5 - Patriotic interrogations: committees of safety in early American drama

Summary

Although american theatrical managers preferred to stage such demonstrable British favorites as The Poor Soldier and The West Indian to anything by an American author, playwrights in the United States recognized more readily than their transatlantic counterparts the dramatic potential of Revolutionary life. Either because of personal suffering or an acute eye for the marked change in social interactions as a result of the polarizing politics from 1775 onward, a few writers offered much darker assessments of republican life than, say, Royall Tyler in his generally affirmative The Contrast, assessments that asked serious questions about precisely who had control not only over social and political structures but also over personal life. As has been observed above, both Michel de Crèvecoeur and Judith Sargent Murray examine fractured domestic relationships brought about by the politics of separation, with one seeing only ruin, the other positing reconciliation as the outcome of a completed war. Yet in both plays, the writers leave a number of questions unanswered, especially about the larger implications of reconceived patterns of patriarchy, deference, and participation of previously subordinated or marginalized groups.

One of the questions the plays pose has to do with the legitimacy of popular, rather than elite, authority to prosecute public affairs. When the Continental Congress convened in 1774, it established the Continental Association, an agreement among the colonies not to import British goods. To enforce the policies of the Association, local bodies were formed called Committees of Safety.