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303 Appendix B Witmer and Freehafer see in the fictional Bacon a rebellious leader of the people , the vindication of Behn’s “appreciation of the egalitarian trends inherent in colonial society” (1968, 16), harboring republican sentiments that make him a traitor to England’s aristocratic legacy. By comparison, posterity has viewed the historical Bacon’s rebellion of 1675–1676 from varying ideological perspectives. Some historians have made him a freedom fighter against the oppression of the royal governor. Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker thus hails him as the leader of the common people against colonial and aristocratic rule: he was “the greatest figure of the first century of American history”; “in his love of individual liberty, his self-reliance, his hatred of oppression he was at home on the American frontier and showed himself akin to the leaders of the Revolution”; he was “a patriot, a champion of the weak, a rebel against injustice, the forerunner of Washington , Jefferson and Samuel Adams,” and “truly a martyr to American freedom as Nathan Hale or Hugh Mercer” (Wertenbaker 1940, v–vi, 178). Ward similarly sees in Bacon some traits of “the would-be father of nations whom generations of American historians have celebrated as the typological forerunner of George Washington” (1976, 96). Wilcomb Washburn, however, finds support in a series of contemporary accounts of Bacon’s Rebellion when asserting that its causes are too “complex and profound” to be summed up as “Bacon’s love of ‘liberty,’ the ‘savagery’ of the Indians, or the ‘patriotism’ of the frontiersmen.” But he has no doubt that “Nathaniel Bacon would be vastly amused to find himself the sainted hero of the guardians of the liberal traditions of western democratic government ” (Washburn 1957, 166). Behn’s portrayal of Bacon adds to his contradictory image. The cowardly councilor Whiff wants to see him hanged for breaking the law, but has to admit that “in what he has done, he has serv’d the King and our 304 | Appendix B Country, and preserv’d our Lives and Fortunes” (Act 1, Scene 2, p. 224). The minor character Friendly acknowledges Bacon’s role in the cause of self-rule for the Virginians: “Indeed ’tis pity that when Laws are faulty they should not be mended or abolish’d” (Act 1, Scene 3, p. 229). Washburn, though he calls The Widow Ranter a “wildly imaginative creation,” sees it as “possible that the democratic ferment preceding the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 inspired Mrs. Behn as the American Revolution did later American writers” (Washburn 1957, 3). The critics Witmer and Freehafer, finding obvious overtones of republicanism in The Widow Ranter, note that the play was published about the time of the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 (1968, 11, 13, 20). Simon Hughes makes a relevant comment on this: “The power of Parliament was . . . confirmed during the Exclusion Crisis of 1679–81, in which Parliament asserted a right to interfere with the royal line of succession, when it tried to exclude James. After the Glorious Revolution when, Witmer and Freehafer suggest, Behn was writing The Widow Ranter, the power of Parliament was codified in law, the Declaration of Rights limiting by law the power of the monarch. This interference of the people’s representatives did in no way threaten the monarchy, or attempt to replace it with a republic. Bacon’s actions should therefore be viewed in light of the form of government in Britain at the time of the writing of the play. His actions, like those of Parliament in Britain, do not necessarily constitute the abolition of the monarchy” (S. Hughes 2002, 78–79). Elliott Visconsi, in contrast to Witmer and Freehafer, sees no sign of republicanism in Bacon, but rather the representative of “a warrior aristocracy, a cadre of overmighty subjects who engage in military action for personal or arbitrary reasons” (Visconsi 2002, 693). ...

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