In The Contrast Royall Tyler used the character Jonathan to satirize the naive innocence of rural Americans and to offer a fresh point of view on the ways of more sophisticated city dwellers. In the following scene Jonathan describes his first visit to a theater:

Jonathan:

So I went right in, and they shewed me away, clean up to the garret, just like meeting -house gallery. And so I saw a power of topping folks, all sitting round in little cabbins, "just like father's corn-cribs"; and then there was such a squeaking with the fiddles, and such a tarnal blaze with the lights, my head was near turned. At last the people that sat near me set up such a hissing —hiss—like so many mad cats; and then they went thump, thump, thump, just like our Peleg threshing wheat, and...