"'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

Papers on Language and Literature, Spring 2002 by Velissariou, Aspasia

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: