majority rule through Parliament was hypocritical (since representation included only men, freeholders of above a certain income) and the second to prove that social equality for Whigs meant parity and therefore the leveling of all hierarchies (religious, economic, etc.).

21-This description is historically accurate. See Bacon's relevant points in his Manifesto (279) and in "A Precis of the June Laws," which declared the prohibition of "all trade with the Indians" except for the friendly ones (274).

22Zwicker here is referring to Dryden's treatment of this notion in Absalom and Achitophel.

23The dissolution of government and the reverting of power to the people who, being the origin of power, have a right to rebellion was by no means a unanimously accepted Whig principle. In fact, few extreme Whigs, such as Sidney, Locke, and Shaftesbury, supported the total dissolution of government and rebellion. See Tyrrell's recurrent argument for self-preservation and defense (25,43,104,107,109-10), which does not nonetheless suggest rebellion: "For God gave man a Right to preserve .. himself Therefore since the first Law of Nature is Self-preservation, it is lawful for a man to use all means conducing to this end, that does not prejudice another mans Right in his particular life or happiness" (114-15). On the same issue, see also J. G. A. Pocock, "Negative and Positive Aspects" (John Locke und/and Immanuel Kant: Historical Reception and Contemporary Relevance. Ed. Martyn P. Thompson. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1991. 45-61) 50-54; and Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics 307-08, 587-88.

241 have borrowed the concept of person-in-authority in the context of Locke's political theory from A. W. Sparkes, "Trust and Teleology: Locke's Politics and his Doctrine of Creation" in Ashcraft's Critical Assessments 2: 122-24; for the legalistic language of the political debate from the civil war onward see Sharpe and Zwicker 8.

251-lis tremendous popular appeal accords with the account of the historical Bacon given by the commissioners. See Batten 15, 16 (note 1 above). In "Berkeley's `Declaration and Remonstrance,' May 29, 1676" Berkeley underscores Bacon's populist relationship to his followers as seduction of "Ignorant and wel affected... the lowest of the people" (271).

26The convergence of individualist exceptionalism and populism with an essentially aristocratic model of political legitimacy is not unprecedented; see, for example, Absalom and Achitophel, where the "rabble" figures as the most flimsy and dangerous basis of power for Monmouth, the charismatic leader.

27See Todd, The Works 455 notes to 11. 5 and 8.

28A good example of this is when the "Rabble," having seized Wellman, threaten to hang him-"Let's Barbicu this Fat Rogue"-Bacon's response is to order them to let him go: "Begone, and know your distance to the Council" (II.iv.130).

29For the signification of vows and oaths in the literature of the period, and in Behn in particular, see chapter 4 of Susan Staves's Players' Scepters: Fictions of Authority in the Restoration (Lincoln: Nebraska UP, 1979).

30For his glamorous leadership, reminiscent of the late Stuarts, his concern with his reputation, resembling that of Monmouth's, and his theatric death see Todd, Gender 52-53.

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ASPASIA VELISSARIOU is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Athens, Greece. Her publications include essays on Wycherley in Restoration 18:1 and Texas Studies in Literature and Language 37:2, and on Sheridan in Bulletin de la societe d etudes angloamericaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles 50 (Juin 2000). She is the author of Congreve and the Politics of Comedy (Athens 1997).

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