Defining American Urbanity: Royall Tyler, William Dunlap, and the Postrevolutionary Theater in New York

Abstract

Through an examination of several plays written by Royall Tyler and William Dunlap, produced at the John Street Theatre in New York during the late 1780s, this article traces an ongoing discussion about the proper nature of postrevolutionary urban manners, and—more broadly—attempts to define the social and cultural features of a distinctive American metropolis, differentiated from its European models and attuned to ongoing contemporary debates about the nature of civil society in the new republic.