Sheridan Richard Brinsley - School for Scandal and Other Plays

OXFORD ENGLISH DRAMA

General Editor: MICHAEL CORDNER
Associate General Editors: PETER HOLLAND MARTIN WIGGINS

THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL
AND OTHER PLAYS

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN (17511816) was the son of Thomas Sheridan, actor, theatre-manager, and educationalist, and Frances Sheridan, dramatist and novelist. He was born in Dublin but mainly educated in England. His elopement with the distinguished singer Elizabeth Linley caused a sensation and embroiled him in two duels. He abandoned legal training after the success of the rewritten version of The Rivals in January 1775 and consolidated his theatrical reputation with the triumphant premire of the opera The Duenna in November that year. On David Garricks retirement in 1776 he became manager of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, for which he wrote A Trip to Scarborough, The School for Scandal, and The Critic over the next three years. Although he continued to manage Drury Lane for two more decades, his election as Member of Parliament in 1780 initiated a new stage of his career, in which he gave priority to his political ambitions over his theatrical involvements, and he was to write only one more full-length play, Pizarro (premired in 1799). But major political office always eluded him, and he died in poverty. In contrast, his three finest comedies, The Rivals, The School for Scandal, and The Critic, have an unbroken history of successful stage performance from their premires to today.

MICHAEL CORDNER is Reader in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. His editions include George Farquhars The Beaux Stratagem, the Complete Plays of Sir George Etherege, Four Comedies of Sir John Vanbrugh, and Four Restoration Marriage Comedies. He is completing a book on The Comedy of Marriage 16601737.

PETER HOLLAND is Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Director of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham.

MARTIN WIGGINS is a Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute and Lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham.

OXFORD ENGLISH DRAMA

J. M. Barrie
Peter Pan and Other Plays

Aphra Behn
The Rover and Other Plays

George Farquhar
The Recruiting Officer and
Other Plays

John Ford
Tis Pity Shes a Whore and
Other Plays

Ben Jonson
The Alchemist and Other Plays

Christopher Marlowe
Doctor Faustus and Other Plays

John Marston
The Malcontent and Other Plays

Thomas Middleton
A Mad World, My Masters and
Other Plays

Arthur Wing Pinero
Trelawny of the Wells
Other Plays

Richard Brinsley Sheridan
The School for Scandal and
Other Plays

J. M. Synge
The Playboy of the Western World
and Other Plays

ed. George Taylor
Trilby and Other Plays
Four Plays for Victorian Siar Actors

John Webster
The Duchess of Malfi and
Other Plays

Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest and
Other Plays

William Wycherley
The Country Wife and Other Plays

Barksted, Beaumont, Fletcher,
Machin, Marston, Middleton
Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies

Campion, Carew, Chapman, Daniel,
Davenant, Jonson, Townshend
Court Masques

Chapman, Kyd, Middleton,
Tourneur
Four Revenge Tragedies

Coyne, Fitzball, Jones, Lewes, Sims
The Lights o London and
Other Plays

Dryden, Lee, Otway, Southerne
Four Restoration Marriage Comedies

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

Edited into an Introduction and Notes by
MICHAEL CORDNER

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Editorial matter Michael Cordner 1998

First published as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 1998

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 17511816.
The rivals; The duenna; A trip to Scarborough; The school for
scandal; The critic / edited by Michael Cordner.
(Oxford worlds classics)
Includes bibliographical references (p.).
I. Cordner, Michael. II. Title. III. Title: Duenna. IV. Title:
Trip to Scarborough. V. Title: School for scandal. VI. Title:
Critic. VII. Series: Oxford world s classics
(Oxford University Press)
PR3681.C67 1998 822.6dc21 9750491
ISBN 0192825674

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Typeset by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong
Printed in Great Britain by
Caledonian International Book Manufacturing Ltd.
Glasgow

I AM grateful for the generous help I have received in the preparation of this edition, especially from Richard and Marie Axton, John Barrell, Anne Barton, Jacques Berthoud, Jordi Coral, John Roe, and Geoffrey Wall. Nick Havely has been an indispensable guide in coping with the difficulties of Sheridans curious Italian. The greatest debt, as always, is to Niccy.

MICHAEL CORDNER

FOUR days before the premire of Sheridans first play at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden, David Garrick reported in a letter to a friend that The Rivals had raisd great Expectation in the Public.

In the event, however, the premire was a disaster. A Friend to Comedy, reviewing it in The Morning Chronicle, underlined the scale of the disappointment:

Our expectations have been some time raised with the hope that they were at last to produce us a truly good comedy; the hour of proof arrives, and we are presented with a piece got up with such flagrant inattention, that half the performers appear to know nothing of their parts, and the play itself is a