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Chapter 5. SHERIDAN: The School for Scandal

Congreve's attempt to fuse the two modes of comedy extant at the time in order to win both audiences over did not succeed in its endeavour. It is only Sheridan who manages to amalgamate successfully the sparkle and fun of brittle wit comedy and the moral attitudes of sentimental comedy in The School for Scandal (1777) three quarters of a century after The Way of the World was first staged.

It is significant that Restoration comedies, including Congreve's plays, were revived in the 1770te. Theatre chronicles inform us that they were very successful and that Congreve's fallen reputation went into an upswing after the revival. This was because the plays were skillfully rewritten especially for their Georgian audience. It is important to realize that it is the adapted versions and not the originals that won appreciation and applause. Eric Rump's analysis published in 1995 shows clearly how the harsh "immoral" parts were expunged. In David Garrick's revival of Wycherley's The Country Wife in 1766, for instance, not only are the characters of Margery and Pinchwife sentimentalized but also "morally dubious" characters like Lady Fidget are written out of the script. The famous china scene is omitted completely and the priceless character of Horner (with his unerring perception of the disparity between appearance and reality) is replaced by the shy and modest Belville who pursues the country girl in order to rescue her from the clutches of her surly guardian Moody (Wycherley's Pinchwife).^ Sheridan's "reformed" presentations of Congreve's plays were a hit and when, a few months later, his own The School for Scandal was staged, critics commended Sheridan and suggested a historic continuity between the two playwrights: for example. The Universal Magazine wrote that The School for Scandal

1 Eric Rump, "Sheridan, Congreve and The School for Scandal". Sheridan Studies, ed. James Morwood and David Crane (Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1995) 65. 203

... has indeed the beauties of Congreve's comedies, without their faults.''^ Perhaps one of the faults that Sheridan apparently managed to eschew was a cavalier attitude to sincerity and a controversial endorsement of role playing.

Whatever may be said about Sheridan's borrowings and his playing to the gallery, it cannot be denied that he had an unerring sense of what would "work" on stage for his particular audience. Mark S. Auburn's detailed critique of the changes made in the earlier sketches used for the school scenes and the Teazle part of the action show beyond doubt how Sheridan skillfully chose to reshape his material for maximum acceptability among his audience.^ Sheridan seems to have managed to eat his cake and have it too, as Bevis puts it, by presenting the scandal scenes (with the members of the school constantly involved in game playing and nurturing role playing as a viable means to success) for the delectation of his audience but also setting them up as satiric targets to be righteously shot down later in the play. Thus he was able to comply with the moral viewpoint of the time. This is similar to the method used by Colley Gibber in plays like The Careless Husband. In fact there is a distinct flavour of what Bevis calls "exemplary comedy"'* to Sheridan's depiction and criticism of society, as will become evident in this chapter. The School for Scandal is a comedy of manners with its typical preoccupation with masks, roles and disguises used in social interaction but it is not amoral in stance as most of Restoration comedy is seen to be. Though the sort of irreverence and role playing seen in Restoration drama is paraded in Sheridan's play too, still the conclusion carefully rejects these as less than ideal.

2 Quoted by Eric Rump, "Sheridan, Congreve and The School for Scandal" 68.

3 Mark S. Auburn, Sheridan's Comedies: Their Contexts and Achievements (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1977) 105 - 48.

'^ Richard W. Bevis, English Drama: Restoration and Eighteenth Century 1660 - 1789 (London: Longman, 1988) 230. 204

Though a great difference in moral attitudes is discernible between Restoration comedy and the subsequent sentimental comedy of Gibber, Shadwell and Steele that precedes Sheridan, yet plot patterns remain similar. In Colley Gibber's The Gareless Husband (1704), for example, Sir Gharles Easy and Lady Betty Modish have made a deep involvement in amorous game playing the pattern of their lives. The play reveals the same preoccupation with games, roles, social poses, fashion, masks and appearances as Restoration comedy. There is even a rather weak attempt at Restoration-like wordplay in the repeated play on "easj^ with its plural implications. The play differs only in the penultimate capitulation of the erring characters and their rather sudden adoption of the sentimental values of sincerity and honesty. That Restoration behaviour models are now to be looked upon askance is made clear by the stellar presence of Lady Easy who is a sentimental model of the ideally virtuous wife. She is entirely chaste and, although aware of her husband's wanderings astray, is both protective of his reputation and unwilling to chide him for his misconduct. Ultimately she is able to communicate her knowledge of his inconstancy in a subtle way (by draping her scarf on his head when she finds him and her maid asleep in two chairs in his bedchamber) by which she both protects his dignity and wins his respect. Lady Easy succeeds in shaming Sir Gharles and thus facilitates his transformation. He, in turn, once reformed himself, manages to persuade the coquettish Lady Betty Modish to give up her games.

"She was never two hours together the same woman" (61), complains Lord Morelove when piqued with Lady Betty's role-playing in Act III. Lord Easy encourages her to recognize and accept the sincere suit of Lord Morelove. Lady Betty is comparable to the witty Restoration heroine who Gibber presents as being in need of "reformation" (53) while Lady Easy is the ideal wife - subdued, constant, indefatigably husband-adoring, every male chauvinist's dream. Her advice to Lady 205

Betty in the face of her frivolous concern over a nevi^ scarf - "'tis the beauty of the mind alone that gives us lasting value" (28) - points to Gibber's indication that appearances should count for less than inner reality. Though it is difficult to believe in her patient endurance of her husband's continuous misdemeanours and her steadfast loyalty to him in spite of them, Gibber clearly delivers his judgment against all kinds of "social mischief^, including the playing of games and roles which he perceives as signs of dishonesty.

It is interesting to notice, however, that Lady Easy does also play a role in her own unobtrusive manner. She acts the unsuspicious and entirely contented wife and makes it a point to maintain this act before the servants in the household, amongst them her husband's mistress: "But I must veil my jealousy, which 'tis not fit this creature should suppose I am acquainted with" (12). Sir Charles' realization of his wrongdoing speaks of his wife's great success in her choice of strategy and is the very stuff of the great sentimental reversal of the attitudes of the rake hero. However, it exposes the minimal presence of the element of "fun" in the role playing structure of this play and also generally in the framework of sentimental comedy in general. The "pleasure" of the audience is merely a gravely moral one in the successful reformation of the play's reprehensible characters. Kaul's comment on Gibber's Love's Last Shift is equally applicable to The Gareless Husband: "What Gibber did in this play was to write a comedy with many of the usual materials and motivations of the Restoration model, but also with a built-in device for turning the whole story into a virtuous lesson in the end."^

The Conscious Lovers (1722), considered Sir Richard Steele's best play, focuses on the sterling virtue of filial duty. Almost every

Bevis, English Drama 155.

'^ A.N. Kaul, The Action of English Comedy: Studies in the Encounter of Abstraction and Experience from Shakespeare to Shaw (New Delhi: Oxford U P, 2001) 112. 206 character is a shining example of goodness and an overwhelming concern is displayed regarding the "proper" behaviour of a son to his father (quite opposite to the irreverent flouting of parent figures in Restoration comedy). In fact, there is an over-riding preoccupation with decorum in every sphere, thus implying an importance given to propriety of appearance. The hero. Sir John Bevil Junior, considers it of primary importance that he obey the wishes of his father. Thus he agrees to marry the girl Sir John Senior chooses for him even though he is in love with someone else.

The play begins with Sir John engaged in an effort to fathom the curious behaviour of his son at a recent masquerade. Indeed "masks", "masquerade", "appearance" and "reputation"^ are expressions used in the expository exchange between Sir John and his manservant, Humphrey, and these set the tone of the play.

Role playing is seen in multiple instances in the play. Bevil plays the part of the ideal (obedient) son even though he has inclinations that run counter to his father's wishes and Lucinda is repeatedly urged by her mother to behave like "a Maid, rigidly Virtuous" (343). At one point Bevil says that "1 put on a Serenity, while my Fellow was present" (352), thus implying that his apparent calm is merely dissembled. Isabella fears that he is one of the "Serpents, who lie in wait for Doves" (330) but Indiana insists that he has no use for "Stratagems", "Artifice" and "Design" (329). The complications of the plot are unravelled by unlikely resolutions that are typical of sentimental comedy. In order that the two pairs of lovers find their way to the altar, disguises have to be resorted to. Charles Myrtle assumes the character of Sir Geoffry, an elderly great-uncle of his beloved Lucinda, in Act V. Again Myrtle and Bevil Junior's

7 Richard Steele, "The Conscious Lovers", The Plays of Richard Steele, ed. Shirley Strum Kenny (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) 308. All subsequent references to this text are to this edition and page numbers are given in parentheses. 207 manservant, Tom, pose as Counsellor Bramble and Sergeant Target respectively in Act III.

The play was a great success and enjoyed revivals right up to the staging of The School for Scandal. However, it is interesting to wonder with Bevis whether the audience enjoyed best the laughing scenes featuring Tom, Phillis and old Cimberton or the sentimental moralizing ones that Dennis called solemn stuff and Fielding referred to as a sermon.*^ Certainly Steele includes rather vulgar comedy in the Cimberton scene in Act III. The fact that it is held repugnant by Lucinda and clearly meant to be castigated by the audience does not obliterate its presence from the scenes of the play.

The play is heavily sentimental and rather a far cry from Sheridan's writing. Role playing is not made the focus of critical deliberation and exists as an interesting twist at the level of plot alone. However, the play also establishes upper class society as one in which role playing and posturing is a way of life. Also, the notion of decorum, so strongly advocated in the play, undeniably involves another sort of play acting. While Bevil has no intention of sacrificing his love, he also equally hopes to dutifully follow the dictates of his father. It is only with the most unlikely sort of development in the form of the discovery of Sealand as the erstwhile Danvers (father of Bevil's beloved Indiana) that Steele manages to give Bevil his virtuous wish and thus vindicate his filial devotion. Sheridan revived The Conscious Lovers more than once during his tenure as manager of the Drury Lane Theatre and his own plays do undoubtedly also reflect the decided preference for natural, spontaneous, unaffected behaviour reflected here.

Goldsmith's On the Theatre shows that the objection Goldsmith and Sheridan (often spoken of as the revivers of the Restoration wit

8 Bevis, English Drama 165. 208 comedy) had against sentimental comedy was the contamination of the genres. They insisted that tragedy or near tragedy should not enter into comedy. Though not the only ones, Goldsmith and Sheridan were the most influential of the dramatists who criticized the confounding of genres in this species of bastard tragedy. Comedy must retain its "laughing" characteristic, they insisted.'* Though certainly not as morally irresponsible as Restoration comedy, Sheridan's plays do represent a return to laughing comedy. The School for Scandal is a comedy of exposure: throughout the play there is a concern with finding the reality beneath the mask of each character, the truth beneath the appearance of each situation.

While The School for Scandal is acknowledged as Sheridan's "best comedy" and his undoubted masterpiece by Byron 1° and praised by critics as diverse as Lamb'^ and Dr. Johnson'^, The Rivals (1775) is also a remarkable play, rather lovable for its clever literary burlesque on notions of the "romantic" and quite replete with instances of play acting and games. Lydia Languish, a rich young heiress with a dominant Child ego state (as Berne would describe it), is enamoured of the handsome Ensign Beverley whose penury renders him an unsuitable match for her. For Lydia the charm of the situation lies in the so-called "romantic" poverty of her lover. She fancies herself in the role of the sentimental heroine who defies social laws (and scorns her fortune) to continue her alliance with the socially unacceptable

9 Oliver Goldsmith, "On the Theatre", Dramatic Essays of the Neo-Classical Age, ed. Henry Hitch Adams and Baxter Hathaway (New York: Columbia U P, 1950) 382.

'0 Lord Byron, "Byron", Sheridan : Comedies, ed. Peter Davison (London: Macmillan, 1986) 41.

•1 Charles Lamb, "Charles Lamb", Sheridan : Comedies, ed. Peter Davison (London: Macmillan, 1986) 137.

'2 John Loftis, Sheridan and the Drama of Georgian England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976) 42. 209

Beverley. "How charming will poverty be with him", she breathes.'^ Finding Lydia's Child in the ascendant, "Beverley" plays along, allowing her the satisfaction of her romantic excesses. She is disappointed to find her role wrested from her when Beverley is finally forced to reveal his real name and station as Capt. Absolute, a member of the prosperous landed gentry. So determined is Lydia in playing the part of the noble heroine in love with a mere ensign on half pay that, in a complex situation, when (in Act 111 scene iii) Capt. Absolute is introduced to her in his right person after his father "arranges" his marriage with Lydia, he is forced to pacify her by convincing her that he is only Ensign Beverley "acting" as Capt. Absolute. When, finally, the Beverley enactment has to be discarded. Jack tells Lydia: I need not tell my Lydia, that she sees her faithful Beverley, who, knowing the singular generosity of her temper, assumed that name, and a station, which has proved a test of the most disinterested love, which he now hopes to enjoy in a more elevated character. (96). Lydia's reaction is a "sullen" expression of her Child ego state - "So! There will be no elopement after all."

His switching between his real identity and his "other self (57) becomes so confusing that, at one point, his father asks him "Who the devil are you" now? He can only reply: "Faith, sir, I am not quite clear myself, but 111 endeavour to recollect." (96). Although his father calls him a "dissembling villain" (97), he is actually "glad you are not the dull, insensible varlet you pretended to be" (97). Rather than the role of the dutiful, utterly obedient son that he takes (after he finds out from Fag that his "intended" is none other than Lydia), Sir Anthony far prefers the "spirited" son who romantically wins his

13 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, "The Rivals", The School for Scandal and Other Plays, ed. Eric Rump (London: Penguin, 1988) 82. All subsequent references to this text are to this edition and page numbers are given in parentheses. 210 woman through a touch of deception. Capt. Absolute's dissembling is forgiven since the cause is "Love", that "masquerader ever since the days of Jupiter" (42). Great hilarity arises from a situation where Beverley is challenged to a duel by Lydia's suitor, Bob Acres. Not only must Capt. Absolute carry the letter to Beverley but he must also serve as a second in the duel between Beverley and Acres.

Yet another instance of role-playing is found in Mrs. Malaprop's coy enactment of the part of Delia while aspiring for the romantic attention of Sir Lucius OTrigger. However, her role as the "queen of the dictionary (68) is the one that has immortalized her in English literature. Also, Lydia's very clever maid, Lucy, wears the mask of "simplicity* (53) in order to serve several masters (for personal gain) without their becoming suspicious and jealous of her knowledge of their doings. Faulkland, the other young lover (who speaks of Jack and himself as a pair of gamesters - 56) wins his Julia in an action bereft of any dissembling but rife with jealousy and misunderstanding. However, even the incredibly sincere Julia confesses she has "often dressed sorrow in smiles" (75).

The play indulgently chastises the silly sentimental romanticism that makes a little role playing necessary on the part of the hero in order to capture the imagination of the heroine. It is a delightful burlesque on exaggerated notions of the "romantic" popularized in the second rate fiction circulated by the lending libraries of eighteenth century England. It begs a comparison with Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey and Shaw's Arms and the Man, both of which have similar satirical intentions. Despite the possibilities for a discussion on the question of identity that can easily be seen as resulting from the multiple selves of Capt. Absolute, Sheridan seems content to restrict his use of role playing to a satirical expose of young girls' notions of romance. He eschews any serious deliberations on the exact identity of the man Lydia is ostensibly in love with, whether the poor ensign or the wealthy captain. 211

Another interesting feature of the play that Rump comments on is the relationship between the actor playing Capt. Absolute and the audience. Since the audience is "in on the joke" of the Jack-Beverley duality, an atmosphere of genial camaraderie prevails. "Jack's appeal lies not only in the kind of relationship he has with Lydia but also in his relationship with the audience, which knows from the beginning what he is up to and therefore, because he is trustworthy, shares with him a bemused delight in the situations in which he finds himself." 14

Louis Kronenberger calls The Rivals a "theatrical coat of many colours... sometimes ridiculing sentimental comedy, sometimes echoing it". It incorporates two antagonistic discourses competing against each other (the sentimental Julia plot and the laughing Lydia action) and revealing a divided allegiance on the part of Sheridan to the opposed camps of "laughing" comedy and sentimental "weeping" comedy. The same division of loyalty is visible in The School for Scandal. The play entertains by the hilarity of its gentle and indulgent satire but fails, as we shall see, to explore the notion of role playing and the attendant problem of man's identity that Pirandello was later to make his obsessed focus.

The title of Sheridan's The School for Scandal reveals the pre­ eminently social bias of the play that is typical of the comedy of manners. The concept of a school for teaching or encouraging scandal mongering is a hilarious one and one that is typical of Sheridan's fine creativity. The title also makes obvious Sheridan's debt to Moliere and his "School" plays - The School for Wives and The School for Husbands - as James Morwood elucidates in his

i"" Eric Rump, Introduction, The School for Scandal and Other Plays, ed. Eric Rump (London: Penguin, 1988) 14. 212 essay "Sheridan, Moliere and the Idea of the School". i= In spite of the overall moral stand that the play takes, the school scenes are to be read, says Morwood, in the light of pure comedy a la Moliere. The school is at the heart of the theme of social posturing and role- playing.

Morwood stresses the contrast between the motif of the school, which stands for acquired artifice, and the heart as the emblem of natural feeling. Thus though Maria hears no good of Charles at the school (and there appears to be concrete proof regarding Charles' profligacy) yet her heart cannot accept it as the truth. Morwood focuses on the number of times that metaphors from the world of education are used - Joseph "studies" sentiment'^, Lady Teazle is his "pupil" (106). During the screen scene - that central image of hypocrisy and dissembling - while Lady Teazle is Joseph's pupil, he is her "Mr. Logick" (102) who tries to convince her of a specious "doctrine" (101) which justifies adultery. The standpoint of the play appears to look forward to the Romantic premise of Rousseau, Wordsworth and others who believed that "good-hearted honesty is a more trustworthy guide" than formal explicit teaching of right and wrong. 1^ There is hardly likely to be any condonation of role playing in such a scenario.

15 James Morwood, "Sheridan, Moliere and the Idea of the School in The School for Scandal", Sheridan Studies, ed. James Morwood and David Crane (Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1995) 77. While Morwood points out that the scandal scenes in The School for Scandal take inspiration from the character assassination scene in The Misanthrope where Celimene and Arsinoe''are found confronting each other, Act II , in which Celimene unabashedly decimates several reputations, is another such scene that might have suggested the notion of the depiction of the scandal school.

'6 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal, ed. C.J.L. Price (1971; Delhi: Oxford U P, 1977) 43. AU subsequent references to this text are to this edition and page numbers are given in parentheses.

'7 Morwood, "Sheridan, Moliere and the Idea of the School in The School for Scandal" 84-85. 213

While the influence of Moliere is evident, that of Congreve is obvious too. The meetings of the school for scandal can be compared with the cabal nights in The Way of the World. Certainly the notion of the cabal would have been fresh in Sheridan's mind since The School for Scandal was written immediately after completing the staging of the Congreve series at Drury Lane. In fact The Way of the World was the last play of the series to be staged. Sheridan may have embarked on the script of The School for Scandal immediately after that.

Mark Auburn offers an analysis of the two sketches or "playlets" as John Picker calls them, The Slanderers and The Teazles, that were adapted and amalgamated to form The School for Scandal. Detractors of Sheridan have accused him of having somehow stapled together two quite distinct plots in The School for Scandal. If the focus of the play is seen to be Sir Oliver's appraisal of the two brothers Surface and their pursuit of Maria (called the "male Cinderella motif by Andrew Schiller) i^, then the scenes involving Lady Teazle might seem to be redundant to that action. Again, the scandal scenes face even greater criticism as contributing little or nothing to the development of the plot. Generally dismissive of Sheridan, A.N. Kaul does not hesitate to roundly criticize "the school for scandal idea itself as "largely ornamental" and having "little functional importance", considering it is the "idea proclaimed in the title". 1*^ On the other hand Richard Bevis speaks of the "brilliant leap" made by Sheridan in uniting the two plots, ^o

It would be appropriate, in fact, to see the play as focusing on three illustrations of a single theme. Sheridan's theme is appearance and reality: the social appearance of a man and his private reality. This

'8 Andrew Schiller, "The Restoration Unrestored", Sheridan: Comedies, ed. Peter Davison (London: Macmillan, 1986) 161.

••3 Kaul, The Action of English Comedy 137.

20 Bevis, English Drama 229. 214 central theme is elaborated using 1) the Surfaces, 2) the Teazles, and 3) Lady Sneerwell's school. Indeed the opening scene depicting the school sets both the tone and the social scenario for the elaboration of the theme. Sheridan reiterates the Restoration statement of the existence of intrigue and malice as essential facts of social life: A school for scandal! Tell me, I beseech you Needs there a school this modish art to teach you? No need of lessons now, the knowing think; We might as well be taught to eat and drink. (Prologue, 6.)

Thus the concern with the reputation, the temptation to gossip and the inclination to select and project a deliberately chosen self-image are seen as intrinsic to human nature. It is by making use of the members of the scandal school that Joseph ruins Charles' reputation and alienates Sir Peter from Charles, thus placing himself in line as a favoured suitor for Maria's hand. While he is a genuine disciple of the school, Lady Teazle is misled into becoming a proselyte. On the other hand, Maria stands firm in her rejection of all that the school represents. The several strands of the plot are, in fact, well interwoven and integrated. The idea of the school is responsible for the situation as we find it when the curtain opens. The rejection of the school leads to the happy resolution. The school is certainly central to the entire plot.

Whether Lady Sneerwell or the others, the members of the school are all master role players. Their projection of an image of themselves is carefully thought out and executed. They are inveterate game players in that they set out to consciously ruin another's reputation whenever it might be convenient to themselves to malign and ostracize someone. Truth has no place in their milieu but dissimulation with the most malicious intentions certainly does. With their Adult eclipsed by their Child, they have no concern with the damage they do their victims. Where the characters are taken from the idle rich, they can but show their sharpness and their wit 215 by the games they play, the victories they notch up, the manipulations and machinations they mastermind. As Pope has said in his inimitable mock epic The Rape of the Lock: "At every word a reputation dies" (Canto III) in the world of Belinda and the Baron. Sir Peter makes a similar remark: "a character dead at every word, 1 suppose" (55). Sir Peter's comment about the malignant conversation of Sneerwell and her cohorts points to the function of words as weapons. Indeed John M. Picker speaks of words as the "ammunition of the scandal set, the bullets that rip apart reputations, and assassinate characters." Picker goes even further to say that, in a society where "words are the shards of conversation", "the pure of heart must resist" their "temptation".^i This is one way of justifying Maria's silence. The society being represented is an artificial society, one fraught with role playing that comes of a rigid determination to maintain, at all costs, the appearance of things. Virtue is hardly the issue, as it were, but reputation - the fagade of virtue - is.

The sort of gossip and scandal mongering that must have been the business of Lady Wishfort's cabal nights is here expanded to a "school for scandal" that is almost professional in its machinations. Lady Sneerwell's pathological games would be seen to clearly belong to the world of Eric Berne's patients rather than to the play worlds that Huizinga, Caillois and Suits describe if it were not for the creative flair she brings to her destructive art. Still, she does appear to be one of the "stimulus deprived" people Berne mentions, who then strive to accumulate strokes of social recognition by the games they play. 22 Lady Sneerwell's determination to destroy innocent reputations as a sort of revenge because hers was ruined in her youth is a form of "sour grapes". Her game could be called "Let's

21 John M. Picker, "Disturbing Surfaces: Representations of the Fragment in The School for Scandal". ELH 65 . 3 (Fall 1998): 643

22 Eric Berne, Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships (1964; Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1970) 13 - 14. 216

Drag Him Down Too": no-one shall enjoy a good reputation if she did not.

Her employment of Snake, a professional journalist or, rather, a Fleet Street hack, raises the level of her purpose to near professionalism. It is to Sheridan's credit that he displays not merely malice in the school exchanges but also the most charming creativity in the style of Congreve and the Pope of The Rape of the Lock. Scandal mongering is seen as a "modish art" (24) in which Mrs. Clackitt's "colouring is too dark, and her outlines often extravagant". On the other hand Lady Sneerwell's "delicacy of tint and mellowness of sneer" distinguishes her as the better "scandal artist" (28). Her absolute confidence in Snake's professionalism, though discovered to be misplaced later on, allows her to be completely frank, thus giving the audience the basic facts of the plot. Joseph is established as a master role player, an "artful, selfish and malicious" (30) man who passes among all his acquaintance as a "model for the young men of the age" (45). In his decision to resort to games and intrigue to win Maria's hand (and fortune), he is comparable to Fainall and Mirabell in The Way of the World. In the finesse the school brings to the malicious art of scandal mongering lies its qualification to merit the label of "play" in the sense Huizinga uses the expression. There is undoubtedly a creative flair and imaginative play involved. The school maintains some of the "secrecy" of their play world too, and certainly the members present a club-like fraternity in their meetings.^^

The myriad talents of Mrs. Clackitt, Sir Benjamin Backbite and Mr. Crabtree provide ample humour but from the outset Maria's outburst - "Wit loses its respect with me when I see it in the company with

-3 J. Huizinga. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (1949; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980) 12. 217 malice" (33) - clearly provides the framework of the play within which the school is bound, ultimately, to be rejected.

Like Lady Wishfort whose picture must sit for her while she is painted to look like her picture (painted in her youth). The School for Scandal also mentions female members of society who are more or less "cosmetic constructs". Christine WiesenthaJ focuses attention on the artificiality of women like Miss Vermillion whose colour is too "fresh put on" (53). Again the widow Ocre "caulkls] her wrinkles" but "joins" her face to her neck "so badly" that "she looks like a mended statue in which the connoisseur sees at once that the Head's modern tho' the Trunk's antique" (54). Among the men are characters like Sir Benjamin Backbite who (reminding us of Oronte in The Misanthrope) is an extremely self-conscious poet or at least likes to project himself as such. The theme of artificiality and posturing is clearly central to the play.

The three scandal school scenes (in Acts I, II, and V) present all that is worst in upper class urban life. But the pseudo-wit and the social posturing fascinate Lady Teazle, fresh from the simple pleasures of the country and she adopts the role of the sophisticated socialite. Lady Sneerwell's "school" educates her so that she can take her place among the smart wits of the Town. Obviously, it is her need to "belong", to be like the others, her "recognition hunger"^^ that drives her to play a role. She craves social recognition. She learns to be extravagant, to have a "lover", to make a fool of her December husband by flouting his every wish. There is an implicit contrast between Maria who remains unspoiled by the attitudes of the scandalmongers and Lady Teazle who succumbs to the false education meted out by them. "O! they have made you just as bad as any one of the Society," growls Sir Peter (51). However, when Lady Teazle repudiates the school in Act V she confirms her reformation.

2'' Berne, Games People Play 14. 218

It is only befitting that, since everything is false in the school for scandal, Snake should ultimately be disloyal to Lady Sneerwell, change his game plan and reveal her part in the plot to discredit Charles in Maria's eyes. In Act V there emerge so many versions of what happened between the Teazles and the Surface brothers that it becomes impossible to separate the truth from the appearance. There are wild inaccuracies, conjectures and hyperbole. Some believe it is Joseph with whom Lady Teazle was discovered, some insist it is Charles. Sir Peter has fought a duel with her lover, say others. Soon even Sir Peter's "actual" words of challenge are being "quoted" by Backbite, and Crabtree even adds the most minute but inconsequential details. When Sir Oliver arrives, he is taken for the doctor come to remove the bullet lodged in the thorax (according to one version) or else to tend the wound delivered by a small-sword (according to another).

The school for scandal, from which the play takes its title, exists to represent the malice and treachery, falsity and insincerity that characterizes social interaction. Just as Congreve's last play acknowledges "the way of the world" as the technique adopted by the majority, so too does the school for scandal establish the role playing propensities of the majority in society. But just as Congreve places Mirabell and Millamant in an ivory tower of rarefied atmosphere, so too does Sheridan provide opposition to the school for scandal in the form of Charles and Maria who refuse to play roles, reject all games and poses and all forms of malice and insincerity.

The most overt instance of role playing in The School for Scandal is found in the deliberate play acting by Sir Oliver. It is a typically Shakespearian situation that is presented to us. Sir Oliver returns to England after a long sojourn in India and finds a situation that might be described, in S.L. Bethell's phrase, as a situation of disorder. Of his two nephews (who are his heirs) one has gained an enviable 219 reputation as an upstanding man of character, but the other is known as a dissolute rascal. Reluctant to believe this infamy of Charles, Sir Oliver decides to find his character out for himself. Choosing the strategy of role playing, he voluntarily takes a role with a "goal of sincerity". In order to observe them unawares and to thus catch their conscience, as it were. Sir Oliver first plays the part of Premium, an unscrupulous money-lender and then poses as Stanley, a poor relation of the family who has been petitioning for help with his ruined fortune. As neither Charles nor Joseph have ever seen him. Sir Oliver decides to "assume his character" in order to get "a fair opportunity of judging" (66). Sir Oliver plays what Christine Wiesenthal calls a verbal charade - he does not actually use costume changes.25

Sir Oliver, arriving incognito, is appalled at the state of affairs in Charles' house. The servants are out to make money out of their master's visitors. They are undisciplined, unmannerly and eminently corruptible. Sir Oliver's first glimpse of Charles is none too promising either. As a moneylender. Sir Oliver is welcomed with but scant respect. Charles seems to have little time for social niceties. In fact he is deliberately shown to be particularly bald in his approach. It is as if Sheridan presents to us the man himself without the frills and fripperies considered so essential a part of social posturing and artificial decorum. Our first sight of Charles is as an apparently degenerate young man, immersed in drinking with obviously worthless friends. But he turns to this moneylender with a forthright proposal. He believes in "plain dealing" (84) as he says. Sir Oliver emerges somewhat dazed from his exchange with Charles. He is appalled that Charles has sold all the family plate and books and is now eager to sell the portraits of his ancestors. Charles' plain speaking upsets Sir Oliver but he manages to complete the play

25 Christine S. Weisenthal, "Representation and Experimentation in the Major Comedies of Richard Brinsley Sheridan", Eighteenth Century Studies 25 . 3 (Spring 1992): 323. 220 within the play and see his ruse through to its conclusion. "What an unnatural rogue", he thinks when Charles irreverently starts up the auction (90).

But Uncle Oliver - "Noll" as Charles refers to him in a mixture of affection and irreverence - is not to be sold in the same way the other portraits of family members are knocked down. Charles decides to keep Sir Oliver's portrait because "the old fellow has been very good to me". Sir Oliver's overjoyed aside - "The rogue's my nephew after all!" (93) - is not to be taken as a narrow egoistic capitulation. It is rather to be seen as Sir Oliver's recognition of Charles' genuine affection for him. When all is said and done, the audience realizes, what are portraits of dead people really worth after all? Is it not stupid sentimentalism to hold on to them when money is in short supply? As Charles puts it so succinctly: "to be sure 'tis very affecting: but you see they never move a muscle, so why should I?" (96). Jack D. Durant calls the screen scene and the auction scene the two pivotal scenes in the play. ^6 They are indeed the two major moments of revelation of the truth about the two brothers. The metaphor is quite clear: Charles sets no great store by pictures (mere appearances). He is more concerned with the real thing, the uncle with whom he has maintained a warm association. Similarly Sir Oliver has refused to credit hearsay about Charles and now, with his first hand experience of Charles' heart, he can say: "Let me hear now who dares call him profligate!" (94). He has seen the reality of Charles beneath his misleading appearance and reputation.

Ultimately it is Charles' unfeigned fondness for his uncle that impresses us and also his generosity - "while I have, by Heaven I'll give" (96) - when he has precious little to spare. Act IV makes it clear beyond doubt that though Charles has no time for the standard

25 Jack D. Durant, "Prudence, Providence and the Direct Road of Wrong", Sheridan: Comedies, ed. Peter Davison (London: Macmillan, 1986) 181. 221 socially required show of proper sentiment, he does have natural feeling. His "nature" - as Danby would describe it^^ - is uncorrupted; his natural impulses of family attachment are not only intact but also strong. It is his family feeling that has led him to buy their father's house. Charles has no patience with social roles and decorum but he has abundant good humour and an affectionate heart. He stands as the example of openness and generosity of spirit and his merit is rewarded finally.

The welcome Sir Oliver receives as Mr. Stanley, a poor relation in need of economic redress, at Joseph's house is a great and deliberate contrast to his reception at Charles' house. Joseph is at his decorous best but he is prolific only with his courtesies and not with his coin. Not only is Mr. Stanley coldly and resolutely turned away (albeit in words with a semblance of politeness) but also Joseph has no compunctions in painting Uncle Oliver as an avaricious man who has not cared to share his abundance with his nephews. "What he has done for me has been a mere nothing." Joseph does not stop at maligning his uncle but goes on to assume a hypocritically virtuous pose when he says, "people, I know, have thought otherwise and for my part, I never chose to contradict the report." (118). Sir Oliver sees him for what he is, a "dissembler" (119). Joseph's sheer ingratitude and refusal to acknowledge the presents he has sent him appall him. Joseph is a past master at "gain(ing) the reputation of benevolence without incurring the expense." As he says The silver ore of pure charity is an expensive article in the catalogue of a man's good qualities; whereas the sentimental French plate I use instead of it makes just as good a show, and pays no tax. (120).

27 John H. Danby, Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature: A Study of "King Lear". 2"d ed. (London: Faber & Faber, 1972). 222

Joseph is a shameless liar and a role player. He has perfected his act as the generous brother who receives no gratitude or appreciation. He claims that he has done much for Charles: The sums I have lent him! - Indeed I have been exceedingly to blame; it was an amiable weakness: however, I don't pretend to defend it, since it has deprived me of the pleasure of serving you, Mr. Stanley, as my heart dictates. (119). Joseph has perfected the pose of injured merit, of humility, of continued and constant, though misplaced, affection.

A. Norman Jeffares describes Sir Oliver as theWues px machina that exposes Joseph's duplicity.^^ Arch game player that he is, Joseph has failed his test. Once again his duplicity is presented in shocking strains. Hardly has Stanley left that Rowley tells him Sir Oliver is in town. This changes the scenario and calls for a change of role: Joseph tries to recall Stanley since if he were to tell Sir Oliver of his treatment at Joseph's hands it would hardly endear the nephew to the uncle.

Snake calls Charles "the most dissipated and extravagant young fellow in the kingdom, without friends or character" (29). It is, indeed, an extremely damning description. Certainly those who should befriend him - his brother and his guardian. Sir Peter - have allied themselves against him. Charles seems to have harmed himself enough by his devil-may-care attitude to life, his determined sowing of wild oats, and gathering around himself young men of dubious virtue and even more questionable loyalty. However, when Lady Sneerwell refers to him as a "libertine, that extravagant, that bankrupt in fortune and reputation" (30) but also simultaneously confesses her interest in this young man "to gain whom I would sacrifice everything", the Tom Jones parallel becomes obvious. But

28 A. Norman Jeffares, Introduction, The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (London; Macmillan, 1967) xviii. 223 events and comments continue to label Charles as a profligate and a prodigal and it is only Sir Oliver's resolute role playing that succeeds in unveiling the truth about him. Mark Auburn points out that if Mirabell and Charles were to be compared, there is certainly a far milder focus on Charles' profligate past; perhaps it is merely assumed rather than demonstrated. "Charles is a type, and might be found in any play with extravagant young men, the sterling of whose hearts, we know, makes up for the lack of gold in their pockets" says Robert Herring. ^^

It is his own brother Joseph who is most guilty in willfully blackening Charles' name. Whether it is Crabtree, Sir Benjamin Backbite or Snake, they each have their contemptuous dig at Charles. To consider it from the Restoration viewpoint of "nothing succeeds like success", Charles has made the unforgivable mistake of spending his fortune and getting into debt - socially he could be seen as a loser. But taken from the Georgian point of view we are to see a man who has been generous and emotional to a fault. His buying of his father's house when Joseph, having no sentimental attachment to it, puts it up for sale to the highest bidder is tangible proof of this. He has none of Joseph's meanness and invariably surrounds himself with company - so-called friends who help swell his bills and thus his debts. He trusts those who prove unworthy of his trust: his own servants.

Mark Auburn compares Charles to Othello and Joseph to lago.^^ Though the comparison may be a little far fetched, certainly Charles seems to represent an abused nobility of character that is finally revealed and established. But while lago's villainy is focused, Joseph's is diluted: he seems merely to drift towards an affair with

29 Robert Herring, Introduction, The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1927; London: Macmillan, 1965) xii,

30 Auburn, Sheridan's Comedies 127. 224

Lady Teazle while trying to negotiate a matrimonial alliance with Maria. Andrew Schiller goes even further when he calls Joseph the Vice of the Morality reincarnated in Hanoverian comedy. Still, he points out that Joseph seems to initiate much evil but does not actually "DO any of the villain's work", thus meriting the light judgment passed on him at the end. "There is no offence actually done in The School for Scandal".^^ Louis Kronenberger is inclined to agree with Schiller: there is only the imputation of sinning in the play but no sign of the real thing.32 Patricia Meyer Spacks makes the point that The School for Scandal substitutes verbal for sexual behaviour. There is no serious misdemeanour, whether sexual or otherwise, actually executed in the play. Still, Joseph's malicious defamation of Charles is definitely culpable and despicable. However, it is true that Lady Teazle and Joseph do not quite enter into an affair though they are on the brink of it - for their various confused reasons. Charles is spoken of as a prodigal but there is no real evidence of his misdeeds either. In her book. Gossip. Patricia Spacks argues that in this play scandal fills the gap occupied by sex in Restoration comedy. Thus scandal mongering serves as an outlet for sexual energy forbidden on the Georgian stage^^. John Picker also speaks of the conversation of the scandal school as a form of sexual voyeurism^"*

After Rowley's championing of Charles, the first tentative vote of confidence comes from Sir Oliver. Aye - I know there are a set of malicious, prating, prudent gossips, both male and female who murder characters to kill time and will rob a young fellow of his good name before he

31 Schiller, The Restoration Unrestored" 166.

32 Louis Kronenberger, The Polished Surface", Sheridan: Comedies, ed. Peter Davison (London: Macnullan, 1986) 177.

33 Patricia Meyer Spacks, Gossip (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986) 145.

34 Picker, "Disturbing Surfaces": 643. 225

has years to know the value of it. - But I am not to be prejudiced against my nephew by such I promise you! No, no - if Charles has done nothing false or mean, I shall compound for his extravagance. (62 - 63). He refuses to take Charles' extravagance as a sign of his negative character but, instead, reminiscences that he and his brother, Charles' father, were "neither of us very prudent youths" (63). Yet, he insists, there was hardly a better man in maturity than his brother, thus pointing out that a young man who sows his wild oats can still grow into a responsible adult - like an actor quite naturally casting off one role and taking on another. Sir Oliver does not write Charles off as an inveterate rascal. Again, when he is told what people say about the two brothers, his comment is a dismissive "Pshaw!" (64). He would rather check out the reality than depend on hearsay (appearance). Sir Oliver hates "to see prudence clinging to the green suckers of youth; 'tis like ivy round a sapling, and spoils the growth of the tree." (65). Sir Oliver speaks for the entire audience, insists C.J.L. Price, when he says of Joseph: " If he salutes me with a scrap of morality in his mouth, I shall be sick directly." (64).^5 The main contrast between the two brothers is that the elder is a compulsive role player while the younger is for "plain dealing". Thus Joseph is presented as constantly playing roles that are convenient to the situation while Charles is eternally but himself.

Charles' faults are those of his youth and his class. He is presented as a typical member of the upper class: financial imprudence and indulgence in pleasures like drinking and gambling were traditionally expected of the young. Whoring might have been another typically expected pastime in a young aristocrat's youthful phase but Sheridan's Georgian sensibility eschews the possibility of that unforgivable sin in the would-be hero of his tale. Sir Oliver says: "I

•35 C.J.L. Price, Introduction, The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1971; Delhi: Oxford U P, 1977) 12. 226 am not sorry that he has run out of the course a little..." (65). Seen in this light it is Joseph who appears to be almost unnaturally proper, grave, sober, prudent and, of course, a man of sentiment. When Mirabell becomes too grave, Millamant mocks him by calling him "sententious".3^ It is love that has thus changed Mirabell. But what excuse does Joseph have? In a sentimental age he has chosen to don the mask of the model gentleman. It is an unnatural excess of this exemplary fagade that makes Sir Oliver suspicious of his true nature. Joseph is repeatedly described as "a man of sentiment", implying that he is all that is proper and considered correct in the social system of the time. The term "sentiment" is invariably used with an ironical inflexion except when Sir Peter uses it to describe Joseph. Sir Peter is taken in by Joseph's role completely until his hypocrisy is exposed by Lady Teazle.

On the other hand. Sir Oliver is overjoyed to find that Charles "is my brother's son" (66) after all. He demonstrates family feeline. generosity and kindness but he does not sentimentalize ^"Lven nis love for Maria is not sentimentalized. It is in a joke that he swears that he has withheld her name from his friends "only in compassion to you" for "If I toast her, you must give a round of her peers, which is impossible - on earth." (80). Charles speaks of his Uncle Oliver (all unaware that it is he who is passing as Premium before him at that very moment) in the same less than reverent mode when he refers to him as "a devilish rich uncle from whom I have the greatest expectations". In a hilarious exchange Charles assures "Premium" that his uncle is "much altered", that "the climate has hurt him considerabl}^ and that "he breaks apace". (85). Charles' confidence that Sir Oliver is so much altered that even his nearest relations do not know him gives rise to almost hysterical laughter from "Premium" and must have brought the house down at Druiy Lane.

36 William Congreve, The Way of the World, ed. Kathleen Lynch (1965; London: Edward Arnold, 1968 ) 49. 227

Charles even dares to offer Premium collateral connected with his uncle's death.

Charles, Sir Oliver concludes after the completion of his little play within the play, is "a dear extravagant rogue" (94). Still, he is neither more nor less culpable than a typical eighteenth century gentleman at the height of his youthful aberrations. His declaration that "while 1 have, by Heaven 111 give" lends credence to Sir Oliver's appraisal of him as a generous young man with his heart in the right place. It is also significant that though Charles is seen drinking, he remains sober. Though we are told he has been gambling, we do not actually see him at the tables and though we are told he is a profligate we never see him in the act.

It is also significant that Rowley, an old, trusted servant of the family who would know both brothers better than anyone else, clearly advocates Charles' cause throughout. This should be given at least as much value as the housekeeper's praise of Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. In fact, Rowley's opinion should be granted even more consideration than Mrs. Reynolds' for he has a more substantial role to play, is consistently loyal and concerned for the family he is employed by and, along with Charles and Maria, is established as a wholly honest character. He does not indulge in any games or role playing. However, it is interesting to note that he initiates Sir Oliver's role playing.

When Charles comes to visit his brother, it is revealing (of Joseph's character) that he first pretends to be unavailable and then reluctantly agrees to let Charles in - that too only because he has a game to play. Sir Peter is to conceal himself while Joseph asks Charles about his supposed tendre for Lady Teazle. Sir Peter expects Charles to tell his brother the truth. He hopes he will "set my heart at rest" by reacting as expected to this "opportunity to clear himself (107). Not only does Charles "deliver" in the sense that he does state 228 an utter lack of romantic interest in Lady Teazle but he goes on to speak further truths - this time inconvenient to Joseph.

The exchange between the brothers is emblematic of their characters: Charles is hearty, unabashed and completely honest while Joseph, though purporting to hate intrigue, is immersed in at least two games at one time. His conversation with Charles is a game played for the benefit of Sir Peter. Also, he has two people separately hidden, each concealed from the other and both concealed from Charles. Part of what Charles says is elicited so that Sir Peter can hear it but the rest of what he says must not be heard by him and thus Joseph tries to hush him up. Ultimately Joseph is forced to tell Charles of Sir Peter's presence. It is typical of Charles to promptly drag Sir Peter out of the closet and out into the open. It is Charles, again, who throws down the screen to see who the "little milliner" (112) is and reveals, to his surprise. Lady Teazle. Thus Charles is the instrument by which truth is revealed. He is puzzled by the game of "hide and seek" being played but, since he has no part in it, he goes away, leaving the players to sort their scripts out. The screen scene, compared to the closet scene in The Way of the World by Brooks and Heilman, is "the perfect embodiment of Joseph's basic duplicity" and not a mere Plautine device.^^ The clever use of the screen in Sheridan's play is emblematic of that play's pre-occupation with appearance and reality in the social context, one it certainly shares with the Restoration comedies.

As the elder of the two brothers it is Joseph's privilege to be addressed as Mr. Surface. The name certainly underlines the

37 Cleanth Brooks and Robert B. Heilman, Understanding Drama (New York: Holt, Rinehart 86 Winston, 1948) 421,246. W.A. Darlington also gives a great deal of importance to the screen scene, saying that Sheridan's 'superb sense of situation" reaches its highest point in this scene which he calls the most famous single scene in English drama except for the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. W. A. Darlington, Sheridan (London: Longmans, Green 85 Co., 1951) 20-21. 229 dishonesty and hypocrisy of Joseph for he is all "surface", eternally changing metaphorical garb and mask to switch roles. Joseph must face castigation from each and every one of the dramatis personae of this play. He is seen completely immersed in game playing. Intrigue, that staple of English comedy, is, it would seem, second nature to him. It is only natural that he should be the friend and associate of Lady Sneerwell who has made it her life's mission to falsify and destroy good character wherever she finds it. She recognizes in him her accomplice and ally: they work together for their mutual benefit. It is in the interest of each to wean Maria away from Charles.

In Act II scene ii, also, Joseph is found in a piquant situation - that of fielding Maria and Lady Teazle at the same time. He is playing the role of importunate lover to Maria's unwilling listener when Lady Teazle walks in. Suddenly Joseph has to juggle matters - and words - so that Lady Teazle may not realize that he has been urging Maria to accept his suit. At the same time Maria must not suspect that he has been propositioning Lady Teazle. Such duplicity on Joseph's part would surely have won him complete rejection were he to be found within the pages of a Jonsonian play. However, Sheridan's tones are far milder than Jonson's.

Joseph belongs wholeheartedly to the school for scandal. He becomes so used to playing games and dissembling that he soon finds out that he has carried his game too far. He pursues Lady Teazle at first only to ensure that she would not discourage Maria from accepting his suit but before he realizes it he finds that he has charmed her to the stage of sexual interest. In Joseph we see a dramatization of social tendencies being imitated to such an extent that they become almost second nature. Joseph can even be seen as a victim of society: he almost cannot seem to help himself; A curious dilemma my politics have run me into! I wanted, at first, only to ingratiate myself with Lady Teazle, that she might 230

not be my enemy with Maria; and I have, I don't know how, become her serious lover. (61 - 62).

Joseph is presented as a victim of the society he lives in or, at least, the inevitable product of it. The attitudes of that society, the social tendency to assume poses and play roles, to nurture, in fact, the false and dishonest, has left its lasting^erhaps indelible, mark on him. As Huizinga clarifies at<

He is let off lightly since, although he intends to harm others, no real damage is actually done. However, it is evident that his "politics", or his tendency to play games has so entrenched itself in his being that it has become second nature to him. His roles are certainly taken with goals of "bad faith". Bernard Suits speaks of the volition to play by the rules and the volition to win. But Joseph seems to have such a need to be smart and one-up on everybody else that he has fallen into a set attitude of intriguing and plotting. His extreme need to be agonistically successful marks him as the sort of pathological player of games that Eric Berne investigates. Rules cannot bind him; he exists in a field of play that is Machiavellian in its refusal to mind any rules. Like the "Schizophrenic Cheat"^^ he is determined to win each game but will not play by the rules. But, possibly, his playing by cheating could be perceived as a greater cleverness at play, as Huizinga shows. His compulsive need to play games to establish his superiority seems to point to some particularly deep-seated insecurity. He takes great risks in his games: hiding three people from each other in a single room makes for a definite intrusion of alea in terms of likely success. One wonders if the element of risk

38 Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Gaines. Life and Utopia (1978; Boston: Nonpareil, 1990) 76. 231 makes for a kind of drug for Joseph, like an adrenaline-inspired "high" that keeps him going on the same track. Had Sheridan cared to analyze Joseph's "driver", it would have made him a far more interesting character than he is.

As he stands, Joseph comes across as a cold character, almost in the mould of a Jonsonian humour - a compulsive schemer and role player. In fact Mark Auburn compares The School for Scandal, "a punitive comedy of exposure"^'^, with Jonson's Volpone. Both Auburn and Morwood also use an analogy with Moliere's Tartuffe. Like Tartuffe and Volpone, Joseph typifies hypocrisy. He plays the role of suitor with Maria. Conscious that she has no warm feelings for him, he still pursues her. When Lady Sneerwell says that Joseph wants "Maria or her fortune" (29), it is clear it is the latter he craves: Maria, being the guileless ingenue that she is, has made no secret^ of her preference for Charles. Yet Joseph enlists the help of the school for scandal to discredit Charles in Maria's eyes and also in the eyes of her guardian, Sir Peter. All the slander that is bandied about concerning Charles is the brainchild of Joseph: a play directed by him.

Lady Sneerwell calls Joseph a "sentimental knave" (30) implying that he is a rascal with the face of sentiment (that is, socially accepted and admired values and attitudes). Joseph is such a consummate actor that he cannot stop playing his part even when he is in the sole company of Sneerwell and Snake, fellow slander artists, who are acquainted with his reality. When Lady Sneerwell is driven to refer to Charles as "poor Charles" (31), he starts on a very sentimental speech about wishing he could help his brother. Surely the audience would share Lady Sneerwell's view when she cuts him off, saying exasperatedly : "O Lud! You are going to be moral and forget that you are among friends." (31).

39 Auburn, Sheridan's Comedies 111. 232

Joseph adjusts his role to that desired by the company he is in. Thus when Maria walks in, upset about her unsolicited beau Benjamin Backbite, Joseph agrees with her complaint that "wit loses its respect with me, when I see it in company with malice''(33). But, again, when Lady Sneerwell contradicts Maria by insisting that "there's no possibility of being witty without a little ill nature", Joseph manages to find words to express agreement with her too. "To be sure, madam; that conversation where the spirit of raillery is suppressed, will ever appear tedious and insipid." (33).

Joseph is seen at his most despicable in Act IV scene Hi. The screen, that very central prop in this scene, acquires the metaphorical value of representing Joseph's duplicity. It is interesting that he has the screen placed, at first, against the window to ensure that his inquisitive neighbour may not detect the presence of Lady Teazle in his house. Joseph encourages Lady Teazle to play Sir Peter false. Since he suspects her fidelity anyway, she may as well prove his fears correct, he urges. He describes her character hilariously (in a manner typical of Wilde) as one "like a person in a plethora, absolutely dying from too much health" (101). A small transgression would actually help her situation. He gives the impression of speaking in a very reasoned manner - in an Adult-to-Adult transaction. Lady Teazle responds in what she believes to be an Adult acceptance of his advice. However, in actuality, it is a Parent- Child transaction. In his interaction with Lady Teazle, Joseph consistently addresses her Child ego state but appears, ostensibly, to be addressing her Adult. When he asks for her judgment on his library (a variation of "Can I show you my etchings?"), he has descended to his Child ego state and targets her Child too, using euphemisms for purposes of flirtation. When he refers to her as his "pupil" (106), too, he is the teacher/Parent addressing her Child to teach her a "doctrine" (101). 233

However, before he can quite convince her to enter into "a trifling fauxpa^ (101) with him, Sir Peter is announced. The screen is now galvanized into performing the function of hiding Lady Teazle from Sir Peter. When Sir Peter expresses his fears regarding the "frailtj^ of his wife and names Charles as the likely would-be seducer, Joseph ironically declaims "the man who can break the laws of hospitality, and tempt the wife of his friend". Such a man "deserves to be branded as the pest of society" (105), he says. Joseph cannot stop Sir Peter from talking about his (Joseph's) "passion for Maria" and is chagrined that Lady Teazle is bound to have heard it. While Joseph sets out to dissemble, deceive and conceal in the screen scene, what actually transpires is a multiple revelation.

Aristocratic life, it would seem, is a matter of screens and fine speeches. We find Joseph juggling roles, explanations and confidences. The screen scene becomes a climactic point in the play where the role playing becomes excessive and more or less self- destructs. It is worth noticing that much of the comic suspense inherent in the scene derives from the hasty improvisations Joseph is forced to make in his little play. Even at this lowest point of his credibility, Joseph refuses to give up and makes a halting but determined speech to justify his dubious actions. Sir Peter pronounces him a villain and leaves the room but Joseph is seen following him with a "Notwithstanding..." (115) and attempting a continuation of his role as a "man of sentiment". However, Lady Teazle has heard enough by now to become disillusioned with Joseph and reveal the truth concerning her presence in Joseph's house. The screen is, as it were, truly set aside. It seems as if she finally grows up, emerging from the Child into the Adult.

It would appear that at least the Teazles and Charles have now discovered the real Joseph. Joseph plays multiple roles but is caught red-handed and exposed. He is a role player who fails to use his game playing powers effectively and successfully. Even in Restoration 234 drama all role players are not applauded for their dissembling. It is only those who can carry off their play acting with poise, grace and, above all, success. Ultimately, even Lady Sneerwell dismisses him as a "blunderer" (131). Thus it would be wrong to point to Joseph as the clinching proof that The School for Scandal is a sentimental play because role playing is criticized. Joseph's role playing would have found censure even in the Restoration era. Besides, he can hardly be compared to a Mirabell who has the best of motives for his role playing - true love. However, Auburn describes Joseph as the most intelligent character in the play.'^o Obviously Sheridan has created a polarity consisting of cleverness and insincerity on the one hand and ingenuousness and good nature on the other. It is interesting to notice that the only time Charles does lie in the play is at the instance of his brother. He pretends that his association of Joseph with Lady Teazle was only a joke. It is a sign of his generosity of spirit rather than any intention to manipulate that he retracts his implication.

Thus Sir Oliver's role playing is successful in gauging the real nature of the two brothers in a society and an age in which the social mask and disguise have become the norm. Sir Oliver's assumption of the roles of Premium and Stanley is to be applauded since it is instrumental in re-establishing order by rewarding the good hearted man rather than the heartless but clever strategist. The presentation and approval of Sir Oliver's play acting marks a throwback to the Shakespearian matrix of attitudes. He enters the plot at a time when a grave injustice is being perpetrated against Charles. By means of his role with a "goal of sincerity he is able to restore Charles' reputation and re-establish him as a suitable partner for Maria.

•fo Auburn, Sheridan's Comedies 109. 235

Maria is presented, in The School for Scandal, as the trophy for whom many suitors contest. Not only are both the main characters, Charles and Joseph, serious contenders for her hand but Sir Benjamin Backbite is also shown in pursuit of her. Charles loves her and hopes to marry her but does not resort to any strategies to ensure that he wins her. Joseph nurtures hopes of marrying her because he seems to have designs on her fortune. He would also, probably, enjoy the sheer satisfaction of thwarting Charles, whom he views as an agonistic rival. Backbite tries to further his suit by dedicating his poetry to her, little realizing she cares neither for him and his flourishes, nor for his verse.

Like Millamant and Celimene, Maria too appears to be the toast of the beau monde. However, she is no posturing coquette. In fact, her supreme value lies in her refusal, at all times, to lend herself to any kind of play acting or game playing. She stands out as the only unblemished major character in the play. As Sheridan scholar C.J.L. ^ Price has said, "Phs only paragons were Maria and Rowley.'"'^ Both her friends and her suitors - in fact almost every other character in the play - have very obvious shortcomings but she is perfectly virtuous, beautiful and desirable. It is true that the long line of heroines in the wit comedies of the Restoration period have invariably been chaste in spite of the almost wicked milieu they live and breathe in. Yet their attraction has lain more in their wit, sparkle and the strength of their personalities than in their virtue. A Millamant or a Harriet is remembered for her (artificial) wit, her (deliberately paraded) audacity, her delightful (simulated) caprice. Maria has none of these individualizing qualities. That she is beautiful and virtuous we are told by Charles, Joseph and Sir Peter. That she is both chaste and absolutely honest we glean from her actions and speech. She is uncomfortable in the extreme while being pursued by Sir Benjamin Backbite since she does not wish to

•" Price, Introduction 12. 236 encourage him. She is willing to court unpopularity but will not allow malice to be described as interesting. Her famous declaration - "wit loses its respect with me when I see it in company with malice" (33) - clearly aligns her with the honest and the good. She would rather be thought dull than witty if malice is to form a necessary ingredient of wit. Roles and games imply dishonesty to her. She is too sincere and honest to be a player of any sort.

Maria is certainly not as fascinating as Millamant or Celimene. She is cast more in the mould of the sentimental heroine - one whose virtue is her entire recommendation. However, she is neither vapid nor passive. She is an obedient ward in that she follows Sir Peter's decree that she is not to meet Charles but she is not afraid to remind him that she does so against the inclination of her heart. She is not so coy as to cloak or to deny her love for Charles and can speak of it frankly. She has more spirit than Lady Easy but lacks her ability to connive and strategize in order to make sure she has her way. Both women, however, share a certain dignity. Maria is a truthteller with a sweet disposition (like Moliere's Eliante) but has no sense of "play" in her nature at all.

The School for Scandal espouses the cause of honesty and decries the Janus-faced. Thus Maria and Charles represent the honnete homme in its old fashioned sense, with the emphasis on honesty and uprightness rather than on politeness and charm. Like the heroines of The Way of the World and The Misanthrope. Maria too has grown up in a society that is a veritable "school for scandal". While Celimene gladly participates in that society, and Millamant is shrewd enough to appear to participate while actually finding her real expression in a stratum above it, Maria is simply and categorically appalled by the goings-on she witnesses. Her silence is her protest. Like Eliante, again, she minimizes her interaction with a society that reeks of hypocrisy and malice. Indeed it is her silence that emphasizes her utter "difference". 237

She is called a "child" by Sir Peter, Lady Teazle and Joseph but she speaks consistently in her Adult ego state. She cannot be cajoled or persuaded and refuses to soften or modify her opinions. Maria's reason for refusing to countenance the suit of Sir Benjamin Backbite (who is considered something of a "wit and a poet" in society) is that "his conversation is a perpetual libel on all his acquaintance" (33). For a character who speaks so little, her denunciation of scandal is very strongly phrased. She calls it "contemptible" and accuses "the male slanderer" of being guilty of "the cowardice of a woman" (33). John Picker gives her the most positive image possible when he points out that her quietness implies a studied avoidance of the weaponry of words. "Words...are the shards of conversation in this play... Words are the weapons, ammunition of the scandal set, the bullets that rip apart reputations, and assassinate characters. Words are...a temptation that the pure of heart must resist."''^ Thus her quietness is to be seen as the triumph of her purity.

Maria shares with Millamant her great regard for privacy. When Mrs. Candour says that the Town talks of nothing but Charles, his extravagance, and Maria's breaking off with him, she retorts: "I am very sorry, ma'am, the town has so little to do." People who "busy themselves so" are perceived by her as "strangely impertinent". (34 - 35).

While all around her the scandalmongers delight in nurturing false rumours, Maria staunchly defends truth. She refuses to lend even lip service to the norms of her society. The outright sturdiness of her defence of honesty in all social matters marks her out as a sentimental heroine. Indeed, a not very malicious criticism of Charles by Sir Benjamin Backbite so incenses her that she leaves the room. "She could not bear to hear Charles reflected on" as Lady Sneerwell

42 Picker, "Disturbing Surfaces": 643. 238 points out (42). "The young lady's penchant is obvious" indeed (42), for Maria does not believe in dissembling. Maria offers a contrast to Joseph: with her, "sentiment" is the real thing, not the "study" of it as is Joseph's counterfeit sincerity.

Maria has too often been criticized as a pale, passive creature. Kronenberger goes so far as to call her "the dullest of ingenues".''^ This has often been considered the greatest shortcoming of the play. However, far from passive, she is, in fact, in Sir Peter's words, a "rebel" who "absolutely refuses" (44) the man her guardian has chosen for her. Maria has spirit and the courage to speak her mind in a forthright manner. She goes to the extent of warning Sir Peter that she would cease to regard him as her guardian if he persisted in his insistence on Joseph's suit (72). Maria must be contrasted with Millamant who, though she does not lie and pretend as the other characters in The Way of the World do, is, nevertheless, guilty of acquiescence in Mirabell's schemes. Maria stands head and shoulders above the general level of deceit that her society is infested with. However, she also lacks the charm and fascination of Millamant's caprice and flirtatiousness, her very disarmingly perverse behaviour when dealing with Mirabell. Maria's is, in short, the sort of desirable attractiveness endorsed by sentimental comedy rather than wit comedy. She is called a "child" at least three times in the play - by Lady Teazle (60), by Joseph (61) and by Sir Peter (71, 137), thus establishing her special brand of charm as that of childlike innocence. She is a completely guileless person of the sort that the Romantics were to valorize.

Maria is not passive but the dullness charge tends to stick. Though she stands firmly by her choice (Charles) and refuses to be intimidated by Sir Peter, she appears dull because she has no witty

« Kronenberger, "The Polished Surface" 179. 239 speeches. Sheridan seems to associate wordplay with frivolity and insincerity. If to raise malicious smiles at the infirmities or misfortunes of those who have never injured us be the province of wit or humour, Heaven grant me a double portion of dullness! (59). Her virtue is indisputable, her hatred of rumour-mongering is righteous but surely it is not necessary for her to look "grave" (53) at all times. Also, she might have been allowed a frivolous pursuit or two to lighten her image.

Maria has been designed as the perfect consort for Charles, that sincere, open and frank young man responsible for selling off the pictures and throwing down the screen - thus metaphorically rejecting mere appearance and unveiling all pretences. Still, Charles is a more endearing character, possibly because he is allowed a few faults. It is interesting to notice that though Charles does not dissemble, he is associated with merrymaking, with humour and with "fun". He is a joyous person, whether with his friends or with the (apparently) unknown Premium. There is a complete absence of the elements of play and fun in Maria's characterization.

Maria's significance in terms of plot development appears to be slender indeed. She functions more as a norm of decency and upholds the values of virtue and privacy and the refusal to play roles even though she is herself caught in a veritable maelstrom of game playing in the milieu in which she must continue to exist. Thus, Maria can be seen as the still point around which the action moves. Though she promises Sir Peter she would not meet Charles, still her refusal to give up on him ensures that Joseph must continue his machinations to try for her hand. One of the games he is involved in is his attempt to win Lady Teazle's help in his suit

The Teazle plot dramatizes the hilarity of a May-December marriage. It is also a fine example of pure manners comedy in the Restoration 240 mould, albeit with the requisite sentimental twist given to it at the end. Sir Peter plays no roles but is cast in the stock character of the jealous old husband with a young attractive wife. Sir Peter's attempts to explain a code of behaviour to Lady Teazle are overtly couched in an Adult-Adult transaction. But, when we hear him say that he never makes mistakes and that the fault is always hers, it becomes obvious that the real level of interaction is the Parent-Child level. While addressing Maria, too, he thinks it proper for him to instruct her like a child. However, Maria forces an Adult-Adult interaction by her insistence that she will not be dictated to. Her refusal to consider him as her guardian much longer indicates her rejection of Sir Peter in the Parent role.

Sir Oliver is immediately able to "read husband in his face" (63) when he meets Sir Peter after many years; he dislikes all falsehood and scandal and would "have it put down by parliament" (58), says his wife. He is, however, completely taken in by Joseph's acting. He has hoped to cast Lady Teazle in the role of a saucily attractive but loyal and faithful young wife. She, however, questions this role. If you wanted authority over me, you should have adopted me and not married me; 1 am sure you are old enough (47), she points out with, possibly, an excess of pertness. As G. Wilson Knight writes in The Golden Labyrinth. "In the scandal mongers' wit talk and the marital relationship of the oldish Sir Peter Teazle and his young and all but seduced wife we have the world of Restoration comedy under satirical and moral control" while "in the contrast of Charles Surface as wild-libertine-with-a-heart-of-gold against his puritanical and hypocritical brother Joseph we are in the world of the 'new comedy", that is, sentimental comedy. He is convinced that the new comedy is deliberately balanced against the old.'*'* It incorporates the phenomenon of a "country wife" becoming citified and sophisticated. Though Sheridan allows us all the pleasure of

-f G. Wilson Knight, The Golden Labyrinth (London: Methuen, 1965) 185, 187. 241 watching Lady Teazle adopting typical city attitudes, behaviour and entertainment, he chooses a sentimental conclusion by maneouvring her into a rather sudden capitulation that has often been found unconvincing. Leonard J. Leff describes her case as that of a Restoration adulteress being transformed into a Georgian lady.^^

Thus the basic incompatibility of this May-December couple is never really confronted. However, Sheridan does not offer very great or unrealistically conclusive hopes of utter domestic bliss for the two as a true sentimental comedy might have. Even at the end of the play Sir Peter can only hope that Charles and Maria will live "as happily together as Lady Teazle and I — intend to do" (141). In that pause Sheridan conveys the possibility of many a difficult moment yet to come. But, undoubtedly, Lady Teazle is reconciled to her husband and certainly no more Josephs are likely to make any very serious waves in the life she will lead. Sheridan uses the pseudo-near-affair with Joseph to teach her a lesson for life in the accepted sentimental way. She has learned the very valuable lesson that appearances can often be deceptive.

That she never really changes in her emotional nature is made clear later when, appalled by Joseph's machinations and touched by Sir Peter's caring, she returns to the fold, as it were, of the virtuous. The portraiture of Lady Teazle as a country girl transformed by London begs a comparison with Margery Pinchwife of The Country Wife. Both Margery Pinchwife, upon whom she is likely to have been modelled, and Lady Teazle clearly come from humble, if different, backgrounds and their lives in the country were the sum total of their experience.

Lady Teazle very consciously plays the role of the smart lady and clearly enjoys it thoroughly. There is a childlike glee in her play

••s Leonard J. Lefif, "Sheridan and Sentimentalism", Sheridan: Comedies, ed. Peter Davison (London: Macrmllan, 1986) 65. 242 acting which has not been seen in the Millamants and Celimenes heretofore. Whereas both these heroines are genuinely sophisticated, Lady Teazle is an innocent in the guise of a city sophisticate. Margery and Lady Teazle in the original sketch The Teazles (which is seen as the source of the Teazle plot as elaborated in The School for Scandal) are guilty of a far more genuine transformation than Lady Teazle in the final version of The School for Scandal is. Margery falls for the glamour of Horner, city rake non pareil, is interested in him sexually and wants to relinquish her dull and jealous husband. She is not playing a role when she aspires to become Horner's mistress. She plays a role merely in her manipulation to get to him.

Lady Teazle is not seen in any kind of disguise, subterfuge or intrigue in The School for Scandal. However, she is forced behind a screen by Joseph. But at the end of that experience she reveals Joseph's deception and clears herself. Yet it would be true to say that throughout most of the play we see her playing a part that is not natural to her. Sheridan lays great emphasis on the fact that Lady Teazle is dazzled by the smart social fagade presented by women like Lady Sneerwell and adopts the social pose considered appropriate for a wealthy socialite. She does it all for the sake of being fashionable. She accepts Joseph "as lover no farther than fashion sanctions", "a mere platonic cicisbeo - what every wife is entitled to" (61). She enjoys her role playing thoroughly: "1 believe I do bear a part with a tolerable grace" (51), she gushes ingenuously to Sir Peter. But the fact that there is no real transformation is underlined by her swift capitulation after she unwittingly overhears both Joseph's falsity and Sir Peter's fond plans for her. While Joseph flattered her and pretended to teach her (as Tattle does Prue), she responded with the credulity of a child. Indeed, Joseph presents his argument (using specious logic) in the guise of an Adult-Adult transaction and she too believes she has understood his rational argument like an Adult. But the real transaction at the psychological level is an angular Parent- Child one. 243

"This Lady Teazle is not an unsophisticated country girl brought to London. She has made her economic alliance with as much cynicism as Fainair says Mark Auburn of the character of Lady Teazle in the original sketch, The Teazles. Indeed, she is shown there as selfish and ambitious: she became a wife for financial gain and hopes to become a widow quickly for further gain and even greater freedom. She is insensitive in the extreme when she roundly tells Sir Peter to his face that she is not keen on being widowed only because he has not yet made any settlement on her. This utterly mercenary attitude would hardly have appealed to a Georgian audience. Therefore Sheridan, master adapter that he is, presented Lady Teazle to his 1777 audience in a slightly different guise. Instead of baldly talking of a settlement, the new Lady Teazle merely utters an inconclusive yet comic and infinitely speaking "Hem! Hem!" (40) when Sir Peter demands whether she is eager to become his widow. Still, she is allowed to dare to point out that Sir Twivy Tarrier might have been a better choice for "he has broke his neck" (75).

However, the main change is wrought by an enhanced focus on her role playing. Our Lady Teazle is not so much transformed into a typical materialistic Londoner as shown to be playing the role of one. Since she is young and obviously a quick study. Sir Peter is dismayed by the apparently sudden change in his "country wife". Sheridan's allegiance to the winning formula of sentimental drama ensures that the "role" does not become the self. The mask remains but a mask and is cast off voluntarily at the end of Act IV by the player herself. Her fascination with the role is revealed to be almost child-like in its innocence and naivety. This is one instance of a role player who embarks on a role because of her innocence rather than through the desire to manipulate or misrepresent the truth. "Ill not be suspected without cause," she says innocently (75) when Sir Peter alleges a relationship with Charles. Surely her excitement has been of the sort that Caillois talks of when he describes the sheer pleasure 244 of adopting a personality other than one's own in a situation of role playing. As Caillois elaborates, there is no intention to deceive in such a case of dissembling. She has enjoyed the "fun" of playing a novel and sophisticated role, just as a child likes to dress up and "act" like mother. She now has the chance to do all the things she only dreamed about in the country: surely her new mask has the quality (described by Caillois) of releasing the inner personality under its protection. Like a child at a carnival, she plays with all the sense of dizzying pleasure within her.

Though the capitulation of Lady Teazle has been criticized as unconvincing and necessitated by the demands of formula-ridden drama by Auburn and others, it is a more discerning reading that takes into account Sheridan's deliberate refusal to "change" Lady Teazle's nature and his insistence that she is shown to be merely playing a role. Sir Peter's genuine love and caring wins her over so that at one stroke she both exposes Joseph's hypocrisy and returns to Sir Peter, the "rock" from whose protection she had wandered when carried away by the dazzling mask she wears. When she hears, in Act IV scene iii, that Joseph and the scandal school have been spreading rumours about her and Charles, she is incensed enough to convince the audience that she is surely well on her way to realizing the shallowness and sterility of the sophisticated world of fashion she has been thoughtlessly imitating.

Lady Teazle may very well choose to don her social mask while in company but we know she is safe while she is aware of what is genuine and what false. She may lead Sir Peter a merry dance but, as he has already realized, what is life without a dash of spice? As he himself says in Act II scene i: "yet with what a charming air she contradicts everything I say, and how pleasingly she shows her contempt for my authority!" (51). Perhaps Sheridan has been more realistic and mature than has been realized when he presents this down-to-earth less-than-perfect image of a type of domestic felicity 245

that is more likely to really exist than the bliss depicted only in fiction. Sir Peter is charmed by his wife's particular brand of mischief. He is surely more vastly entertained by this "citified" Lady Teazle than he was by the demure country girl who spent her evenings making patterns for ruffles that she could never actually make since she lacked the materials. "Her saucy daring", as Jack D. Durant calls it'*^, is definitely much to Sir Peter's taste. It is dramatic wisdom that led Sheridan to leave the case of the Teazles inconclusive. He indicates the path but eschews any concrete promises. Sheridan maintains a lightness of touch by not entirely subduing and "sentimentalizing" Lady Teazle.

Of the two young women in the play certainly Lady Teazle is the more interesting. She has a flamboyant attractiveness that Maria lacks and also some of the mischievous air of the Restoration heroines. C.J.L. Price confidently calls her "the most interesting character in the play" and points to her good-natured participation in the scandal school.'*^ "When I say an ill natured thing, 'tis out of pure good humour," she says disarmingly (51), reminding us of the pure comedy of Wilde with its recurrent device of inversion. The presence of Lady Teazle certainly maintains the "fun" element in the action of the play. The abundance of "fun" in the Teazle plot makes up for the deficiency of it in the Charles-Maria-Joseph action

The triumph of The School for Scandal lies in its punitive exposure of dissembling and on its ultimate approval of "country" values (typical of sentimental drama) like honesty, frankness, warmth, loyalty and generosity. Auburn uses the term "humane comedj^ coined by Shirley Strum Kenny to describe Sheridan's creations.'^^ While the play reveals a great preoccupation with role, game, image and

'^^ Jack D. Durant, "Prudence, Providence and the Direct Road of Wrong" 188.

••^ Price, Introduction 11.

"** Auburn, Sheridan's Comedies 71. 246 appearance as facts of social life, still the play very clearly rejects these as far from ideal. Joseph's "sentiment" is discovered as false, a mere mask. Similarly Lady Teazle's imitation of the city sophisticate is exposed as just a role, adopted for a while and discarded when better understanding and maturity prevails. Joseph's motivation for game playing is pure Machiavellian desire to retard the progress of his competitor (for Maria's hand) by using the school for scandal to revile him (Charles). His games could find a place in Eric Berne's Games People Play. In his machinations there is no vestige of the ludic enjoyment, the "fun" associated with the pleasure of play. The element of fun belongs quite completely to the school and to the Lady Teazle part of the plot. The action revolving around Joseph is pure intrigue drama, devoid of any laughter. When he leads Lady Teazle down the garden path, there is neither any fun nor any seriousness in his intention. He tells us, while soliloquizing, that he has somehow drifted into an affair with her without really even wanting it to actually happen. This is what can happen when role playing becomes a habit.

It forms a curious reflection on a premise that Huizinga lays down as a natural pre-requisite of game playing. According to Huizinga all game playing is voluntary. Yet Joseph's game playing seems to be poised on the brink. It appears to be the product of such compulsive social conditioning that it no longer has any elements of real volition, only strongly conditioned reactions that have become "second nature" to him. It is a situation worthy of intensive analysis and could have raised the level of the plot. However, Sheridan does not aspire to any psychological complexity in his characterization. His purpose is served by merely letting Joseph off lightly and tying up the various strands of the action without further ado.

Christine Weisenthal has pointed out that the play has been criticized for not "thrusting home its moral vigorously enough, that Sheridan relies lamely upon emphasizing benevolence and virtue 247 rewarded at the expense of properly thrashing vice.''49 Sheridan allows Joseph to walk out unreformed, still uttering protestations and trying to find a way around the truth. Also, it cannot be denied that only one "licentiate" member of the "Scandalous College" (Lady Teazle) returns her "diploma", deciding to "leave off practice" and "kill characters no longer" (139). But, as Robert Heilman shows in The Way of the World: Comedy and Society, comedy is an essentially "unillusioned" and "jesting awareness" of the "habitual and indeed incurable ironies of life in the world". It "rarely proposes amendment, alternatives, or avoidance" of the world.^^ That Sheridan has shown that the actual characters of the two brothers are opposed to their reputations is enough comic comment: the realization has come that appearance and reality are rarely congruent. With the portrayal of the Charles and Maria group, Sheridan "posits a roseate, sentimental faith in the goodness of humanity".^i But this is balanced by a "jesting awareness" that with slick "surfaces" such as Joseph and sour slanderers like Lady Sneerwell present, the "Oil and Vinegar" (140) of society will always exist and a forced reformation would be what is called in The Critic a "bungling reformation".^^ The play seems to arise out of a Johnsonian definition of the end of comedy as neither didactic nor corrective but rather to entertain by "making an audience merry".^^

The play quite clearly presents a contrast to the attitudes of The Way of the World. It also differs dramatically from Volpone in terms of the

''^ Weisenthal, "Representation and Experimentation" 327.

50 Robert Heilman, The Way of the World: Comedy and Society (Seattie: University ofWashington Press, 1978) 236,41.

5' Weisenthal, "Representation and Experimentation" 328.

52 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, "The Critic", The School for Scandal and Other Plays, ed. Eric Rump (London: Penguin, 1988) 137. The Critic is another of the rehearsal plays (Uke Buckingham's) and makes clever use of the play within the play framework.

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