unknown
Dramatic Works
Sans-Souci. Alias Free and Easy: or An Evening’s Peep into a polite Circle (1785)
Sans-Souci. Alias Free and Easy: or An Evening’s Peep into a polite Circle (1785)
Production & Reception History
unknown
Print & Publication History
“Boston: Printed by WARDEN and RUSSELL, M,DCC,LXXV” [1785], 24 pp.
Mercy Otis Warren was rumored to be the author, but she denies that in a letter to George Warren on March 7, 1785, “I hope I shall never write anything I should be so much ashamed to avow as that little indigested farrago” (qtd. in Stuart, The Muse of the Revolution, 176)
Genre & Structure
- political satire in 3 acts (with scene divisions)
Gender Relevance
features a scene between a “Republican Heroine” (most likely Catharine Macaulay, the British radical historian who had visited America in 1784/85) and “Mrs. W—n” (most likely Mercy Otis Warren)
Key Words & Themes
elitism, social distinctions, Federalists/Anti-Federalists
Additional Information
ridicules the Boston “Sans Souci” club, an elite bimonthly salon linked to the Federalists around John Hancock; faults the postwar complacency; derides elite Bostonians’ desire for consumption and lack of Republican principles;
Availability
Early American Imprints, Series 1, no. 19234
Evans Early American Imprint Collection, http://name.umdl.umich.edu/N15151.0001.001 (attributed to Mercy Otis Warren)
Secondary Sources
Stuart, Nancy Rubin. The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation. Boston: Beacon Press, 2008. 175-177.
Nathans, Heather S. Early American Theatre from the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson into the Hands of the People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 57-58.
(only brief references, no in-depth treatment available)
