poorly linked with the main plot that it is sometimes well-nigh excised from acting versions of The Rivals,1 while the "scandalscenes" serve rather for "setting" than for advancement of the plot. In general, however, Sheridan's practical knowledge of stage effect is consummate. The "duel scene," the "auction scene," and especially the "screen scene" are among the most successful scenes in English comedy. Yet perhaps Sheridan's most notable triumph is that his scenes, however effective individually, develop naturally from the necessities of the plot. The brilliancy of the "auction scene" would be its own justification, but it serves the essential object of introducing Sir Oliver's test of the character of his scapegrace nephew. Not merely the general conception, but the execution of individual details in scene-construction, reveals Sheridan's dramatic art. Highly ingenious, and highly natural as well, is the device which provides for the fall of the screen not by blunder or accident, but by Sir Peter's curiosity as to the "little French milliner." Hazlitt surely had in mind Sheridan's dramatic art when he pronounced The School for Scandal, "if not the most original, perhaps the most finished and faultless comedy which we have.” 2

Contrast with Goldsmith shows Sheridan's triumph in naturalness of incident. So strong are the improbabilities upon which rests the plot of She Stoops to Conquer that, to quote Dr. Johnson, it "borders upon farce." The prolongation of Marlow's mistake in thinking Hardcastle's house an inn is hardly justified by the plea that the plot is founded on an actual mistake of Goldsmith. The scene on "Crackskull Common" passes from comedy to farce, when Mrs. Hardcastle fails to recognize either her own garden or her own husband. Equally improbable is Marlow's failure to recognize

1 See Appendix, Mr. Joseph Jefferson's Acting Version of The Rivals. 2 Lecture viii, in Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819), p. 335. 3 Boswell, Life of Johnson, Macmillan ed. (1900), I, 530.

the mistress in the maid. In Sheridan there is no such wrenching of the probabilities. Mrs. Malaprop has no reason to suspect that "Captain Absolute and Ensign Beverley are one and the same person," nor has Bob Acres reason to suspect that his dreaded adversary will prove to be one of his "particular friends." However effective as a stage-play, She Stoops to Conquer cannot compare in naturalness of incident or of plot-development with The School for Scandal. As a dramatic artist Goldsmith must yield the honors to Sheridan. Comparison between Goldsmith and Sheridan has been intentionally confined to the trio of famous comedies. To insist upon comparison of The Good Natur'd Man with The Rivals and The School for Scandal is to hang a millstone around Goldsmith's neck. Croaker and Lofty, doubtless the best characters in Goldsmith's earlier play, can with difficulty rival Sir Fretful Plagiary and Mr. Puff, despite the fact that The Critic is merely a burlesque. For scenes, perhaps only the bailiffs' scene and Croaker's reading of the letter may be termed effective. If the rather negative merits of The Good Natur'd Man and the positive merits of The Critic be urged, Goldsmith's contribution to English drama is obviously inferior in extent and variety to that of Sheridan.

Tested merely by continuance of stage popularity, Sheridan stands in English drama second only to Shakespeare. Judged by purely literary standards, though he cannot be ranked in the school of Shakespeare's Comedy of Nature, he stands as the most finished product of the Comedy of Manners. No more effective and yet rational modern summary of the case for Sheridan can perhaps be found than that given to Fraser Rae by Sir Henry Irving: "Sheridan brought the comedy of manners to the highest perfection, and The School for Scandal remains to this day the most popular comedy in the English language. Some of the characters both in this play and in The Rivals have become so closely associated with our current speech

that we may fairly regard them as imperishable. No farce of our time has so excellent a chance of immortality as The Critic." 1

THE RIVALS

1. THE SOURCES OF THE RIVALS

General Sources Suggested. - The ingenuity of many explorers of the original sources of The Rivals is comparable only to the imaginative genius of many of Sheridan's biographers. Were all the charges of borrowing and theft preferred against Sheridan proved, he would at least stand credited with a literary knowledge perhaps as striking in a man of threeand-twenty as the possession of some original dramatic ability. An idea of these supposed borrowings, great and small, in plot and character, may be gained by grouping together a few of the authors from whom, it is alleged, Sheridan drew - Smollett, Garrick, Shakespeare, Molière, Fielding, Colman, Prior, Steele, Mrs. Sheridan, Theodore Hook.2 So far, moreover, do doctors disagree, that while one suggests Smollett's Peregrine Pickle, several insist on Humphry Clinker; while one suggests Mrs. Sheridan's novel The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, others insist on her play, A Journey to Bath. Most ingenious is the theory of indebtedness to Theodore Hook, who was born thirteen years after the first performance of The Rivals. Not all the other suggestions can be swept aside so conclusively, but the assertion may be made safely that Sheridan's borrowings from any or all of these supposed originals are comparatively slight.

Mrs. Mala prop. - Investigation has centered chiefly on the original of Mrs. Malaprop. The hyper-ingenious Watkins,

1 Fraser Rae, Sheridan, II, 322.

2 Brander Matthews, Sheridan's Comedies (Crowell ed. 1904), Introduction to the Rivals, lxviii ff., takes up the cudgels effectively in Sheridan's defense.

Sheridan's first biographer, finds Mrs. Malaprop "a palpable copy from an original in the novel of Joseph Andrews," and thereupon institutes a comparison between Mrs. Slipslop and Mrs. Malaprop in which he maintains that what “gives inimitable humour to the story of Fielding becomes extravagantly absurd in the comedy of Sheridan."1. Among other suggested originals are Tabitha Bramble in Humphry Clinker, Mrs. Heidelberg in Colman and Garrick's The Clandestine Marriage, and Dogberry in Much Ado about Nothing. The wordblunders of these characters, however, bear but a superficial resemblance to Mrs. Malaprop's "nice derangement of epitaphs." In Tabitha Bramble's letters, for instance, most of the rough comic effect is due to extraordinarily illiterate spelling. Thus, in her first letter, she writes of her "rosecollard neglejay, with green robins," and of the "litel box with my jowls." In the speeches assigned to Mrs. Heidelberg, the spelling shows that her blunders of speech lie chiefly in mispronunciation. In her first scene, for example, occur "pertest," "dishabille," "kivers" (for "covers"), "qualaty," "nataral," and "perdigious." In decided contrast should be remembered Julia's explanation of Mrs. Malaprop's "select words so ingeniously misapplied, without being mis pronounced." Dogberry, indeed, may claim closer kinship to Mrs. Malaprop than can Tabitha Bramble or Mrs. Heidelberg. Yet it must not be forgotten that the word-blunders of the illiterate have long been a stock source of comedy, and that in Shakespeare alone are, besides Dogberry, Elbow the "simple constable," Mistress Quickly, and Launcelot Gobbo. Whatever the kinship between Mrs. Malaprop and such literary or rather, illiterate — ancestors, a far nearer relative is to be found in Mrs. Sheridan's unfinished comedy, A Journey to Bath. In the fifth scene of the first act Mrs. Tryfort is described as "the vainest poor creature, and the fondest of 1 Memoirs of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, I, 198.

hard words, which, without miscalling, she always takes care to misapply"-a close parallel to Julia's already quoted description of Mrs. Malaprop. Both Mrs. Tryfort and Mrs. Malaprop use "progeny" for "prodigy," and "contagious" for "contiguous," and there are a few parallels less exact than these. Though the borrowings are not numerous, the conclusion seems inevitable that the immediate suggestion for Mrs. Malaprop came from Mrs. Sheridan's play.

Lydia Languish. Since the ultra-romantic heroine is a stock comedy character, it is not surprising that critics have found originals for Lydia Languish almost as readily as for Mrs. Malaprop. Among the most frequently suggested prototypes of Lydia Languish are Smollett's Lydia Melford1 in Humphry Clinker, Colman's Polly Honeycombe in the comedy of the same name, and Steele's Biddy Tipkin in The Tender Husband. Apart from the similarity in name, Lydia Melford's resemblance to Lydia Languish is best summarized in her uncle Matthew Bramble's phrase, "Truly, she has got a languishing eye, and reads romances." His earlier description of her, however - "a poor, good-natured simpleton; as soft as butter, and as easily melted"- hardly fits Sheridan's character. Lydia Melford faints on discovering that a supposed spectacle-vendor is her disguised lover, Wilson. Lydia Languish speedily overcomes astonishment at the sudden discovery of Beverley (iii, 3), and turns the unexpected opportunity to profit. Smollett's heroine rejoices with all her relatives when finally "the slighted Wilson is metamorphosed into George Dennison, only son and heir of a gentleman whose character is second to none in England"; Sheridan's heroine renounces Beverley when she discovers that he is Sir Anthony's

1 Sanders, Life of Sheridan, p. 34, and G. A. Aitken, The Rivals, Introduction, vii, speak of Lydia "Bramble" instead of Melford.

2 Lydia Melford's words in her letter to Mrs. Jermyn, toward the close of Humphry Clinker.