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The Puritans have always been halfway right in their opposition to the theatre. The drama, in the abstract and as a form of literature, is of an ancient house and a noble. But the professional stage tends naturally to corruption, and taints what it receives. The world pictured in these contemporary society plays – or in many of them – we are unwilling to accept as typical. Its fashion is fast and not seldom vulgar. It is a vicious democracy in which divorces are frequent and the “woman with a past” is the usual heroine; in which rowdy peers mingle oddly with manicurists, clairvoyants, barmaids, adventuresses, comic actresses, faith-healers, etc., and the contact between high life and low-life has commonly disreputable motives. Surely this is not English life, as we know it from the best English fiction. And, if the drama is to take permanent rank with the novel, it must redistribute its emphasis.

SHERIDAN

WITH the exception of Goldsmith’s comedy, “She Stoops to Conquer,” the only eighteenth century plays that still keep the stage are Sheridan’s three, “The Rivals,” “The Critic,” and “The School for Scandal.” Once in a while, to be sure, a single piece by one or another of Goldsmith’s and Sheridan’s contemporaries makes a brief reappearance in the modern theatre. I have seen Goldsmith’s earlier and inferior comedy, “The Good-natured Man,” as well as Towneley’s farce, “High Life Below Stairs,” both given by amateurs; and I have seen Colman’s “Heir at Law” (1797) acted by professionals. Doubtless other eighteenth century plays, such as Cumberland’s “West Indian” and Holcroft’s “Road to Ruin,” are occasionally revived and run for a few nights. Sometimes this happens even to an earlier piece, such as Farquhar’s “Beaux’ Stratagem” (1707), which retained its popularity all through the eighteenth century. But things of this sort, though listened to with a certain respectful attention, are plainly tolerated as interesting literary survivals, like an old miracle or morality play, say the “Secunda Pastorum” or “Everyman,” revisiting the glimpses of the moon. They do not belong to the repertoire.

Sheridan’s plays, on the other hand, have never lost their popularity as acting dramas. “The School for Scandal” has been played oftener than any other English play outside of Shakespeare; and “The Rivals” is not far behind it. Even “The Critic,” which is a burlesque and depends for its effect not upon plot and character but upon the sheer wit of the dialogue and the absurdity of the situations – even “The Critic” continues to be presented both at private theatricals and upon the public stage, and seldom fails to amuse. There is no better proof of Sheridan’s extraordinary dramatic aptitude than is afforded by a comparison of “The Critic” with its model, Buckingham’s “Rehearsal.” To Boswell’s question why “The Rehearsal” was no longer played, Dr. Johnson answered, “Sir, it had not wit enough to keep it sweet”; then paused and added in good Johnsonese, “it had not vitality sufficient to preserve it from putrefaction.” “The Rehearsal” did have plenty of wit, but it was of the kind which depends for its success upon a knowledge of the tragedies it burlesqued. These are forgotten, and so “The Rehearsal” is dead. But “The Critic” is not only very much brighter, but it satirizes high tragedy in general and not a temporary literary fashion or a particular class of tragedy: and, therefore, nearly a century and a half after its first performance, “The Critic” is still very much alive. The enduring favor which Sheridan’s plays have won must signify one of two things: either that they touch the springs of universal comedy, la comédie humaine– the human comedy, as Balzac calls it: go down to the deep source of laughter, which is also the fountain of tears; or else that, whatever of shallowness or artificiality their picture of life may have, their cleverness and artistic cunning are such that they keep their freshness after one hundred and fifty years. Such is the antiseptic power of art.

The latter, I think, is Sheridan’s case. His quality was not genius, but talent, yet talent raised to a very high power. His comedy lacks the depth and mellowness of the very greatest comedy. His place is not among the supreme creative humorists, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Aristophanes, Molière. Taine says that in Sheridan all is brilliant, but that the metal is not his own, nor is it always of the best quality. Yet he acknowledges the wonderful vivacity of the dialogue, and the animated movement of every scene and of the play as a whole. Sheridan, in truth, was inventive rather than original. His art was eclectic, derivative, but his skill in putting together his materials was unfailing. He wrote the comedy of manners: not the comedy of character. In the greatest comedy, in “The Merchant of Venice,” or “Le Misanthrope,” or “Peer Gynt” there is poetry, or at least there is seriousness. But in the comedy of manners, or in what is called classical comedy, i.e., pure, unmixed comedy, the purpose is merely to amuse.

He never drives his plowshare through the crust of good society into the substratum of universal ideas. We are not to look in the comedy of manners for wisdom and far-reaching thoughts; nor yet for profound, vital, subtle studies of human nature. Sheridan’s comedies are the sparkling foam on the crest of the wave: the bright, consummate flower of high life: finished specimens of the playwright’s art: not great dramatic works.

Yet when all deductions have been made, Sheridan’s is a most dazzling figure. The brilliancy and versatility of his talents were indeed amazing. Byron said: “Whatsoever Sheridan has done, or chosen to do, has been par excellence always the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy, the best drama, the best farce and the best address; and, to crown all, delivered the very best oration ever conceived or heard in this country.” By the best comedy Byron means “The School for Scandal”; the best drama was “The Duenna,” an opera or music drama; the best address was the monologue on Garrick; and the best oration was the famous speech on the Begums of Oude in the impeachment proceedings against Warren Hastings: a speech which held the attention of the House of Commons for over five hours at a stretch, and was universally acknowledged to have outdone the most eloquent efforts of Burke and Pitt and Fox.

Sheridan came naturally by his aptitude for the theatre. His father was an actor and declamation master and had been manager of the Theatre Royal in Dublin. His mother had written novels and plays. Her unfinished comedy, “A Journey to Bath,” furnished a few hints towards “The Rivals,” the scene of which, you will remember, is at Bath, the fashionable watering place which figures so largely in eighteenth century letters: in Smollett’s novel, “Humphrey Clinker,” in Horace Walpole’s correspondence, in Anstey’s satire, “The New Bath Guide,” and in Goldsmith’s life of Beau Nash, the King of the Pumproom. Histrionic and even dramatic ability has been constantly inherited. There are families of actors, like the Kembles and the Booths; and it is noteworthy how large a proportion of our dramatic authors have been actors, or in practical touch with the stage: Marlowe, Greene, Jonson, Shakespeare, Otway, Lee, Cibber, the Colmans, father and son, Macklin, Garrick, Foote, Knowles, Boucicault, Robertson, Tom Taylor, Pinero, Stephen Phillips. These names by no means exhaust the list of those who have both written and acted plays. Sheridan’s career was full of adventure. He eloped from Bath with a beautiful girl of eighteen, a concert singer, daughter of Linley, the musical composer, and was married to her in France. In the course of this affair he fought two duels, in one of which he was dangerously wounded. Now what can be more romantic than a duel and an elopement? Yet notice how the identical adventures which romance uses in one way, classical comedy uses in quite another. These personal experiences doubtless suggested some of the incidents in “The Rivals”; but in that comedy the projected duel and the projected elopement end in farce, and common sense carries it over romance, which it is the whole object of the play to make fun of, as it is embodied in the person of Miss Lydia Languish.

It was Sheridan who said that easy writing was sometimes very hard reading. Nevertheless, whatever he did had the air of being dashed off carelessly. All his plays were written before he was thirty. He was a man of the world, who was only incidentally a man of letters. He sat thirty years in the House of Commons, was Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs under Fox, and Secretary to the Treasury under the coalition ministry. He associated intimately with that royal fribble, the Prince Regent, and the whole dynasty of dandies, and became, as Thackeray said of his forerunner, Congreve, a tremendous swell, but on a much slenderer capital. It is one of the puzzles of Sheridan’s biography where he got the money to pay for Drury Lane Theatre, of which he became manager and lessee. He was a shining figure in the world of sport and the world of politics, as well as in the world of literature and the drama. He had the sanguine, improvident temperament, and the irregular, procrastinating habits of work which are popularly associated with genius. The story is told that the fifth act of “The School for Scandal” was still unwritten while the earlier acts were being rehearsed for the first performance; and that Sheridan’s friends locked him up in a room with pen, ink, and paper, and a bottle of claret, and would not let him out till he had finished the play. This anecdote is not, I believe, authentic; but it shows the current impression of his irresponsible ways. His reckless expenses, his betting and gambling debts resulted in his arrest and imprisonment, and writs were served upon him in his last illness. I do not think that Sheridan affected a contempt for the profession of letters; but there was perhaps a touch of affectation in his rather dégagé attitude toward his own performances. It is an attitude not uncommon in literary men who are also – like Congreve – “tremendous swells.” “I hate your authors who are all author,” wrote Byron, who was himself a bit of a snob. When Voltaire called upon Congreve, the latter disclaimed the character of author, and said he was merely a private gentleman, who wrote for his own amusement. “If you were merely a private gentleman,” replied Voltaire, “I would not have thought it worth while to come to see you.”

Dramatic masterpieces are not tossed off lightly from the nib of the pen; and doubtless Sheridan worked harder at his plays than he chose to have the public know and was not really one of that “mob of gentlemen who write with ease” at whom Pope sneers. Byron and many others testify to the coruscating wit of his conversation; and it is well-known that he did not waste his good things, but put them down in his notebooks and worked them up to a high polish in the dialogue of his plays. It is noticeable how thriftily he leads up to his jokes, laying little traps for his speakers to fall into. Thus in “The Rivals,” where Faulkland is complaining to Captain Absolute about Julia’s heartless high spirits in her lover’s absence, he appeals to his friend to mark the contrast:

“Why Jack, have I been the joy and spirit of the company?”

“No, indeed, you have not,” acknowledges the Captain.

“Have I been lively and entertaining?” asks Faulkland.

“O, upon my word, I acquit you,” answers his friend.

“Have I been full of wit and humor?” pursues the jealous lover.

“No, faith, to do you justice,” says Absolute, “you have been confoundedly stupid.”

The Captain could hardly have missed this rejoinder; it was fairly put into his mouth by the wily dramatist.

Again observe how carefully the way is prepared for the repartee in the following bit of dialogue from “The School for Scandal”: Sir Peter Teazle has married a country girl and brought her up to London, where she shows an unexpected zest for the pleasures of the town. He is remonstrating with her about her extravagance and fashionable ways.

Sir Peter: “Madam, I pray had you any of these elegant expenses when you married me?”

Lady Teazle: “Lud, Sir Peter, would you have me be out of the fashion?”

Sir Peter: “The fashion indeed! What had you to do with the fashion before you married me?”

Lady Teazle: “For my part – I should think you would like to have your wife thought a woman of taste.”

Sir Peter: “Aye, there again – Taste! Zounds, Madam, you had no taste when you married me.”

The retort is inevitable and a modern playwriter – say, Shaw or Pinero – would leave the audience to make it, Lady Teazle answering merely with an ironical bow. But Sheridan was not addressing subtle intellects, and he doesn’t let us off from the lady’s answer in good blunt terms: “That’s very true indeed, Sir Peter! After having married you I should never pretend to taste again, I allow.” But why expose these tricks of the trade? All playwrights have them, and Sheridan uses them very cleverly, if rather transparently. Another time-honored stage convention which Sheridan practises is the labelling of his characters. Names like Malaprop, O’Trigger, Absolute, Languish, Acres, etc., are descriptive; and the realist might ask how their owners came by them, if he were pedantic enough to cross-question the innocent old comedy tradition, which is of course unnatural and indefensible enough if we choose to take such things seriously.

About the comparative merits of Sheridan’s two best plays, tastes have differed. “The Rivals” has more of humor; “The School for Scandal” more of wit; but both have plenty of each. On its first appearance, January 17, 1775, “The Rivals” was a failure, owing partly to its excessive length, partly to bad acting, partly to a number of outrageous puns and similar witticisms which the author afterwards cut out, and partly to the offense given by the supposed caricature of an Irish gentleman in the person of Sir Lucius O’Trigger. Sheridan withdrew the play and revised it thoroughly, shortening the acting time by an hour and redistributing the parts among the members of the Covent Garden Theatre company. At its second performance, eleven days later, it proved a complete success, and has remained so ever since. It has always been a favorite play with the actors, because it offers so many fine rôles to an all-star company. It affords at least four first-class parts to the comic artist: Sir Anthony Absolute, Mrs. Malaprop, Bob Acres, and Sir Lucius O’Trigger: while it has an unusually spirited jeune premier, a charming though utterly unreasonable heroine, a good soubrette in Lucy, and entertaining minor characters in Fag and David.

As we have no manuscript of the first draft of “The Rivals,” it is impossible to say exactly what changes the author made in it. But as the text now stands it is hard to understand why Sir Lucius O’Trigger was regarded as an insult to the Irish nation. Sheridan was an Irishman and he protested that he would have been the last man to lampoon his compatriots. Sir Lucius is a fortune hunter, indeed, and he is always spoiling for a fight; but he is a gentleman and a man of courage; and even in his fortune hunting he is sensitive upon the point of honor: he will get Mrs. Malaprop’s consent to his addresses to her niece, and “do everything fairly,” for, as he says very finely, “I am so poor that I can’t afford to do a dirty action.” The comedy Irishman was nothing new in Sheridan’s time. He goes back to Jonson and Shakespeare. In the eighteenth century his name was Teague; in the nineteenth, Pat or Mike. We are familiar with this stock figure of the modern stage, his brogue, his long-skirted coat and knee breeches, the blackthorn shillalah in his fist and the dudeen stuck into his hatband. The Irish naturally resent this grotesque: their history has been tragical and they wish to be taken seriously. We have witnessed of late their protest against one of their own comedies, “The Playboy of the Western World.” But perhaps they have become over touchy. There is not any too much fun in the world, and if we are to lose all the funny national peculiarities from caricature and farce and dialect story, if the stage Irishman has got to go, and also the stage Yankee, Dutchman, Jew, Ole Olsen, John Bull, and the burnt cork artist of the negro minstrel show, this world will be a gloomier place. Be that as it may, Sir Lucius O’Trigger is no caricature: he doesn’t even speak in brogue, and perhaps the nicest stroke in his portrait is that innocent inconsequence which is the essence of an Irish bull. “Hah, my little ambassadress,” he says to Lucy, with whom he has an appointment, “I have been looking for you; I have been on the South Parade this half hour.”

“O gemini!” cries Lucy, “and I have been waiting for your worship on the North.”

“Faith,” answers Sir Lucius, “maybe that was the reason we did not meet.”

A great pleasure in the late sixties and early seventies used to be the annual season of English classical comedy at Wallack’s old playhouse; and not the least pleasant feature of this yearly revival was the performance of “The Rivals,” with John Gilbert cast for the part of Sir Anthony, Mrs. Gilbert as Mrs. Malaprop, and Lester Wallack himself, if I remember rightly, in the rôle of the Captain. But, of course, the comic hero of the piece is Bob Acres; and this, I think, was Jefferson’s great part. I saw him three times in Bob Acres, at intervals of years, and it was a masterpiece of high comedy acting: so natural, so utterly without consciousness of the presence of spectators, that it was less like acting than like the thing itself. The interpretation of the character, too, was so genial and sympathetic that one was left with a feeling of great friendliness toward the unwarlike Bob, and his cowardice excited not contempt but only amusement. The last time that I saw Joe Jefferson in “The Rivals,” he was a very old man, and there was a pathetic impression of fatigue about his performance, though the refinement and the warm-heartedness with which he carried the part had lost nothing with age.

Historically Sheridan’s plays represent a reaction against sentimental comedy, which had held the stage for a number of years, beginning, perhaps, with Steele’s “Tender Husband” (1703) and numbering, among its triumphs, pieces like Moore’s “Foundling” (1748), Kelly’s “False Delicacy,” and several of Cumberland’s plays. Cumberland, by the way, who was intensely jealous of Sheridan, was the original of Sir Fretful Plagiary in “The Critic,” Sheridan’s only condescension to personal satire. He was seemingly a vain and pompous person, and well deserved his castigation. The story is told of Cumberland that he took his children to see “The School for Scandal” and when they laughed rebuked them, saying that he saw nothing to laugh at in this comedy. When this was reported to Sheridan, his comment was, “I think that confoundedly ungrateful, for I went to see Cumberland’s last tragedy and laughed heartily at it all the way through.”

With Goldsmith and Sheridan gayety came back to the English stage. In their prefaces and prologues both of them complain that the comic muse is dying and is being succeeded by “a mawkish drab of spurious breed who deals in sentimentals,” genteel comedy, to wit, who comes from France where comedy has now become so very elevated and sentimental that it has not only banished humor and Molière from the stage, but it has banished all spectators too. Goldsmith laments the disgusting solemnity that had lately infected literature and sneers at the moralizing comedies that deal with the virtues and distresses of private life instead of ridiculing its faults. Joseph Surface in “The School for Scandal” is Sheridan’s portrait of the sentimental, moralizing hypocrite, whose catchword is “the man of sentiment”; and whose habit of uttering lofty moralities is so ingrained that he vents them even when no one is present who can be deceived by them.

Surface: “The man who does not share in the distresses of a brother – even though merited by his own misconduct – deserves – ”

“O Lud,” interrupts Lady Sneerwell, “you are going to be moral, and forget that you are among friends.”

“Egad, that’s true,” rejoins Joseph, “I’ll keep that sentiment till I see Sir Peter.”

“The Critic” has a slap or two at sentimental comedy. A manuscript play has been submitted to Mr. Dangle, who reads this stage direction, “Bursts into tears and exit,” and naturally asks, “What is this, a tragedy?” “No,” explains Mr. Sneer, “that’s a genteel comedy, not a translation – only taken from the French: it is written in a style which they have lately tried to run down; the true sentimental and nothing ridiculous in it from the beginning to the end… The theatre, in proper hands, might certainly be made the school of morality; but now, I am sorry to say it, people seem to go there principally for their entertainment.” Another of these moral comedies is entitled “ ‘The Reformed Housebreaker’ where, by the mere force of humour, housebreaking is put in so ridiculous a light, that if the piece has its proper run.. bolts and bars will be entirely useless by the end of the season.”

Sheridan has often been called the English Beaumarchais. The comedies of Beaumarchais, “The Barber of Seville” and “The Marriage of Figaro” were precisely contemporaneous with Sheridan’s, and, like the latter, they were a reaction against sentimentalism, against the so-called comédie larmoyante or tearful comedies of La Chaussée and other French dramatists. With Beaumarchais laughter and mirth returned once more to the French stage. He goes back for a model to Molière, as Sheridan goes back to English Restoration comedy, and particularly to Congreve, whom he resembles in the wit of his dialogue and the vivacity of his character painting, but whom he greatly excels in the invention of plot and situation. Congreve’s plots are intricate and hard to follow, highly improbable and destitute of climaxes. On the other hand, Sheridan is a master of plot. The duel scene in “The Rivals,” the auction scene and the famous screen scene in “The School for Scandal” are three of the most skilfully managed situations in English comedy. Congreve’s best play, “The Way of the World” (1700), was a failure on the stage. But whatever Sheridan’s shortcomings, a want of practical effectiveness, of acting quality, was never one of them. Sheridan revived society drama, what Lamb called the artificial comedy of the seventeenth century. Lydia Languish, with her romantic notions, and Mrs. Malaprop with her “nice derangement of epitaphs” are artificial characters. Bob Acres is for the most part delightfully natural, but his system of referential or sentimental swearing – “Odds blushes and blooms” and the like – is an artificial touch. The weakest feature of “The Rivals” is the underplot, the love affairs of Faulkland and Julia. Faulkland’s particular variety of jealousy is a “humor” of the Ben Jonsonian sort, a sentimental alloy, as Charles Lamb pronounced it, and anyway infinitely tiresome. In modern acting versions this business is usually abridged. As Jefferson played it, Julia’s part was cut out altogether, and Faulkland makes only one appearance (Act II, Scene I), where his presence is necessary for the going on of the main action.

There is one particular in which Congreve and Sheridan sin alike. They make all the characters witty. “Tell me if Congreve’s fools are fools indeed,” wrote Pope. And Sheridan can never resist the temptation of putting clever sayings into the mouths of simpletons. The romantic Miss Languish is nearly as witty as the very unromantic Lady Teazle. I need not quote the good things that Fag and Lucy say, but Thomas the coachman, and the stupid old family servant David say things equally good. It is David, e.g., who, when his master remarks that if he is killed in the duel his honor will follow him to the grave, rejoins, “Now that’s just the place where I could make shift to do without it.” Sir Anthony is witty, Bob Acres himself is witty, and even Mrs. Malaprop – foolish old woman – delivers repartees. Mrs. Malaprop’s verbal blunders, by the way, are a good instance of that artificial high polish so characteristic of Sheridan’s art. There are people in earlier comedies who make ludicrous misapplications of words – Shakespeare’s Dogberry, e.g., or Dame Quickly, but they do it naturally and occasionally. Sheridan reduces these accidents to a system – a science. No one in real life was ever so perseveringly and so brilliantly wrong as Mrs. Malaprop.

Dramatically this is out of character and is, therefore, a fault, though a fault easy to forgive since it results in so much clever talk. It is a fault, as I have said, which Congreve shares with Sheridan, his heir and continuator. Perhaps the lines of character are not cut quite so deep in Sheridan as in Congreve nor has his dialogue the elder dramatist’s condensed, epigrammatic solidity. But on the whole, “The Rivals” and “The School for Scandal” are better plays than Congreve ever wrote.