epigrammatic sayings of the characters have passed into our ordinary speech, and others, we find, linger pleasantly in our memory. A comedy of society. Finally, The Rivals is "a comedy of society"; that is, the mirror is held up to the fashionable world in its distinctively social functions. Perhaps The School for Scandal is an even better example of this type of comedy. The two plays together, it may be said, reflect the contemporary fashionable life of the two great capitals of English society, Bath, with its free and easy cosmopolitanism, and London, with its brilliant drawingroom artificiality. "The scope and immediate object of a play," says Sheridan in his Preface, "is to please a mixed assembly in Success on Representation." Judged by this standard, The the stage. Rivals has thoroughly succeeded. For nearly a century and a half it has kept its place in our theatrical repertory, always effective when adequately presented. Its sudden surprises, clever groupings of persons, strong contrasts of character, keen thrusts of satire, and rapid fireworks of wit make it in action a grand tour de force that is well-nigh irresistible. Faults as literature. But the play must be submitted also, as Sheridan grants, to "the cooler tribunal of the Study." Here it does not fare quite so well, for the reader who judges the play as literature finds along with its excellent qualities certain grave faults. These faults are due primarily, it would seem, to the inexperience of the author. Indeed, from a young man of twenty-three, unfamiliar with the theatre, and composing his first play, we could not expect the finish of a master. The remarkable thing is that the play is so excellent. To inexperience, surely, is due the first fault that we observe the machinery of the play is too evident. We realize too often that the characters are talking not to each other, but at the audience; we see constantly the dramatist striving through asides and monologues to convey to us certain necessary information; and we feel throughout the general movement of the plot the presence of some one behind the scenes. In short, the young playwright had not yet acquired "the art that conceals art." A second fault, obvious on reading the play, is the artificiality of the language. The servants, for example, are far too keen at repartee, and their wit is of a nature quite impossible in country menials. This in some measure may be excused, perhaps, on the plea that the whole play moves on a level of wit much higher than in actual life, and that in the midst of the general display of cleverness even the servants may indulge in epigram and repartee. The explanation, however, does not fully excuse. Again, in quite a different way, Faulkland and Julia are artificial. They speak in stilted rhetoric and elaborate figures. Take, for example, Julia's closing speech: "Then let us study to preserve it so and while Hope pictures to us a flattering scene of future Bliss, let us deny its pencil those colours which are too bright to be lasting. When Hearts deserving Happiness would unite their fortune, Virtue would crown them with an unfading garland of modest, hurtless flowers; but ill-judging Passion will force the gaudier Rose into the wreath, whose thorn offends them, when its Leaves are dropt!" Certainly no young lady ever spoke in this fashion, and even the fact that Faulkland and Julia represent the sentimental muse does not condone such artificiality. The other characters, also, are apt now and then to speak rhetorically. Again, the humor of the play is often exaggerated to the point of improbability, or sheer impossibility. For example, Mrs. Malaprop's misuse of words is at times overdone: "I laid my positive conjunction on her, never to think on the fellow again; - I have since laid Sir Anthony's preposition before her; but, I'm sorry to say, she seems resolved to decline every particle that I enjoin her." "Well, Sir Anthony, since you desire it, we will not anticipate the past; so mind, young people spection will now be all to the future." our retro Surely there is too much method in this "derangement of epitaphs." Moreover, Bob Acres's "referential oaths," though invariably humorous, leave an impression that they are "above the speaker's capacity." "David. But put the case that he kills me!-by the Mass! I go to the worms, and my honour whips over to my enemy! "Acres. No, David — in that case! — Odds crowns and laurels! your honour follows you to the grave." "Sir Lucius. Would you chuse to be pickled and sent home? or would it be the same to you to lie here in the Abbey? I'm told there is very snug lying in the Abbey. "Acres. Pickled! - Snug lying in the Abbey ! - Odds tremors! Sir Lucius, don't talk so!" We smile at these ingenious oaths, yet at the same time are quite aware of their improbability. the senti mental comedy. The English stage in the latter half of the eighteenth century was overrun with the so-called Sentimental ComRelation to edy the French comédie larmoyante. It presented to the audience impossible characters, speaking in an artificial, "genteel" language, and moving in an atmosphere surcharged with virtue. Apparently its main purposes were to teach morality, and to make the spectators "weep a flood." Against this prevailing sentimental comedy a warfare had been waged for some years. Goldsmith, in The Good Natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1773), had struck the hardest blows. But others, also, had joined in the battle; notably Samuel Foote, who had produced at the Haymarket Theatre in 1773 an amusing burlesque of the sentimental in his farce The Handsome Housemaid; or Piety in Pattens, in which a maiden of low degree, by the mere effects of morality and virtue, raised herself to riches and honours." The Rivals carried on the work of Goldsmith and Foote, and helped to give the finishing blows to the prevailing moral-lachrymose comedy. This fact Sheridan 66 1 This is not extant; for a discussion of it, and of the sentimental comedy, see John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage, v, 374-6. |