Richard Brinsley Sheridan - Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The Complete Works of

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

(1751-1816)

Contents

Delphi Classics 2017

Version 1

The Complete Works of

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

By Delphi Classics, 2017

Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan

First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2017.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 78656 083 4

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Richard Brinsley Sheridan was born in Dublin on 30 October 1751

The site of the birthplace today, Dorset Street, Dublin

Dublin today

A COMEDY

The Rivals debuted at the Covent Garden Theatre on 17 January 1775. It was Sheridans first play, composed shortly after he married Elizabeth Linley, who was considered to be one of the most well regarded soprano singers of the period. She was the daughter of composer Thomas Linley, who was the musical director of the Bath Assembly Rooms. Elizabeth performed in concerts for her fathers venue as well as appearing at the Covent Garden Theatre, which is better known as the Royal Opera House. Her work came to an abrupt end in 1773 when she married Sheridan and he forbade her to appear on stage as he believed it would reflect badly on his reputation and status as a gentleman. Though the playwright insisted it was necessary for his wife to retire, the couple soon suffered financial difficulties without Elizabeths income. It was under these circumstances that Sheridan decided he needed to write a play in order to earn enough money to uphold his extravagant lifestyle.

The opening night of the play was a disaster, as it was excoriated by both critics and the public. One of the actors in a prominent role gave a particularly poor performance and the play was criticised for being too long. Sheridan immediately responded to its harsh reception and heavily edited the text over the course of a week and half; it was staged again, this time, to great acclaim. It has remained one of his most well-known and frequently performed works over the last two centuries.

The Rivals is a comedy set in eighteenth century Bath, which was a city often associated with luxury and consumerism. The plot centres on the romantic entanglements of the idealistic Lydia Languish and her various suitors. It also features one of the most famous comedic characters in English literature, Mrs Malaprop; her tendency to mistakenly use a word in place of a similar sounding one, often to great comic effect, resulted in the term malapropism entering the English language. The play is a robust satire on the artifice, pretension and self-importance of genteel and aristocratic English society.

The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in the 1820s

An illustration of the Covent Garden Theatre shortly before it burned down in 1808

Elizabeth Ann Sheridan (ne Linley) (1754-1792) by Thomas Gainsborough, 1787

A 1795 Drury Lane playbill for the drama

Photograph of Louisa Lane Drew as Mrs. Malaprop in an all-star revival of The Rivals to benefit Charles W. Couldock, May 1895

Bob Acres and His Servant by Edwin Austin Abbey, c. 1895

Elsie Leslie as Lydia Languish in The Rivals, 1899

A preface to a play seems generally to be considered as a kind of closet-prologue, in which if his piece has been successful the author solicits that indulgence from the reader which he had before experienced from the audience: but as the scope and immediate object of a play is to please a mixed assembly in representation (whose judgment in the theatre at least is decisive,) its degree of reputation is usually as determined as public, before it can be prepared for the cooler tribunal of the study. Thus any farther solicitude on the part of the writer becomes unnecessary at least, if not an intrusion: and if the piece has been condemned in the performance, I fear an address to the closet, like an appeal to posterity, is constantly regarded as the procrastination of a suit, from a consciousness of the weakness of the cause. From these considerations, the following comedy would certainly have been submitted to the reader, without any farther introduction than what it had in the representation, but that its success has probably been founded on a circumstance which the author is informed has not before attended a theatrical trial, and which consequently ought not to pass unnoticed.