AND THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL BY RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN With an Introduction by HENRY MORLEY CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED AND MELBOURNE. MCMIV INTRODUCTION. SHERIDAN's first comedy, The Rivals, was written in 1774, when Sheridan (born in September, 1751) was twenty-three years old. He had been married, little more than a year before, to the beautiful Miss Linley, a young singer, who was daughter to Thomas Linley, the musician, and in 1774 they had set up a little establishment of their own in Orchard Street, Portman Square. The comedy was first acted at Covent Garden on the 17th of January, 1775. It was unsuccessful on the first night through failure of the actor who played Sir Lucius O'Trigger. The part was at once transferred to a better comedian, and success was then complete. The house in Orchard Street had a large music-room attached to it, and Mrs. Sheridan, who, upon marriage, withdrew wholly from public singing, entertained friends with little concerts, in which she and the other members of her family were the only performers. This more than made up for the modest form of table hospitality to which the young couple were confined. Sheridan's wife had a little money of her own, earned by her singing, besides £3,000 paid by a rich old gentleman for the folly of having engaged himself to her when she was a girl of sixteen. Sheridan himself had written politics in aid of income; and he certainly had no turn for economy. When he was a boy at Harrow, under Dr. Sumner, an uncle Chamberlayne looked after his money accounts, and enforced upon him, considering his father's circumstances, the necessity of strict economy. He was not to compete for an archery prize, because competition involved the cost of an archer's costume. But inasmuch as, at the same time, he had a |