A Review of Royall Tyler's Play The Contrast

How refreshing! Royall Tyler's play The Contrast brought some much needed humor to my hectic life. This play was an absolute delight to read. It was hilarious, entertaining, quite believable, and easy to understand (despite the fact it was written so many years ago). This play offers a fantastic glimpse into the American culture during Tyler's time, while being universal enough to still be relevant even in our day. We can all relate to the characters and know people in our own lives who resemble these characters. I suppose some things simply stay the same, regardless of what century it is. There are always the artificial people, the ones who are excessively concerned about appearances. Then, almost polar opposites, we can find those that are the admirable people, who would sacrifice every single thing they own for a noble cause to help others.

The characters in Royall Tyler's The Contrast are so colorful and alive, so much so that they seem to almost leap off the page with every new word. This play is truly a contrast of the diversity which exists from person to person: from the players to the lovers and the imitators to the sincere. I am still completely amazed at how Royall Taylor could manage to create such an insightful play in three short weeks! To create any type of literary work of this length in three weeks is difficult enough. But to write such a masterpiece in that little amount of time? Why, that is phenomenal! I must think that Tyler was quite a man with unique talents to be able to accomplish this remarkable feat.