Montagu Slater new. Slater's original libretto, which he published himself (to the annoyance of Britten and Peter Pears, who had made a number of amendments to it before the opera was staged), is cast in three acts. It omits the repetitions necessary in the actual opera. Anthony Burgess, writing in The Listener (magazine) in 1964, stated: “The excellence of Peter Grimes has a great deal to do with Montagu Slater's libretto, the only libretto I know that can be read in its own right as a dramatic poem.” He also wrote the libretti for `Yerma’, composed by Denis Aplvor. Slater was involved,
James W. Grimes the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In 1861 Grimes was a member of the peace convention held in Washington, D.C., in an effort to devise means to prevent the impending Civil War. In December 1861, he introduced the senate bill which led to the creation of the Medal of Honor (initially only for Navy and Marine personnel). During President Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial, Grimes broke party ranks, along with six other Republican senators and voted for acquittal. Senators William Pitt Fessenden, Joseph S. Fowler, Grimes, John B. Henderson, Lyman Trumbull, Peter G. Van Winkle, and Edmund G. Ross