Page 261 - DENG403_BRITISH_DRAMA

Unit 20: The School for Scandal: Criticism to the Text and Characterization

Act V, scene I, runs on from the screen scene with Joseph, the bad-tempered, blaming not himself Notes
but Fortune and abusing his servant. However, the audience expects Joseph to have a moment of
composure. It does happen, in real life, that a man is pounded by unremitting misfortune but
generally there is a pause. Joseph surveys the wreck of his hopes ruefully. His annoyance arise from
the offended pride of a professional schemer: Sure Fortune never played a man of my policy such a
trick before!
He cannot believe that disaster has befallen him through an error of judgement—as it has insofar as
he has failed to understand Sir Peter and Lady Teazle—and attributes everything to the confrontation
and revelations in his library. Apart from his miscalculations about the Teazles, his scheme to have
an affair with Lady Teazle as a cover for his approach to Maria through Sir Peter has not been
carefully thought out.
The effect Sheridan seeks and achieves in the characterization of Joseph Surface is that this man of
Policy is too clever by half and that his discomfiture is just the punishment for his nasty combination
of hypocrisy, self-seeking, and conceit. There is some danger that Sheridan may overplay his hand
and, in Act V, portray Joseph as too repellent. Angry that his schemes have collapsed, Joseph is a
specialist in pursuing his own ends under a cloak of morality and searching his own goals with a
cynical disregard of others.
In Act V, the scenes are brief and powerful. Joseph speaks the perfect language of sentiment in
order to fob off his beggar. To explain his inability to give, he holds up a mirror in which his own
image is drawn and reflected. Joseph tends to use sentiment to offset the disadvantages of his
reputation for benevolence, and recommends the technique to other men of policy as heartless as
himself. He desires respectability—position and wealth—no matter how many bodies he has to
climb over to achieve it. He spouts smug and sententious pieces of advice, artful, selfish and
malicious.

If we regard Sir Joseph as a sinner, then his brother, Sir Charles, is a saint. Not so! Not
so much of a clear-cut line of demarcation! Sheridan would neither allow these two brothers
to go to hell nor paradise! He gives them each a human foible and inherent flaw to make them
sound and appear agreeable and laughable on the stage. For Charles, it is his extravagance
and dissipation that smite him most. For Joseph, it is restlessness, wit, and avarice that betray
himself in the first place!

Sir Peter Teazle

Upright gentleman of about age fifty who has recently married a young woman. Fooled by Joseph
Surface’s pretensions, he promotes a marriage between Joseph and Maria. Sir Peter Teazle is named
after the teasel, a thorny and prickly plant which suggests Sir Peter’s vexatious nature. Sir Peter, the
unhappy bridegroom and confident of his more lively friend, Sir Oliver, fills three roles of varying
degrees of importance. As far as the entertainment value of the play is concerned, his most important
function lies in his role as the husband of Lady Teazle. These two engage in several thoroughly
witty exchanges in the course of the action, which make them a delight to have on the stage Sir Peter
is obviously cast in the beginning as an aging comic husband who marries a young country girl. Sir
Peter does stand alone for part of the play, talking to the audience or Rowley. He ceases to be
specifically the husband of Lady Teazle and becomes more generally the stock comic figure of the
woe-begone husband with serious difficulties on his hands. The Restoration concern with horns
has been replaced by a concern with extravagant expenses but the overall comic effect is much the
same.
Besides being a source of entertainment, Sir Peter is also important to the actual movement of the
play in his role as confident to Sir Oliver. It is through him and because of him that Sir Oliver

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