INTRODUCTORY NOTE RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, statesman and dramatist, was born in Dublin on Oct. 30, 1751. He belonged to a highly talented family, his grandfather, Thomas Sheridan, being a prominent Jacobite and a historian, and his father, also Thomas Sheridan, a distinguished actor, theatrical manager, and author. Sheridan was educated for the bar, but the success of his comedy, "The Rivals," led him into close relations with the theatre. "The Rivals" was followed by “St. Patrick's Day," a farce; "The Duenna," a comic opera; “A Trip to Scarborough," an adaptation from Vanbrugh; "The School for Scandal" (1777); and a patriotic melodrama, "Pizarro." He was manager of Drury Lane Theatre, which he twice had a chief part in rebuilding; and though he had periods of marked prosperity in his management, and exercised a powerful influence on the stage history of his time, his theatrical activities frequently involved him in grave financial difficulties. In 1780 Sheridan entered Parliament, and for over thirty years he took a highly distinguished part in politics. He held cabinet office a number of times, and was regarded as the most brilliant and effective orator of his day. His most famous speeches dealt with the prosecution of Warren Hastings; the French Revolution, in connection with which he urged the policy of letting the French manage their own government, but of resisting their attempts to spread their principles by conquest; the war with the American colonies, by his opposition to which he earned the gratitude of Congress; and the liberty of the press, of which he was an uncompromising champion. Throughout his career he was an honest and intrepid advocate of liberal ideas. In "The School for Scandal” Sheridan carried the comedy of manners to the highest point it has reached in England. In the permanence of its hold on the public it is surpassed only by the plays of Shakespeare; and in characters like Joseph Surface, Sir Peter, and Lady Teazle, and in the scandal scene and the auction scene the author added to the lasting glories of the English stage. Sheridan died in 1816, and was buried with great pompin Westminster Abbey. A PORTRAIT ADDRESSED TO MRS CREWE, WITH THE COMEDY OF THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL BY R. B. SHERIDAN, ESQ. TELL me, ye prim adepts in Scandal's school, Come, gentle Amoret (for 'neath that name In worthier verse is sung thy beauty's fame); Come for but thee who seeks the Muse? and while Celestial blushes check thy conscious smile, With timid grace, and hesitating eye, The perfect model, which I boast, supply:- No tongue o'ervalues Heaven, or flatters her! Yet she by Fate's perverseness-she alone Would doubt our truth, nor deem such praise her own. Adorning fashion, unadorned by dress, Simple from taste, and not from carelessness; She frowns no goddess, and she moves no queen. Might well have fixed a fainter crimson there, Inshrined Modesty-supply the rest. But who the peril of her lips shall paint? Strip them of smiles-still, still all words are faint. To judge of what she says, and swear 'tis sense: Curious to mark how frequent they repose, As well as charms, rejects the vainer theme; And, half mistrustful of her beauty's store, She barbs with wit those darts too keen before: Read in all knowledge that her sex should reach, Though Greville, or the Muse, should deign to teach, Fond to improve, nor timorous to discern In Millar's dialect she would not prove Apollo's priestess, but Apollo's love, Graced by those signs which truth delights to own, |