PLAYS OF RICHARD SHERIDAN.   Term Paper ID:25714 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Examines [A School for Scandal] & [The Critic] in context of late 18th/early 19th Cent. British culture & Restoration comedy.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines [A School for Scandal] & [The Critic] in context of late 18th/early 19th Cent. British culture & Restoration comedy. Paper Introduction: Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) was a late eighteenth-century British playwright of some renown, noted for helping to revive the English comedy of manners during the Restoration. This type of play depicts the amorous intrigues of people in the wealthier segment of society, and the best-known of Sheridan's plays analyze this territory with sharp wit and complex plots. He followed in the footsteps of William Congreve and William Wycherley and satirized his society in highly-polished plays like School for Scandal and The Critic. The eighteenth century began as a period of relative calm after the ferment and political turmoil of the previous century, and this was marked by the Restoration, the return to a previous order. The political order of the previous century was embodied in Thomas Hobbes' work Leviathan, which could be seen as a Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. The political order ofthe previous century was embodied in Thomas Hobbes' work Leviathan, whichcould be seen as a justification for the rule of Cromwell and a challengeto the accepted order of royalty. This play also opens with aPrologue setting the piece firmly in the theater: The Sister Muses, whom these realms obey, Who o'er the Drama hold divided sway, Sometimes, by evil counsellors, 'tis said Like earth-born potentates have been misled. The play opens with Mr. and Mrs Dangle atbreakfast when they are visited by Mr. Sneer, who no doubt delivers hislines in a way that is in keeping with his name, as did Lady Sneerwell.Dangle takes a superior view of the theater and of the lessons that thetheater should teach, and Sneer humors him in this in order to manipulatehim. He was the son of an actor,wrote for the theater, and then abandoned the theater for a career inpolitics, serving at one time or another as Under Secretary for ForeignAffairs, Secretary to the Treasury, and Treasurer of the Navy. When he enters, the subject turnsto the interplay between playwright (which he pretends to be) and critic: But, for my part, I am never so well pleased as when a judicious critic points out any defect to me; for what is the purpose of shewing a work to a friend, if you don't mean to profit by his opinion? One of the consequences of this attitude in both plays is that thesecharacters generally only harm one another. Sheridan originally started this piece as little more than a skit,but it developed into a full-length play. Perhaps the first thing one notices about this sort of comedy is theuse of clever names that indicate character. Such asides are a theatricaltradition which also draws attention to the fact that this is a play byincluding the audience as part of the action--Maria is not speaking toherself but directly to the audience. For instance,having learned that Charles Surface loves Maria, the viewer now learns thatJoseph Surface, Charles's brother, is also in love with Maria, though he ispretending to admire Lady Sneerwell as part of his own plot to break upCharles and Maria and achieve his own ends. For one thing, they hardlyspeak to anyone else, and they think only of how they appear to others andhow they can manipulate others to their own ends. The names are almost allegorical andconjure up images which reflect on the characters and shape our view ofthem ever after. This type of play depicts theamorous intrigues of people in the wealthier segment of society, and thebest-known of Sheridan's plays analyze this territory with sharp wit andcomplex plots. Most want to be seen inone way when in fact they have very different characters in reality. Dryden writes in this regard ina way that shows a love of learning and a belief in its power to transcendthe old rules: A thing well said will be wit in all languages; and though it may lose something in the translation, yet to him who reads it in the original, 'tis still the same; he has an idea of its excellency, though it cannot pass from his mind into any other expression or words than those in which he finds it (in Abrams 1843-1844). Thesituations all revolved around complex plotting by different cliques togain sexual advantage over other characters in the piece. Restoration comedy tends to draw attention to its own theatricalitywith references to the theater, and A School for Scandal begins with atraditional poetic introduction which does just that: Tell me, ye prime adepts in Scandal's school, Who rail by precept, and detract by rule, Lives there no character, so tried, so known, So deck'd with grace, and so unlike your own, That even you assist her fame to raise, Approve by envy, and by silence praise! Pope offeredpoetry of a classical, satiric sort, tightly controlled and directed atdeveloping wit, while Samuel Johnson expressed his wit better in his prosethan in his poetry. The critics in particular speakas if they represented the audience in their every word or gesture. The eighteenth century was called the age of prose, though prose fromBacon and others was strong in the previous century as well. The characters in The School for Scandalgenerate humor by the way they attack one another both behind each other'sbacks and to each other's faces, depending on the circumstances. This constant badinage causes Maria to leavethe room at one point, after she has turned to the audience and states,"Their malice is intolerable" (Sheridan 66). In someways, Puff is also the most honest of the characters in both plays, for henever pretends he is other than he is--a flack who is willing to work foranyone and promote them as he promotes himself. Thisis also a characteristic of Restoration comedy which Sheridan makes hisown. You shall decide if this a portrait prove, Or fond creation of the Muse and Love.The dialogue is theatrical in the way it is shaped and honed to perfectionso that the various back-biting characters can debase one another withlanguage in an oral dance. The growing middleclass included people with more and more leisure time, and they along withthe upper classes turned more and more to literature as a diversion. They have nooutside life and do not want one, yet they often speak as if they wererepresentatives of a huge class of people. Restoration comedywas concerned with the foolish behavior of the wealthier classes, and thatis what is found here. (The Critic 336). . Power had in a larger sense started shifting to the peopleat large, and this was seen in the increase in education and in the growthof a wider reading public than had ever existed before. Once more, the names of the charactertell much about their nature. Lady Sneerwell uses Snake as ameans of spreading false rumors, just what a man named Snake would do. Money is amotivating factor because so many of these characters are simply greedy,but they do not have designs on other people's money because they do nothave any of their own. He followed in the footsteps of William Congreve andWilliam Wycherley and satirized his society in highly-polished plays likeSchool for Scandal and The Critic. "The Critic." In Sheridan's Plays, Cecil Price (ed.), 331-386. It is amore intellectual work than the earlier plays but has never been aspopular. Norton, 1986.Sheridan, Richard Brinsley. Eachof these plans intersects at various points and with varying degrees ofcomplexity. In A School for Scandal,these include having the audience meet Lady Sneerwell, an aptly named womanwho is a wealthy society leader and so a snob, meeting in her dressing roomwith a social hanger-on named Snake. Here, again, it is the dialoguethat carries the action into a higher realm, for the plot and settings aremuch like other drama of the period. All of hisimportant theatrical pieces were written in a period of four years--TheRivals (1775), The School for Scandal (1777), and The Critic (1779), alongwith some short pieces and a comic opera. These all assume, as circumstances require, the various forms of letter to the Editor, Occasional Anecdote, Impartial Critique, Observation from Correspondent, or Advertisement from the Party (The Critic 352). Thecharacters in The Critic do much the same, but in addition the character ofPuff is humorous because of the absurd nature of what he says. A School forScandal is also his most popular play. (The Critic 346). These are small societiesthat exist within larger social orders which they largely ignore. Works CitedAbrams, M.H. The characters in The School for Scandal are every bit as muchactors and critics in an amateur fashion as the characters in The Criticare in a professional way. Dryden expressed the classicalspirit of the age in calling for a universal drama which can transcend thelimitations of language placed on it in former times, when translations ofthe classics were to be avoided and when only those who could read Greekand Latin could read the classics at all. It servedas the underlying basis for the film Shampoo in the 197 s, in much-alteredform. New York: W.W. And where might they be found? Sheridan satirizes his characters largely byletting them speak for themselves, and they show their true natures as theyare tearing apart the characters of other people. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.----------------------- 11 Newliterary forms developed to replace the old, opening the way for satiristssuch as Alexander Pope, dramatists and poets like John Dryden, andhumanists and scholars like Samuel Johnson. Joseph and Charles are brothers and are contrasted throughout.Joseph is always speaking moral platitudes and descending into sentimentalattitudes, but for all his preaching to others, he himself is greedy andmalignant as well as dedicated to scheming. The dialogue in The Critic is satiric and well-hoed as it targetstypes found in the theater and the interplay of the different types overissues of right and wrong, good and bad. Dangle is interested in nothing but the theater and says this as hereads his newspaper--there is only one kind of news he wants to read, andthat is theatrical news. He may spend his money like it was water, buthe is not greedy as is his brother and is instead generous to a fault.Critics at the time pointed out that there was nothing new in thesecharacters, and they were perfectly right. In both plays, Sheridan creates a sense of a society which isenclosed and self-referential, interested more in itself and each of itsmembers than in any other subject whatsoever. J.L.Styan notes this and then indicates that it is less important to wonder whyplotting and characterization were so limited than to ask why the fact thatthey were so limited and so repeated was unimportant to their success: The assumption is that the endless stories of seduction and cuckolding, and the repeated stereotypes of wit and coquette, fop and prude, country wife and country cousin, merely provided convenient pegs on which to hand the true elements of drama offered by Restoration comedy. The theatrical people in The Critic are likeDangle--the only news they want is news of the theater. Thepeople in The School for Scandal care only for their social class at best,and for themselves at worst. The newspaper came into beingthrough the writings of Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, and Samuel Johnson. Sir Benjamin Backbite isanother with designs on Maria and with his own plan for succeeding. The character and situationswere much as were always found in comedy of this type. The theatrical crowd may couch what theywant in very different terms, but this is what they want just the same.Mr. Sheridan had a relatively short career. Joseph Surface is indeed all surface, and his brotherCharles is an aristocratic young man who is thought of as a wastrel and sois also all surface. Anothercharacter is named Sir Fretful Plagiary--his first name indicates hisfussiness, his last name his profession. The characters represented types, with differentsins represented by different persons, and this is also found here. However, The School for Scandalremains the more famous play and the one that is still revived. These characters and those that follow are types found in the theaterof the time, and Sheridan satirizes them in the names he selects, in theway they conduct their affairs, in the language they use, and in the waythey speak of themselves and of one another. I am, sir, a practitioner in panegyric, or, to speak more plainly, a professor of the art of puffing, at your service--or anybody else's (The Critic 352).When asked precisely what this means, he expands on his former statement: Yes, sir, puffing is of various sorts; the principal are, the puff direct, the puff preliminary, the puff collateral, the puff collusive, and the puff oblique, or puff by implication. In the first scene we learn that Lady Sneerwell lovesCharles Surface, who in turn is in love with the beautiful Maria. This is another reason why the motivation isusually sexual and social--they want a liaison with a specific person, butthey also want to succeed in their social setting, which may beaccomplished by that sexual liaison or by keeping some sexual liaisonsecret. Attend!- a model shall attract your view- Daughters of calumny, I summon you! The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume I (Fifth Edition). The planis for Lady Sneerwell, with the help of Snake, to break up the young coupleso Lady Sneerwell will have a clear field. . Restoration Comedy in Performance. The plot of A School for Scandal is complex and unfolds in a seriesof scenes introducing characters and character relationships, which theviewer must keep close track of to know what is transpiring. The School for Scandal. Puff actually wants to be a puff and to do his job, but others in TheSchool for Scandal and The Critic want only to be the center of attentionand to get their own way. The Critic is, of course, more overtly theatrical, given that it hasa theatrical setting and characters who are show people or patrons of showpeople. Since this was the age of prose, it is not surprisingthat the novel came into being in the eighteenth century and developed intoa new art form by the end of that century and the beginning of the next.Scholarship was much prized in this age, and Samuel Johnson showed itsimport when he wrote his dictionary, much as James Boswell celebrated thescholar in the form of Johnson himself. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) was a late eighteenth-centuryBritish playwright of some renown, noted for helping to revive the Englishcomedy of manners during the Restoration. What marks this play as superior to others, and what oftendifferentiates one Restoration comedy from another, is the brilliance ofthe dialogue and the polished way the characters are brought forth todeliver their lines. Woodbury, New York: 1958.Styan, J.L. The eighteenth century began as a period of relative calm after theferment and political turmoil of the previous century, and this was markedby the Restoration, the return to a previous order. The people in The Schoolfor Scandal may seem to have different goals than those in the theatricalworld of The Critic, but in fact they want much the same thing--renown,reputation, and sexual dalliance. In the eighteenth century, though themonarchy had been restored, power had clearly shifted to parliament to agreat degree. The rise of the newspaper also showed the growth in literacy during thiscentury. The interplay between Dangle and Sneer centers onthe need to purify the theater and raise it to a new moral level. In the code of speech an behavior which lay dormant in the lines, and in whose secrets player and spectator could share-- but only through the right sort of performance (Styan 1). He also prepared a version ofVanbrugh's The Relapse under the title A Trip to Scarborough in 1777.Sheridan included certain farcical elements in his first play that weremissing in A School for Scandal, which was more subtle and more perfectlyrealized, with strong characterizations and a superior plot. His last play, The Critic, is asatire on the theater and of the vanity of artists and critics. Restoration comedy was a particular theatrical form that made use ofsimilar characters and plots for some forty years at its height. Another character whose name identifies his profession is Mr. Puff,who makes no bone about his profession: Yes, sir; I make no secret of the trade I follow: among friends and brother authors, Dangle knows I love to be frank on the subject, and to advertise myself viva voce. Charles is a wastrel, but heis also lively and cheerful. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.Sheridan, Richard Brinsley. 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