One thing about Mercy Otis Warren's writing that stuck out to me is how she uses rhyme to convey the meaning of the satire. The fact that the play is written in verse and uses rhyme every now and then is reminiscent of Shakespeare's approach to satire, which she studied as a child. In the beginning of the play there isn't much rhyme - just a few lines thrown in here and there. The first bit is in the first scene of Act I where Simple says "And ecstasies entranced my slender brain/ But yet, e'ere this I hoped more solid gains." The next occurence is in the same scene when Halzerod, responding to Crusty Crowbar's doubt about his stance in the war, says "Gave me a competence of shining ore, /Or gratified my itching palm for more; / Till I dismissed the bold intruding guest, / And banished conscience from my wounded breast." In these beginning bits of rhyming lines, Warren is using rhyme as a method of emphasizing the characters' personalities and portraying them as greedy and heartless. Another instance of this is at the end of Act I where Halzerod, responding to a horrific scene of brutality against the Americans that Hateall has just invented, expresses in rhyme how he would have no pity for such victims because they would be getting what they asked for. Once again, rhyme is used to reiterate how cruel the Tories are.
The emphasis on rhyme shifts a bit towards the end of the play. In the middle of Act II, scene 3 on page 18, Secretary Dupe says "Not Senex rant, nor yet dull Grotius' pen... Can either coax them, or the least control/ The valorous purpose of their Roman souls." Here he compares the colonists to Romans, suggesting that he must have some sort of respect for them. The last three speeches of the play are all in rhyme. A little later in scene 2 Secretary Dupe expresses in rhyme how he thinks that the British cannot win the war and then Meagre, also rhyming, chastizes him for it. The very last speaker is the woman, who in her rhyming verse says that the colonists will indeed win the war and that they will be heroes. There is a definite shift in the tone of the rhyming segments in the second half of the play as Warren uses it to praise the colonists and their cause. She uses rhyme to outline her main points - the cruelty of the Tories and the valor of the Colonists - because rhyme makes the lines more memorable.