BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE SHERIDAN'S The Rivals was produced at Covent Garden Theatre on January 17, 1775, and promptly withdrawn. On its reappearance, in a revised form, eleven days later, with a better actor in the part of Sir Lucius O'Trigger, it attained a great success, and was speedily put into print. Before the end of the year another edition was called for, and a third in 1776, but the literary critics, so we are told, were unappreciative, and perhaps to their obtuseness should be attributed the disinclination to publish his plays which Sheridan afterwards showed. Produced on May 2, 1775,1 less than four months after The Rivals, the farce of St. Patrick's Day, certainly his weakest work, was never printed with his sanction. The Duenna, brought out in the following November, remained unprinted till 1794; A Trip to Scarborough, his adaptation from Vanbrugh's Relapse, though put on the stage in February 1777, did not appear in book form till 1786. Of The School for Scandal, produced in London on May 8, 1777, an edition was printed for J. Ewling of Dublin, without date, but presumably during the course of the next year. Sheridan had given a copy of his manuscript to his sister, Mrs. Lefanu, who 1 Moore gives the date of production as 'November 1775,' obviously confusing it with that of The Duenna. 4C2838 |