The School for Scandal and Other Plays

"His Comic Muse does not go about prying into obscure corners, or collecting idle curiosities, but shows her laughing face, and points to her rich treasure?the follies of mankind"

Thus wrote William Hazlitt of Sheridan, whom he thought shone 'like Hesperus' among the comic writers of the eighteenth century. As a playwright Sheridan had a brief but brilliant career, and between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-eight he wrote two of the funniest plays in our literature, The Rivals and The School for Scandal, and a wonderful farce, The Critic. Ingenious plots, agile and eloquent wit, and an unerring eye for the comic situation characterize Sheridan's drama. Never an insistent moralist, he delighted in deflating hypocrisy and in satirizing the manners of his age. As Eric Ramp writes in the Introduction, while Sheridan was no great innovator, "the three comedies by which he is now known are in many ways the best that Georgian theatre has to offer and they are comedies which, over the last two hundred years, have added much, as Dr Johnson said about Garrick, to 'the gaiety of nations'".

Richard Brinsley Sheridan was born in 1751, the son of an actor-elocutionist, and educated at Harrow. He escorted the singer Elizabeth Linley to France, fought two duels on her behalf, and married her in 1773. In 1775 he made a spectacular debut as a dramatist with The Rivals, St Patrick’s Day and The Duenna, a comic opera. The following year he acquired Garrick’s share in the Drury Lane Theatre, which he managed until it was burnt down in 1809. The School for Scandal was produced in 1777 and The Critic in 1779. From 1780 until 1812 Sheridan was an M.P. and held several government offices. During 1787 and 1788 he made some celebrated speeches supporting the impeachment of Warren Hastings. He died in 1816.
Eric Rump studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge, for his B.A. and at the University of Toronto for his Ph.D., and is now an Associate Professor in the English Department of Glendon College, York University, Toronto. He is the author of a number of articles on both Restoration and modern drama and has edited The Comedies of William Congreve for the Penguin Classics.
Eric Rump studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge, for his B.A. and at the University of Toronto for his Ph.D., and is now an Associate Professor in the English Department of Glendon College, York University, Toronto. He is the author of a number of articles on both Restoration and modern drama and has edited The Comedies of William Congreve for the Penguin Classics.