Preface. History of the Play. Sheridan's farce, The Critic, or a Tragedy Rehearsed, was brought out on the 30th of October 1779, when the author, then aged twenty-eight, was manager of Drury Lane Theatre; and its wit has kept it alive to this day, though many of the personal allusions have long since ceased to be understood by the reader. There is the usual story of Sheridan's procrastination. We are told that two days before the play was to be produced the last scene was unfinished, and that it was only by inveigling Sheridan into the green-room, where there was a fire, wine and supper, stationery, and the incomplete manuscript, and then locking him in, that he was brought to finish the work. It is said that he laughed heartily at the joke; certainly he was not loth to have such stories told, for he liked it to be thought that his brilliant scenes were thrown off without any of the care which, in reality, he bestowed upon them. The Critic was not printed until 1781, when, unlike Sheridan's other plays, it was published with the author's approval. The original edition has an engraved title-page, which was afterwards used, without modification, in later issues; the genuine first issue can thus only be distinguished by examining the watermarks in the paper. Parsons, as Sir Fretful Plagiary, the author; Miss Pope, as the tragedy heroine Tilburina; and Bannister as Don Ferolo Whiskerandos, were among the chief successes of the original cast. In later days the names of Farren and Charles Matthews have been associated with the play, and many changes have been introduced on the stage in order to bring the satire up to date. Matthews published in Tinsley's Magazine for November 1872 a defence of the system of "gags" which he and others introduced into the piece with the view of suiting it to a modern audience. Unfortunately The Critic is now rarely acted in public, and never in its original form. In drawing the character of Sir Fretful Plagiary, Sheridan had in mind the dramatist Richard Cumberland, who had prefixed to his play, The Choleric Man, a Dedication to Detraction. Cumberland was sensitive, vain, and envious. In one of his letters to Garrick he complains of Sheridan's neglect when one of Cumberland's tragedies was being read to the actors: "It gave me not the slightest offence, as I put it all to the habit of dissipation and indolence." There is a well-known tale that when Cumberland and his family witnessed the first performance of The School for Scandal, Cumberland asked his children what they found to laugh at, adding, in an undertone, "keep still, you little dunces ! " When Sheridan heard of this incident he said, "It was ungrateful of Cumberland to have been displeased with his children for laughing at my comedy, for when I went to see his tragedy I laughed from beginning to end." There are other versions of the story, and it is only fair to add that Cumberland's first tragedy was not acted until 1778, a year after The School for Scandal, and that he denied that he was present at the first performance of Sheridan's play. The original of Dangle is said to have been a Mr Vaughan, who had busied himself in the affairs of the Richmond Theatre, and had written letters in the Morning Post. George Colman had ridiculed him, under the name of Dapper, in the papers called The Genius (1761-2). Among the plays satirised by Sheridan was John Home's Fatal |