Page 240 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

British Drama

Notes 26. By current standards, the School for Scandal appears realistic in the characters’ speech, dress,
and motivations.
27. By the current standard, there is no strong character in the School for Scandal to drive the
play.
28. The comedy of manners in England were classed as Comedy of love.

18.3 Summary

• Richard Brinsley Sheridan, (baptized November 4, 1751, Dublin, Ireland—died July 7, 1816,
London, England) was born in Dublin, Ireland, on October 30, 1751.
• Sheridan’s father, Thomas, was an actor and theater manager; his mother, Frances, was the
author of novels and plays. The family moved to London in 1758, and Sheridan was educated
at Harrow (1762-1768).
• Sheridan fell in love with Elizabeth Ann Linley (1754–92), whose fine soprano voice delighted
audiences at the concerts and festivals conducted by her father, Thomas. In order to avoid the
unpleasant attentions of a Welsh squire, Thomas Mathews of Llandaff, she decided to take
refuge in a French nunnery. Sheridan accompanied her to Lille in March 1772 but returned to
fight two duels that same year with Mathews.
• On April 13, 1773, Sheridan married Elizabeth Linley and set-up house in London on a lavish
scale with little money and no immediate prospects of any—other than his wife’s dowry. The
young couple entered the fashionable world and apparently held up their end in entertaining.
• The year 1775 was a productive one for Sheridan. In May his farce, St. Patrick’s Day, or the
Scheming Lieutenant, was performed, and in November Sheridan’s comic opera, The Duenna,
was produced with the help of his wife’s father at Covent Garden. A son, Thomas, was also
born to the Sheridans in 1775.
• Sheridan had become Member of Parliament for Stafford in September 1780 and was
undersecretary for foreign affairs (1782) and secretary to the treasury (1783). Later he was
treasurer of the navy (1806–07) and a privy councillor. The rest of his 32 years in Parliament
were spent as a member of the minority Whig party in opposition to the governing Tories.
• Sheridan’s financial difficulties were largely brought about by his own extravagance and
procrastination, as well as by the destruction of Drury Lane Theatre by fire in February 1809.
With the loss of his parliamentary seat and his income from the theatre, he became a prey to
his many creditors. His last years were beset by these and other worries—his circulatory
complaints and the cancer that afflicted his second wife, Esther Jane Ogle.
• When Sheridan settled in London, he began writing for the stage. Less than two years later of
his marriage, in 1775, his first play, The Rivals, was produced at London’s Covent Garden
Theatre. It was a failure on its first night. Sheridan cast a more capable actor for the role of the
comic Irishman for its second performance, and it was a smash which immediately estab-
lished the young playwright’s reputation and the favour of fashionable London. It has gone
on to become a standard of English literature.
• Sheridan’s famous play The School for Scandal (Drury Lane, 8 May 1777) is considered one of
the greatest comedies of manners in English. It was followed by The Critic (1779), an updating
of the satirical Restoration play The Rehearsal, which received a memorable revival starring
Laurence Olivier as Mr. Puff, opening at the New Theatre on 18 October 1945 as part of an
Old Vic Theatre Company season.

234 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY