of the play would contribute to the
amusement of audiences to-day is to be doubted, although it is a
striking dramatic curio. The play in the reading is scarcely exciting.
It is surprisingly devoid of situation. Its chief characteristic is
"talk," but that talk, reflective in its spirit of "The School for
Scandal," is interesting to the social student. When the ladies discuss
the manners of the times and the fashions of the day, they discuss them
in terms of the Battery, in New York, but in the spirit of London. The
only native product, as I have said, is _Jonathan_, and his surprise
over the play-house, into which he is inveigled, measures the surprise
which must have overwhelmed the staid New England conscience of Royall
Tyler, when he found himself actually in that den of iniquity,--the
theatre. For the first time in the American Drama, we get New England
dialogue and some attempt at American characterization. Wignell, being
himself a character actor of much ability, and the son of a player who
had been a member of Garrick's Company in London, it is small wonder
that he should have painted the stage Yankee in an agreeable and
entertaining and novel manner.

But, undoubtedly, the only interest that could attach itself to this
comedy for the theatre-going audience of to-day would be in its
presentment according to the customs and manners of the time. In fact,
one would be very much entertained were it possible to make _Letitia_
and _Charlotte_ discuss their social schemes and ambitions in a parlour
which reflected the atmosphere of New York in 1787. As a matter of fact,
however, the audience that crowded into the little John Street Theatre,
on the opening night of "The Contrast," was treated to an interior room,
which was more closely akin to a London drawing-room than to a parlour
in Manhattan. According to the very badly drawn frontispiece, which
Wignell used in the printed edition of the play, and which William
Dunlap executed, we see a very poor imitation of the customs, costumes,
and situations which Tyler intended to suggest.

Indeed, we wonder whether Dunlap, when he drew this picture, did not
have a little malice in his heart; for there is no doubt that he showed
jealousy over the success of "The Contrast," when, after a three years'
stay in London, under the tutelage of Benjamin West, he returned to
America to find "The Contrast" the talk of the town. Both he and
Seilhamer who, however prejudiced they may be