I hate to say it, but the country’s going to the dogs. “Luxury is surely the bane of a nation: Luxury! which enervates both soul and body, by opening a thousand new sources of enjoyment, opens, also, a thousand new sources of contention and want: Luxury! which renders a people weak at home, and accessible to bribery, corruption, and force from abroad… . Oh, that America, oh, that my country would, in this her day, learn the things that belong to her peace!”
Thus, the manly Colonel Manly, surveying the state of the nation in 1787. “There is a deal of ruin in a nation,” said Adam Smith in 1776. But eleven years’ worth? You don’t have to be Manly to fear for a republic fallen into post-Revolutionary decadence and softness.
Colonel Manly is the hero of The Contrast by Royall Tyler (later Chief Justice of Vermont). The playbill announced it as “A Comedy in Five Acts: Written by a Citizen of the United States,” which was a rarer distinction than you might suppose. The Contrastis the first American play—that’s to say, the first native work ever to be produced professionally. It was premiered at the John Street Theatre in New York on April 16, 1787, and 219 years later returned to town for an engagement at the Theatre of St. Clement. The eponymous contrast is between sturdy patriotism, quiet decency, and other American virtues, and a lot of frou-frou folderol by Europeanized fops who spend their
