The first purely American play ever put upon a regular stage by a professional company of actors was _The Contrast_, performed at the theatre in John Street, New York, on the 16th of April, 1787. It was, as recorded by William Dunlap in his _History of the American Theatre_, a comedy in five acts, by Royall Tyler, Esq., a Boston gentleman of no great literary pretensions, but in his later life prominent in the history of Vermont, to which State he moved shortly after its admission into the Federal Union in 1791. Mr. Ireland and Mr. Seilhamer preserve the original cast of _The Contrast_, which, however, as containing no names prominent in histrionic history, is of no particular interest here. Not a very brilliant comedy--it was weak in plot, incident, and dialogue--it is worthy of notice not only because of its distinction as the first-born of American plays, but because of its creation and introduction of the now so familiar stage-Yankee, Jonathan, played by Thomas Wignell, an Englishman who came to this country the preceding year. He was a clever actor, and later, a successful manager in Philadelphia, dying in 1803. Jonathan, no doubt, wore a long tailed blue coat, striped trousers, and short waistcoats, or the costume of the period that nearest approached this; certainly he whittled sticks, and said "Tarnation!" and "I vum," and called himself "a true-born son of liberty" through his nose, as have the hundreds of stage-Yankees, from Asa Trenchard down, who have come after him, and for whom he and Mr. Wignell and Royall Tyler, Esq., were originally responsible. Jonathan was the chief character in the piece, which was almost a one-part play. Its representations were few. This Jonathan is not to be confounded with another and a better Jonathan, who figured in _The Forest Rose_, a domestic opera, by Samuel Woodworth, music by John Davies, produced in 1825, when Tyler's Jonathan had been dead and buried for many years. Woodworth's Jonathan was originally played by Alexander Simpson, and later by Henry Placide. It was long a favorite part of the gentleman known as "Yankee Hill." The American Drama--such as it is--may be divided into several classes, including the Indian Drama, and the plays of Frontier Life, which are often identical; the Revolutionary and war plays; the Yankee, or character plays, like _The Gilded Age_, or _The Old Homestead_; the plays of local life and character, like _Mose_, or _Squatter Sovereignty_; and the society plays, of which Mrs. Mowatt's _Fashion_, and Bronson Howard's _Saratoga_ are fair examples. Of these the Indian drama, as aboriginal, should receive, perhaps, the first attention here.