The Contrast, The First Comedy In American Drama History

The Contrast was considered a good, well-made and eminently successful play, and one of the most famous American plays before the twentieth century. Besides, it was also generally acknowledged as the first comedy in American drama history, the first play written by an American playwright as well as produced in the country by a professional American company. It has attracted a considerable amount of attention from the critics, since the day it was put on, but most previous critics either overvalued it as one of the first American dramas and a useful "document" or undervalued it as merely a provincial copy of Sheridan. This paper is going to study the merits of this play as the first widely-acknowledged American comedy from the perspectives of its connections to the British traditions and how it successfully distinguished itself from such traditions through its excellent creation of characters, unique depiction of American culture and its exploration of the characteristics of American speech.It cannot be denied that for a long while before American drama grew stronger, developed its own uniqueness and gained its status on the world dramatic stage, it had been nurtured, inspired and instructed by its European models. Royall Tyler also benefited a lot from his European counterparts, especially Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It is more than justified to say that some similarities between The Contrast and The School for Scandal reveal the kinship between American dramatic tradition and the European traditions in a positive way. In this sense, by having successfully inherited the good parts of its prototypes, The Contrast opened the tradition of comedy in the new nation, and laid a solid foundation for its profound influences upon its later works.Although Tyler used the basic conventions of British sentimental comedy, like the fop and the seducer (Dimple), the flirt (Charlotte), the innocent heroine (Maria), the senex (Van Rough) and the gull (Jonathan), he made these characters carry moral messages Americanized in speech, manners, and values. For example, although the character Van Rough reminds people of the middle-class merchant emerging in eighteenth-century Britain, his language carries a clearly American stamp. Manly is a noble, simple and morally pure young man from the provinces, but he is a patriot that cannot be found in the British model. Similarly, Maria, though a weak and virtuous sentimental heroine, is also patriotic. Most importantly, Manly's servant Jonathan reflects American egalitarian values, by insisting on being called a "waiter" rather than a "servant". Through all these elements, despite the strong traces of British dramatic traditions it bears, The Contrast successfully distinguished itself from its prototype, developed its own features, and established its irreplaceable status in American drama history.The successful characterization of these roles has exerted a profound influence upon the development of later American drama or even American literature. For example, in eighteenth-century, the most popular figure for Federalist satiric purposes was the rustic New England Yankee. During the Revolutionary War, British writers had identified the rustic Yankee as "Jonathan," a derisive sobriquet that they applied to Americans generally. The figure represented to the federalist writers of the 1790s an appropriate embodiment of the American common man as the all-too-common dominator of American society and culture that they deplored. The merchant character Van Rough would be another example, after whom some characteristics were attributed to the businessman image in later American drama. This businessman was primarily characterized through his interest in acquiring more money even at the expense of other considerations. With his interest in money the businessman also displayed a tendency to downgrade all forms of learning not essential to earning a livelihood. For plays which contain businessmen characters, American playwrights made an effort to create a specifically American environment. This is also a very distinctive feature of this play, which is different from its European models.The second distinctive feature of The Contrast is that there are many references to its contemporary events. Despite the fact that the early American plays were often stereotyped and imitative of their European models in plot, the plots were related to realistic situations in this country. A study of other categories of American drama should reveal the same degree of purely American influence. This is also a very important feature that distinguishes The Contrast from its British counterparts, that it bears the stamp of American origin through references to events familiar to the New York audience, which localizes the action and sets it apart from European plays of the same period. For example, In Act II, scene 1, Colonel Manly converses with his sister that touches upon the recent politico-economic event, and their reference to the communication notes, paper money, must had been a quite painful reminder to the contemporary audience of the inflation of the Continental currency.The satire against theater and theatergoers in The Contrast has also attracted the attention of many critics. With a puritan tradition, the new United States was actually a country without too much theatrical culture. So the essential problem Tyler came across was how to write a play for his target audience. As an institution, the theater was undergoing severe attack and high suspect in the public as a corrupting force in an infant republic. Considered as a "playhouse" stage, theater was identifiably British rather than American. Nevertheless, Tyler and other pioneer playwrights wanted this art to prosper in America just like in Europe, not simply as imitations but as forms that could take their own local stamp and also rise to greatness. The solution Tyler adopted was to work a double satire. On the one hand, by using the theater against itself, Tyler created a distance between the stage and the audience, forced the audience to ponder more through the effect of "defamiliarization", thus somewhat deconstructing its practices and counteracting their power to corrupt the audience watching The Contrast. On the other hand, Tyler made fun of those people who knew nothing about the theater except what they heard from their frontier parsons. From Tyler's perspective, the attacks on the theater were often launched by people who had no experience with a real stage.The Contrast also initiated an endeavor to explore American culture and speech. When this play was put on, America was still a very young nation, and was still in the process of defining itself. It was eager to establish an entirely new cultural system and distinguish itself from other countries. In order to do so, the Americans had to determine for themselves what manners, fashions, and values they would be known by to people from other countries. The Contrast reflects people's endeavor to do so at that moment. At the end of 18th century, young America was trying hard to find its own cultural way out. This play reveals the contrast between Americans who are comfortable with their identities and those who tried to be something they are not, the contrast between dowdy virtues and supposedly fashionable decek and selfishness, and the contrast between independence and servility.The characters speak not as one integral American chorus but contrapuntally, with various characters and speech patterns arranged to juxtapose in constant scenes. As an immigration country, the characteristic of American speech is its variety rather than its unity. By doing so, Tyler draws our attention to the diversity rather than the unity of American speech, indicates the variety of American speech, questions its authenticity, and shows it to be a very insecure medium at best.Tyler's trial exploration of the characteristics of American speech has also exerted a profound influence upon later writers. For example, the danger of sentimentality and bombastic diction of Charlotte becomes a central issue in Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland. Mark Twain's essay on Cooper also directs our attention to the question of American speech. The diction of Twain's another book, Huckleberry Finn also legitimizes and gives dignity to Jonathan and his dialect speech as a characteristic, even a prototypical American voice.The search for an authentic American speech initiated by Tyler continues all the time, fluctuating between Jonathan and Manly, between the dialect of Holden Caulfield or Flem Snopes and the rhetoric of Eugene Gant or Quentin Compson, and the European observer continues to wonder which voice truly reflects American ideal, and which voice expressed the dignity and integrity of American existence.