Subtlety and Loyalty
revealing spectacles of regime-change
Regime-change, after the fact, is often revealed subtly. Drastic change, at least immediately, is improbable. Enacting regime-change and sustaining its execution is obviously what’s most difficult. But we can still gain (subtle) hints as to how we “get from here to there” when situationally viewing the new regime in light of how the old one looked in the same situation. In the following anecdote, the “situation” is a scene.
After assuming the American presidency, George Washington took in the play The School for Scandal at the Old Southwark theater in Philadelphia. A little over ten years before, this same theater housed the amateur theatrical performances of British soldiers and Loyalists after the city had been taken by the British.
The east stage box, reserved for the highest ranking officers of the British army while they occupied the city, was now—in this new regime—set aside for the President and his entourage. When Washington attended this particular play, he received a welcome fit for a king, no doubt irking the republican members of his cabinet (Jefferson).
Holdovers from the old regime will exist. Scenes included: shows presented upon stages during which spectacles of decorum are showered upon the new elite. This combination is at its most powerful when spectators feel that not much change has actually transpired. Sitting in that theater were some of the same Loyalists from ten years before, and without even noticing, their loyalty had switched from the Crown to Washington.