Write a Thorough discussion of The Contrast by Royall Tyler

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Write a Thorough discussion of The Contrast by Royall Tyler, pointing out the three parallels in character that Tyler uses to support his main and secondary themes. Use specific examples from the play to support your statements.

It was the first example of the stage Yankee that was to hold the stage in various incarnations for more than a century. Some would argue that the character evolved into the American anti-hero that emerged in the first half of 20th Century and is still with us. The play was a success and was repeated in New York three more times, and played in Baltimore in 1787 and 1788, in Philadelphia in 1790 and even in conservative Boston in 1792. The play is genuinely witty and the character types Tyler satirizes are still recognizable today. Charlotte and Letitia who open the play are surely the mall-prowling "valley girls" of their day. It was a performance of The Contrast that inspired William Dunlap to write his first play.
The Contrast. The second drama by an American playwright that is professionally staged. Tyler's comedy of manners examines the differences between America and Europe. The play features the first appearance of a typical Yankee, soon to be a stock character in drama.
The characters are large and uncomplicated. Actors might have fun acting out some of the scenes. Tyler wrote The Contrast for much the same reason Franklin wrote his Autobiography, to instruct his countrymen how to behave and what to value. Following the style of British eighteenth-century drama, The Contrast is a web of intrigues spun out of lust and greed. Will Dimple marry the virtuous Maria or the rich Letitia? Will he seduce the impressionable Charlotte? Will the sophisticated New Yorkers defeat the stolid Manly? In the end The Contrast is about the role books, education, experience, and the broader values of society play in the creation of the men and women who will populate the American republic, and that sounds like high school, too.
The Contrast itself is concerned with the veracity of Americans-Tyler appears to espouse the idea that with Americans, "What you see is what you get." However, to a certain degree Tyler's selection of drama as his mode for transmitting a national identity complicates the transparency The Contrast appears to celebrate. The theatrical genre itself requires a certain degree of dissembling and performance. The moment the play was taken from the written word to performance Tyler's message becomes complicated. Several critics have presented logical reasons why Tyler might deliberately desire the complications of this form. Sandra Gustafson in Eloquence is Power highlights numerous reasons why performance and oratory during this period hold particular preeminence over textual forms for persuading an audience. Outside of trying to modify European dramatic traditions and create uniquely American dramatic traditions, it is possible that Tyler was also exploiting the power that came with dramatic presence-a presence that can evoke the power of the American evangelical preacher's historic warnings against insincerity, excess, and other vices discussed in the play.
Jeffrey H. Richards in Theater Enough: American Culture and the Metaphor of the World Stage 1607-1789 sees another important reason for Tyler's selection of the dramatic form. He views the use of the theater as a site for moral instruction "not, as it is practiced in England, to undermine it" (267). Richards feels that Americans ...