Sheridan's comedies: The rivals and the school for scandal; ed. with an introduction and notes to each play and a biographical sketch pf Sheridan

Preface

"To read a good comedy is to keep the best company in the world, where the best things are said, and the most amusing happen," — so Hazlitt tells us. Sheridan's two great comedies are seen on the stage to-day more often than any two plays of any other dramatist, not excepting Shakspere ; it may be doubted whether even * Hamlet' is acted more than the * School for Scandal.' They are read as freely and frequently and with as much pleasure as are the plays of any English dramatist, with the sole exception of Shakspere. Neither the ? Rivals' nor the c School for Scandal' is one of the eighteenth century classics, which, like the Spectator and the Rambler, like c Rasselas' and perhaps, alas! the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' is taken on trust and read by title only, like a bill before the House. And yet, although they bear their hundred years bravely, although they are acted half a thousand times in succession at one theatre, although they continue to come out in new editions for the table of the library and for the pocket of the traveller, they have not hitherto received the careful editing which the classics of the drama deserve and demand.

O PREFACE.

To present Sheridan's plays in a pure text, with all needful illustrative notes, with short introductions setting forth their history, and with a biographical sketch of their author, so that the reader might be provided with whatever is necessary for the full enjoyment of these centenarian comedies, — this is the object of the present edition.

For the text, I have followed that of the edition of two volumes octavo published in 182 1 with a preface by Moore. For the brief biography of Sheridan I need say little: it is the result of original research and it contains few secondhand facts; but so carefully has the ground been gleaned by earlier writers, that I can claim as my own by right of discovery only the explanation of the means whereby Sheridan became the owner of Drury Lane Theatre; — and even the solution of this problem is plausible and probable rather than absolutely certain.

I take pleasure in thanking here, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Esq., of Frampton Court, Dorchester, for the courtesy and consideration with which he allowed me to examine the manuscripts of his grandfather now in his possession. My thanks are also due to my friends Laurence Hutton and II. C. Bunner, for the invaluable aid they have kindly given me in the preparation of these pages for the press.

B. M.

New York, October, 1884.

Contents

PAGE

Biographical Sketch of Richard Brinsley Sheridan .... n

The Rivals.

I

Richard Brinsley Sheridan was the son of Thomas and Frances Sheridan, and the grandson of Dr. Sheridan, the friend and correspondent of Swift. Thomas Sheridan was a teacher of elocution, a player, a manager, a lexicographer, and altogether an odd character. He thought himself a greater actor than David Garrick, and the author of a better dictionary than Samuel Johnson's. He seems to have had no great love for Richard Brinsley, and to have given him little care. Frances Sheridan was a woman of singular gifts and singular charm. Garrick and Johnson liked her, although they did not like her husband; and they appreciated her remarkable literary merits. Garrick brought out and acted in the ' Discovery/ a comedy of her's; and Dr. Johnson praised her novel, the 'Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph,' saying he knew not if she had a right, on moral principles, to make her readers suffer so much. It can scarcely be doubted that her influence upon her son's character would have been highly beneficial, but unfortunately he was not always with her, and she died in 1766, when he was only fifteen years old. The absence of parental care left a fatal impress on his character, and it is to his unregulated youth that we may ascribe most of the wanderings, the mis-steps, and the mishaps of his manhood.

When Sheridan was seven years of age he was placed at school with Mr. Thomas Whyte, who was afterward the teacher of Sheridan's biographer, Moore. Here he was considered a dunce. The next year, in 1759, they removed to England; and in 1762 Richard Brinsley was sent to Harrow, where he remained for about three years, unwillingly picking up such crumbs of learning as might suffice to sustain life. He was popular with his school-fellows, and his teachers believed in his ability despite his deficient scholarship. He showed already the indolence which was always one of his most marked characteristics, and which he possessed in conjunction, curiously enough, with an extraordinary power of application whenever he was aroused by an adequate motive. He seems to have acquired some understanding of Latin and Greek. He formed many friendships at Harrow. The chief partner of his youthful sports and studies was Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, with whom he translated the seventh idyl of Theocritus and many of the minor poems credited to that " singer of the field and fold."

In T769 the elder Sheridan returned to London from France with his favorite son, Charles ; and calling Richard to his side, he began to instruct both boys in English grammar and in oratory. " They attended also the fencing and riding schools of Mr. Angelo," who has recorded the fretful dignity of Thomas Sheridan, and the geniality and good humor of his younger son. In the middle of 1770 the Sheridans moved to Bath, a hot-bed of fast and fashionable society, and about as unsuitable and unwholesome a place as could be imagined for a young man of eighteen with Richard Brinsley Sheridan's lack of training and want of prospects. He kept up a lively correspondence with Halhed, who was then at Oxford. The friends were ambitious and hopeful; and they determined to attempt literature together, fondly dreaming that they might awake one morning and find themselves famous. They planned a play and a periodical paper; Halhed wrote most of the former, and Sheridan sketched out the only number of the latter which Moore could discover. Then they attempted a metrical version of the love-epistles credited to the Greek sophist, Aristsenetus. It is to be noted that Le Sage also began his literary life by translating Aristcenetus. In November, 1770, Halhed had done his share of this; it was not until December that Sheridan, in his usual dilatory way, set about his task, aided by a Greek dictionary. There is a French version (Poictiers, 1597), but Sheridan had not gone to France in 1764 with the family, and he knew little French, and came in time to hate the language. He took several months over his work, and though the completed manuscript was to have been given to the publisher in March, it was not received by him until May ; and it was only in August, 1 77 1, that there appeared for sale "The Love Epistles of Aristsenetus, Translated from the Greek into English metre."

"Love refines

The thoughts, and heart enlarges ; hath his seat

In reason, and is judicious." — Milt. Par. Lost, B. 8.

"London: Printed for J. Wilkie, No. 71 St. Paul's Churchyard. MDCCLXXI."

The quotation from Milton we may credit to Sheridan ; it is impudently humorous in the eyes of those who know how light and lively are some of the love-passages related by the Greek tale-teller. The translation was anonymous, and the preface was signed with the joint initials of the young poets, H. S. It is highly comic to read that one of the reviews fathered it on " Mr. Johnson, author of the English Dictionary, etc." Moore and Sheridan's other biographers agree in calling the translation a failure in that it met with no favor from the public. It may be that the authors made no money by it ; but it succeeded at least in getting itself into a second edition, which does not look exactly like flat failure. It has since been reprinted with Propertius, Petronius Arbiter, and Johannes Secundus, in a volume of Bonn's Classical Library. Halhed soon after went to India, where he wrote a volume of imitations of Martial, and began to be known as a distinguished Orientalist. Two original poems of Sheridan's were published in the Bath Chronicle, during this year. One was a description of the principal beauties of. Bath, called ' Clio's Protest ; or the Picture Varnished,' being an answer to some verses called the ' Bath Picture ; ' and the second was a humorous description of the opening of the new Assembly Rooms, ' An Epistle from Timothy Screw, to his brother Henry, Waiter at Almack's.'

There was at Bath at this time a family of Linleys, all musicians of marked ability. The eldest daughter, Miss Elizabeth Linley, was as beautiful to see as to hear. She was between sixteen and seventeen when Sheridan first met her. She was sought by many suitors, good and evil, young and old. Among them were Sheridan's elder brother Charles, Halhed, a Mr. Long, to whom her parents engaged her, and a Captain Mathews, who happened to have a wife already. Charles Sheridan gave up the struggle and wrote Miss Linley a letter of farewell. Halhed soon sailed for India. To Mr. Long she secretly represented that she could never be happy as his wife, and he magnanimously took on himself the blame of breaking off the match and appeased her parents by settling three thousand pounds on her. Captain Mathews was not as generous or as readily got rid of ; he persecuted her incessantly ; until at last she confided in Sheridan, who expostulated in vain with the married rake. To avoid him she resolved to take refuge in a convent in France : this was early in 1772. Sheridan offered to accompany her; and when they had reached France he persuaded her to marry him. After the idle ceremony he placed her in a convent at Lisle, where she fell sick, and where her father found her.

It was known at Bath that Miss Linley and Sheridan had disappeared together; one rumor had it that they had "set off on a matrimonial expedition to Scotland." The baffled Captain Mathews blustered boldly during Sheridan's absence, and even published an abusive advertisement. When Sheridan returned to England with Miss Linley and her father, he called Mathews out at once. The elder Angelo had instructed Sheridan in "the use of the small sword, and it was in consequence of the skill acquired under this tuition that he acquitted himself with so much address when opposed to the captain, whose reputation was well known in the circles of fashion as an experienced swordsman." Despite this reputation, Captain Mathews seems t-e have been a coward as well as a bully. At first he dodged the duel ; and when it was fought he begged his life and wrote an ample apology. Immediately after he lied about the affair. At last things were so hot around about him, that he was constrained to challenge Sheridan to a second meeting, at which Sheridan was badly wounded. Angelo notes that Mathews had learned fencing in France and was considered very skilful; and he recollected " Dick Sheridan (his appellation then) shewing me a wound in his neck, then in a sore state, which he told me he had received from his antagonist on the ground" Plainly enough Mathews had the best of the second duel, although Sheridan's courage was beyond question, and he refused to beg his life. After his recovery he was sent into the country, where he remained until the spring of the next year, 1773. During all this time his father and Miss Linley's were determined to keep them apart. Moore tells us, that Sheridan contrived many stratagems "for the purpose of exchanging a few words with her, and that he more than once disguised himself as a hackney-coachman, and drove her home from the theatre," where she had been singing. At last Mr. Linley yielded, and they were married by license, April 13, 1773, after a courtship as romantic in its vicissitudes as Miss Lydia Languish or Miss Blanche Amory could possibly wish.

Mrs. Sheridan was perhaps the most gifted of a gifted family. Dr. Burney refers to the Linleys "as a nest of singing-birds"; and Michael Kelly records that Mozart spoke in high terms of the talents of Mrs. Sheridan's brother. Her services were in good demand as a singer of oratorios, and might have been rewarded sufficiently to support the young couple in ease, if not in affluence. But Sheridan was not a man to live at his wife's apron-strings, or to grow fat on the money she earned. With manly pride he refused all offers, and declined even to allow her to fulfil the engagements made for her by her father before the marriage. This was honorable and high-minded, but it deprived them of a certain income. Dr. Johnson's praise might please Sheridan's heart, — if it was reported to him, — but it could not fill his stomach. With abundant belief in himself, Sheridan meant to make his own way in the world and to owe his support to his own hand. He had nothing, not even a serious education. He had been entered a student of the Middle Temple just before his marriage, but he had not pursued the law further. Without money, and without a profession, but with a full confidence in himself, and a hereditary connection with the theatre, it is no wonder that Sheridan determined to write for the stage. His father was an actor and a manager, and had written one play ; and his mother had written several. With these antecedents and the reputation of ability which he had already achieved somehow, he was asked by Harris, the manager of Covent Garden Theatre, to write a comedy.

II

The time was most propitious for the appearance of a new comic author. The works of Wycherley, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, and Congreve, were falling, or had already fallen, out of the list of acting plays. Evelina blushed at the dialogue of Congreve's * Love for Love,' and was ashamed at the plot. Only Sheridan himself could make Vanbrugh's ' Relapse ' presentable. Farquhar and Wycherley fared but little better, though the 'Country Wife' of the latter, deodorized into something like decency by the skilful touch of Garrick, retained sufficient vitality to linger on the stage, under the name of the ' Country Girl,' until the end of the century.

There were many symptoms of a rapid improvement in virtue and of an evolution in morals, and thisjielped to make the way straight before the feet of a new dramatist who could keep his eye on the signs of the times. The comedies of Congreve and Wycherley, Farquhar and Vanbrugh, seem to have been written to show that the true road to happiness was to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife. Sydney Smith said that their morality was " that every witty man may transgress the seventh commandment, which was never meant for the protection of husbands who labor under the incapacity of making repartees." M. Taine, with all his French tolerance for wit, is disgusted with the indecency of the comic writers of the Restoration, and says, " We hold our nose and read on." These old-fashioned plays were beginning to be unpalatable to a new-fangled taste. The times were ripe for a new writer.

Few of the dramatists of the day were formidable rivals. The one man who might have been a competitor to be feared, a fellow- Irishman — for, as Latin comedy was imitated from the Greek, and as French comedy was modelled upon the Italian, so English comedy has in great part been written by Irishmen — the author of the 'Good-natured Man,' Oliver Goldsmith, died in 1774. 'She Stoops to Conquer,' produced the year before, had scotched sentimental comedy, an imported French fashion, which was slowly strangling the life out of the comic muse ; and although Sheridan, in the ' Rivals,' might choose to do obeisance to this passing fancy by the introduction of those two most tedious persons, Faulkland and Julia, he was soon to repent him of his sins, and in the ' School for Scandal' deal it a final and fatal blow. Cumberland, the sole survivor of the school, had but little life left in him after the appearance of the ' Critic ' ; and no life is now left in his plays, which have hardly seen the light of the lamps these fifty years. Better luck has attended the more worthy work of George Colman the elder, the author of the 'Jealous Wife,' and of David Garrick, the author probably of ' High Life Below Stairs,' who had also collaborated in the ' Clandestine Marriage'; these three plays keep the stage to this day. But in 1775 both Colman and Garrick had ceased to write for the theatre. The coarse, vigorous, hardy satires of Samuel Foote, and the namby-pamby tragedies and wishy-washy comedies — " not translations only, taken from the French" — of Arthur Murphy, were alike beginning to pall upon playgoers.

Among all these dramatists, and greater than any of them, appeared the author of the 'Rivals.' Although written hastily at the request of Harris, the manager of Covent Garden Theatre, the ' Rivals ' was not wholly a new composition ; it is rather an elaboration of earlier sketches and inchoate memorandums jotted down by Sheridan at various times after he was seventeen years old, when the hope of gaining independence by writing for the stage first flitted before his eyes. And this reworking of accumulated old material was characteristic of Sheridan throughout life, and in whatever department of literature he might venture himself. His poems, his plays, his jests, and his speeches abound in phrases and suggestions set down years before. Sheridan must needs have had aid from earlier work, since we find him telling his father-in-law, November 17, 1774, that he would have the comedy in rehearsal in a few days, and that he had not written a line of it two months before, " except a scene or two, which I believe you have seen in an odd act of a little farce." Haste of composition is shown in the inordinate bulk of the play, which was at least double the length of any acting comedy — so Sheridan tells us in the preface — when he put it into Harris's hands. "I profited by his judgment and experience in the curtailing of it, till, I believe, his feeling for the vanity of a young author got the better of his desire for correctness, and he left many excrescences remaining because he had assisted in priming so many more. Hence, though I was not uninformed that the acts were still too long, I flattered myself that, after the first trial, I might with safer judgment proceed to remove what should appear to have been most dissatisfactory."

The ' Rivals ' was first acted at Covent Garden Theatre on the evening of January 17, 1775, and it was damned out of hand. It was repeated the next night, and then withdrawn for repairs. A change of front in the face of the enemy is always a risky experiment, but Sheridan operated it successfully. Lightened of the feebler scenes by condensation, and strengthened by the substitution of Clinch as Sir Lucius 0' Trigger for Lee, who had acted the part very badly, the ' Rivals ' was again offered to the public, and was acted fourteen or fifteen times before the season closed on June 1st. On the tenth night a new prologue was spoken by Mrs. Bulkley, in which Sheridan made adroit use of the figures of Comedy and Tragedy, which stood on each side of the stage, and defended his use of broader comic effects than the partisans of sentimental comedy could tolerate. After the first few nights, however, the ' Rivals ' picked up and held its own. Its brisk and bristling action, its highly ingenious equivoque, its broadly limned and sharply contrasted characters, its close sequence of highly comic situations — all these soon began to tell with the public, and the piece became one of the first favorites of the play-goer.

As Goldsmith had shown his gratitude to Quick, who acted Tony Lumpkin to his satisfaction, by signing the ' Grumbler,' an adaptation of the 'Grondeur' of Brueys, acted for Quick's benefit, so Sheridan, in gratitude to Clinch, who had bravely lent his aid to pluck the flower success from the nettle danger, wrote * St. Patrick's Day ; or the Scheming Lieutenant/ a farce in two acts, produced for

•| RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.

Clinch's benefit, May 2, 1775, and acted six times before the close of the .season at the end of the month. ' St. Patrick's Day' is a lively enough little play, of no great consequence or merit, owing something in the conduct of its plot and the comicality of its situations to Mohcie, and containing only a few of the brilliant flashes of wit which we are wont to consider as Sheridan's especial property.

Sheridan devoted the summer to the writing of a comic opera, the music for which was selected ami composed by his father-in-law, Mr. Linley, "We owe to Gay," said \)\\ Johnson, "the ballad-opera — a mode oi comedy which at first was supposed to delight only by its novelty, but has now, by the experience of half a century, been so well accommodated to the disposition of a popular audience that it is likely to keep long possession of the Stage." And of all balladoperas, Gay's first was easily the foremost until this of Sheridan's ; the 'Beggar's Opera' had no real rival until the production of the ' Duenna.' While, however, the 'Beggar's Opera' owed part of its extraordinary vogue to its personal and political satire, the 'Duenna' had no politieal purport ; its only aim was to please, and in this it succeeded abundantly. Brought out original!)" at Covent Garden on November 21, 1775, it was performed seventy-five times during the ensuing season — an extraordinary number in those days — twelve more than the 'Beggar's Opera' had achieved. In order to counteract this great success of the rival house, Garrick, then the manager of Drury Lane, as Moore tells us, " iound it necessary to bring forward all the weight of his own best characters, and even had recourse to the expedient of playing off the mother against the son, by reviving Mrs. Frances Sheridan's coined)- of the ' Discover),' and acting the principal part in it himself. In allusion to the increased fatigue which this competition with the ' Duenna ' brought upon Garrick, who was then entering on his sixtieth year, it was said by an actor of the day that ' the old woman would be the death of the old man."' The success of Sheridan's opera was not confined to one season ; it lasted nearly fifty years.

The plot, suggested perhaps by an episode in the * Country Wife ' of Wycherley, or perhaps by the ' Sicilien ' of Moliere, and not owing very much to either source, lends itself to several amusing scenes of equivoke and cross-purpose. But the characters in the 'Duenna' have far less strength, as well as far less originality, than their brothers and sisters in the 'Rivals,' in the ' School for Scandal,' and in the 'Critic.' There is no Sir Anthony Absolute, or Mrs. Malaprop, no Sir Peter or Lady Teazle, no Mr. Puff or Sir Fretful Plagiary ; there is for the most part nothing but half a dozen of the usual types — the young lover, the romantic girl, the jealous rival, the lively coquette, the arbitrary father, the intriguing old woman. Among all these, the character of the little Portuguese Jew, Isaac Mcndoza, stands out in bold relief as the only figure in the play really worthy of its illustrious authorship. He is knavish, and always overreaches himself; like Dickens's Joey Bagstock, who was "sly, devilish sly, sir," he is "a cunning dog, ain't I? A sly little villain, eh ? . . . Roguish, you'll say, but keen, hey? — Devilish keen?" Did Dickens, who wrote a comic opera at the very beginning of his literary career, — did Dickens remember this passage, I wonder?

Not only in the drawing of character, but also in dialogue, is the 'Duenna' inferior to Sheridan's better-known plays. In spite of all its brightness and lightness, it i^ impossible not to acknowledge that it does not contain his best work. It has few specimens of the recondite wit and quaint fancy which make the ' School for Scandal ' so brilliant and unequalled a comedy. If Sheridan's wit, like quicksilver, is always glistening, perhaps at times, like mercury, it seems a little heavy. Now and again the dialogue vies in sparkle and point with the talk of its author's other plays, but not as often as might be wished. It seems hastier, at once less happy and less polished. One thing to be remarked about all of Sheridan's plays is that the dialogue is easy to speak. The son of an elocutionist and lecturer and himself an orator, Sheridan worked his words until they fell trippingly from the tongue. And the songs in the 'Duenna' have a quality not as common as might be thought ; they are all singable. The words of many songs and especially of many modern songs, are so loaded with harsh consonants and combinations of consonants, and with sounds which shut instead of opening the mouth, that they are very difficult to sing. But the songs of the ' Duenna,' like the songs of all true songsters — Moore, for instance, and Lover, and a few other poets who have sung their verses into being — are as easy to sing as they are appropriate to music. And they sang themselves at once into popularity. Moore refers to them fifty years after they were first heard in public as though they were then known to all his readers. Here is one of Don Antonio s

I ne'er could any lustre see

In eyes that would not look on me ;

I ne'er saw nectar on a lip

But where my own did hope to sip.

Has the maid who seeks my heart

Cheeks of rose, untouched by art,

I will oAvn the color true,

When yielding blushes aid their hue.

Is her hand so soft and pure?

I must press it to be sure ; Nor can I be certain then Till it, grateful, press again.

Must I with attentive eye Watch her heaving bosom sigh?

I will do so when I see That heaving bosom sigh for me."

From the correspondence between Sheridan and Linley, it is evident that the symmetry and the success of the 'Duenna' was due largely to the high confidence the composer had in the author ; and to the perfect accord between them, Linley nowhere seeking to display himself, but only to second Sheridan as best he might. In an opera the music should fit the words as the words fit the music, until they both seem to be the result of a single inspiration and to have only one body — just as the Aztecs, on first beholding the Spanish troopers, mistook horse and man for a single being. Sheridan had no voice ; he could not sing ; and he knew nothing about music. But he was a born dramatist, and he had a keen ear for what was likely to be most effective in a given situation ; and Linley was intelligent enough to take every hint, and to turn it to best advantage. Many years after the ' Duenna,' when Sheridan brought out his last play, ' Pizarro,' Michael Kelly, was required to compose the music it needed, for it was a sort of melodrama, in the early sense of the word as well as the later : and in his reminiscences Kelly records the conversation he had with Sheridan in regard to it. " My aim was to discover the situations of the different choruses and the marches, and Mr. Sheridan's ideas on the subject ; and he gave them in the following manner : ' In the Temple of the Sun,' said he, ' I want the Virgins of the Sun and their High-Priest to chant a solemn invocation to their Deity.' I sang two or three bars of music to him, which I thought corresponded with what he wished, and marked them down. He then made a sort of rumbling noise with his voice (for he had not the smallest idea of turning a tune), resembling a deep, gruff, bow, wow, wow ; but though there was not the slightest resemblance of an air in the noise he made, yet so clear were his ideas of effect that I perfectly understood his meaning, though conveyed through the medium of a bow, wow, wow." A story not unlike this is told of Victor Hugo, who is equally unmusical and who outlined or hinted at the kind of tune he needed for a song in one of his plays.

The 'Rivals,' 'St. Patrick's Day,' and the 'Duenna,' — a comedy in five acts, a farce in two acts, and a comic opera in three acts,— - were all produced in the year 1775 at Covent Garden Theatre.- Before the run of the ' Duenna ' was ended, Sheridan was in negotiation with Garrick for the purchase, in conjunction with Linley and Dr. Ford, of the great actor's half of Drury Lane Theatre. Although Garrick and Thomas Sheridan were rival actors and never exactly hit it off together, the former always had a cordial esteem for Mrs. Sheridan, and he was prepared to carry this over to her son. So when he made up his mind to give up acting and to abandon management, he was ready to think well of Sheridan's offer to buy him out. Colman, to whom the management was first offered, would purchase solely on condition that he could buy the whole ; Garrick was only half owner, and young Lacey, who had the other half, refused to sell. While Garrick was giving his farewell performances,, the negotiations with Sheridan were pending. The great actor — probably the greatest who ever trod the stage — spoke his last speech and made his last exit on June 10, 1776; and on June 24, so Davies tells us, he signed the contract of sale to Sheridan, Linley and Ford. By twenty-eight years of good management the value of Drury Lane Theatre had been trebled, and the selling price was fixed at ,£70,000, or .£35,000 for Garrick's. half. Sheridan and Linley were to find £"10,000 each, and their friend Dr. Ford was to supply the remaining £15,000. Where Sheridan raised the money for his share has been one of the mighty mysteries of theatrical history. There is a general belief that he borrowed it — but from whom ? Watkins, his first biographer, mentions a mortgage to Dr.