The School for Scandal - Richard Brinsley Sheridan (reading strategies book txt) 📗

The School for Scandal

By Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Introduction A Portrait Prologue Dramatis Personae School for Scandal Act I Scene I Scene II Act II Scene I Scene II Scene III Act III Scene I Scene II Scene III Act IV Scene I Scene II Scene III Act V Scene I Scene II Scene III Epilogue Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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Introduction

Early in the spring of 1776 Richard Brinsley Sheridan succeeded David Garrick as the manager of Drury Lane Theatre. Within a little more than a year Sheridan had brought out the Rivals a comedy in five acts, St. Patrick’s Day, a farce in one act, and the Duenna, an opera in three acts. Great expectations were excited by the announcement of his first play at his own theatre. The production of the Trip to Scarborough in February, 1777, was only a temporary disappointment, for it was soon noised abroad that a more important comedy in five acts was in preparation. At last, on May 8, 1777, the School for Scandal was acted for the first time on any stage.

Garrick had read the play, and he thought even more highly of it than he had thought of Mrs. Sheridan’s Discovery many years before. He aided the author with much practical advice, and volunteered to write the prologue, a form of composition for which his lively fancy and neat versification were particularly suited. The great hopes excited for the comedy barely escaped disappointment⁠—for on the night before the first performance, as Sheridan told the House of Commons many years later, he was informed that it could not be performed, as a license was refused. It happened at this time there was the famous city contest for the office of chamberlain, between Wilkes and Hopkins. The latter had been charged with some practices similar to those of Moses, the Jew, in lending money to young men under age, and it was supposed that the character of the play was levelled at him, in order to injure him in his contest, in which he was supported by the ministerial interest. In the warmth of a contested election, the piece was represented as a factious and seditious opposition to a court candidate. The author, however, went to Lord Hertford, then lord chamberlain, who laughed at the affair and gave the license. Sheridan told Lord Byron that the next night, after the grand success of the School for Scandal, he was knocked down and taken to the watch-house, for making a row in the street, and being found intoxicated by the watchman.

Perhaps this was only a bit of Hibernian hyperbole, though a man’s head might well reel under a triumph so overwhelming. There seems to have been hardly a dissenting voice. Merry⁠—Della-Cruscan Merry, the future husband of Miss Brunton, who, under his name, was afterward the leading actress of America did, it is true, object to the great scandal-scene. “Why do not the dramatis persona,” he said, “stop talking, and let the play go on?” The comedy was a success from the rising of the curtain, but it was the falling of the screen⁠—although Garrick thought the actors stood a little too long without moving⁠—which raised the audience to the highest degree of enthusiasm. Reynolds, the dramatist, relates that as he was passing about nine on this evening through the pit-passage, “I heard such a tremendous noise over my head that, fearing the theatre was proceeding to fall about it, I ran for my life; but found the next morning that the noise did not arise from the falling of the house, but from the falling of the screen in the fourth act, so violent and tumultuous were the applause and laughter.”

The singular success of the School for Scandal seems to have been greatly aided by the unusual excellence of the acting. Charles Lamb says, “No piece was ever so completely cast in all its parts as this manager’s comedy.” Sheridan chose his performers, and modified his play, if needed, to suit their peculiarities, with the same shrewdness that he showed in all such matters. When reproached with not having written a love-scene for Charles and Maria, he said that it was because neither Mr. Smith nor Miss P. Hopkins (who played the parts) was an adept at stage lovemaking. King, the original Lord Ogleby in the Clandestine Marriage⁠—a part written by Garrick himself⁠—was Sir Peter; and Mrs. Abington was Lady Teazle. No one was better suited than John Palmer, from whom Sheridan may well have derived some hints of Joseph Surface; Boaden relates a characteristic interview between him and the manager, when he returned to the theatre after an escapade. “My dear Mr. Sheridan,” began the actor, with clasped hands and penitent humility, “if you could but know what I feel at this moment here!” laying one hand upon his heart. Sheridan, with his usual quickness, stopped him at once: