Mercy Otis Warren, wife of General James Warren and sister of James Otis, was one of the most vocal supporters of the patriot cause during the American Revolution. Called “a definite stimulator of the Revolutionary leaders” (Christ 7), she wrote extensively: poems, sketches, letters, and plays, and was praised by John Adams as a “political pen which has no equal that I know of in this country” (Quinn 34). Of her plays, The Adulateur (1773), The Defeat (1773), The Group (1775), The Blockheads (1776), and The Motley Assembly (1779), she claimed only one, The Group, and that long after publication; all of her work was published anonymously. This anonymity poses no real problem for authorship for most of the plays, for there is reasonably strong documentary or internal evidence indicating that she wrote The Adulateur, The Defeat, and The Motley Assembly, as well as The Group, and there is general agreement that she wrote these plays.