The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

*contains spoilers*


By the time The School for Scandal hit the stage at the Drury Lane Theatre in May 1777, Richard Brinsley Sheridan had already been dealt his own life’s portion of scandal. In one particularly influential instance, Sheridan escorted his beloved Elizabeth Linley to a French convent to escape the advances of a certain Captain Thomas Mathews, only to return to England to find that Mathews had posted a defamatory article in the local newspaper with the intention of damaging his reputation. Honour demanded action, as the leisured classes of Bath indulged in relishing gossip over the situation, and so Sheridan challenged Mathews to a duel. This very incident is hinted at in the text: one of the piece’s villains, the heartless and ambitious Joseph Surface, is confronted by the husband of his lover, and the results of the confrontation are greatly exaggerated by the titular School for Scandal; “Then, madam, they began to fight with swords“. This is an apt attack of the nature of rumour and gossip.


Indeed, Sheridan basically blasts the leisured classes with his shotgun of satire. At the time of the play’s initial performances, theatre trips were dominated by one genre in particular: the sentimental comedy – the stock characters of these comedies of manners were either too good or too bad, and they all overcame their moral trials and all ended well. Sheridan, in contrast, wanted to reflect the complexities of the human predicament, and so he took the genre to task with the presentation of characters such as Charles Surface, younger brother of Joseph, whose drinking, gambling and frivolous lack of respect for tradition lay side by side with his faithful devotion to Maria and his genuinely amiable temperament. Whilst the venomous tongues of the scandalmongers claim Charles to be profligate, he is ironically one of the only characters who is open and honest – and is also generous about it. The play kicks of with the scheming Lady Sneerwell planning Charles’s downfall with the aptly named Snake. We then go on to meet the School for Scandal, which consists of: Mrs Candour, who manages to simultaneously assert her distaste for gossip whilst also managing to gossip in doing so; Benjamin Backbite, who thinks himself quite the wit, though Sheridan makes it apparent that that is most definitely not the case; Crabtree, uncle of Benjamin Backbite, whose sycophantism to Lady Sneerwell also manages to somehow compliment his competitive side regarding gossip and scandal; and Lady Teazle, wife of the long-suffering Sir Peter Teazle, who seems to have the wrong impression about almost everything.


Sheridan makes ample use of asides to great comedic effect, particularly in the scenes in which Sir Peter and Lady Teazle bicker and compete for power in their marriage. And as the play weaves its way along, tangling now and then into complex but discernible tangles, Sheridan uses dramatic irony to create a sense of heightened comedic tension, particularly in Joseph Surface’s library, where Lady Teazle hides behind a screen to avoid being discovered by Sir Peter, only for Sir Peter to then seek a hiding place in which to spy on Charles Surface as Charles arrives to chat with his brother. Everything unravels eventually, of course, though Sheridan has one last kick at the conventions of the sentimental comedies of the time with Charles Surface’s closing declaration; “Why, as to reforming…I’ll make no promises…” Not every moral trial is overcome, nor does everything end well, but it is such a joy to watch unfold.

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