"'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

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.