Richard Brinsley Sheridan – författare

Richly exploited comic situations, effervescent wit, and intricate plots combine to make Sheridan's work among the best of of all English comedy. The School for Scandal (1777) is his masterpiece, a brilliantly crafted comedy of contrasts in which brothers Joseph and Charles Surface contend for Maria, with hilariously differing intentions and results. Also a work of acute comic irony, The Rivals satirizes the romantic posturing of Lydia Languish while her disguised suitor Captain Absolute's resourceful contrivances advance an ever inventive and skilfully wrought plot. Included in this edition are the opera play The Duenna and the rarely printed musical play A Trip to Scarborough, adapted from Vanbrugh's The Relapse. Sheridan's last play, The Critic, is an exuberant parody of the modish tragic drama of the day. Lampooning Sir Fretful Plagiary's absurdly bombastic historical drama during its confused stages of production, its satire never fails to delight. The texts of the plays have been newly edited by the General Editor of the Oxford World's Classics English Drama series. A fine introduction and notes on Sheridan's playhouses and critical inheritance make this an invaluable edition for study and performance alike. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Critic was Sheridan's response to a very specific political and theatrical situation. In the summer of 1779, a Franco-Spanish invasion seemed imminent and patriotic fervour superseded party divisions and personal animosities. The Critic satirises the panic of the summer in the form of the comically misconceived tragedy 'The Spanish Armada' that is in rehearsal in the second and third acts, but The Critic ends with genuine patriotic feeling. This edition traces both the political and the theatrical objects of Sheridan's satire and discusses its reliance (and improvement) on earlier meta-theatrical burlesques like The Duke of Buckingham's Restoration romp The Rehearsal.

Enduringly popular less for its plots than for its verbal brilliance and wit, The School for Scandal (1777) was the most frequently performed play of its time. Sir Peter Teazle has made the perennial mistake of elderly bachelors in English comedy and married a much younger wife in the hope that she will be too innocent to cross him. In fact, Lady Teazle spends her time with Lady Sneerwell and the worst set of scandalmongers in town, who have a beady eye on Charles Surface, the reckless young libertine, in expectation of seeing him ruined. Charles, however, turns out to possess the sterling virtues of generosity and loyalty to friends and family; and it is his hypocritical brother Joseph who ends up the villain of the piece. This edition discusses Sheridan's earlier drafts for the play and sets it into its theatrical context of anti-sentimentalism and its social context of the London High Society in which Sheridan had begun to move.

Both Sheridan and Goldsmith lamented the popularity of sentimental comedy in the later eighteenth century and wrote their witty and satirical plays (though never lascivious in the manner of Restoration comedies) to counteract the sentimental mode. The Rivals (1775) was a qualified success: the suave young officer who is 'forced' by his father to marry the very girl to whom he is secretly engaged must always please; but first audiences were as uncertain as later critics about how to evaluate his neurotic friend Faulkland, who invents a series of caveats for his marriage to the earnest Julia. A country squire who becomes alarmingly foppish in town, an impetuous Irishman and the linguistically challenged Mrs Malaprop complete the cast. This edition includes the original preface and several prologues; in an appendix it lists all the fashionable books and songs to which the characters allude.