Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
3.15 ROYALL TYLER
(1757–1826)
Royall Tyler was born and educated
in Boston. His studies at Harvard were
often interrupted by the events preceding
the American Revolution. Indeed, in
1776, Harvard administered its classes
outside of Cambridge in the comparative
safety of Concord. Tyler earned his BA
that same year then served in the colonial
army during the American Revolution.
In 1779, he earned his MA and was
admitted to the bar the following year.
He later served in the army again in the
suppression of Shays’ Rebellion (1786–
1787), a Massachusetts uprising against
unfair tax and debt collection.
Image 3.23 | Royall Tyler
Tyler practiced law in Maine and Artist | Unknown
Source | Wikimedia Commons
later in Massachusetts. After 1790, he
License | Public Domain
practiced in Vermont where he was chief
justice of the Supreme Court (1807–1813) and professor of jurisprudence at the
University of Vermont (1811–1814). Tyler was a prolic author in various genres.
He wrote legal papers, poems, and an epistolary travel book. He projected books
on cosmography and the nature of religious intolerance. He also wrote plays and a
satiric novel, The Algerine Captive (1797).
The work for which he is remembered today is his play The Contrast (1787),
the rst American comedy produced by a professional company. The Contrast is
modeled after Restoration comedies, or comedies of manners, with their topical
subject matter and intricate plots. Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s (1751–1816) The
School for Scandal, rst performed in 1777, likely served as inspiration. The
Contrast wittily satirizes hypocrisy and corruption, both of which vices Tyler
locates in British culture, a culture that stains the more ethical and upright
American culture.
3.15.1 The Contrast
(1787)
PROLOGUE
WRITTEN BY A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF NEW-YORK, AND SPOKEN BY MR.
WIGNELL
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