Excerpt: ...Mrs. MALAPROP That's you, sir. ABSOLUTE Reads. Has universally the character of being an accomplished gentleman and a man of honour.-Well, that's handsome enough. Mrs. MALAPROP Oh, the fellow has some design in writing so. ABSOLUTE That he had, I'll answer for him, ma'am. Mrs. MALAPROP But go on, sir-you'll see presently. ABSOLUTE Reads. As for the old weather-beaten she-dragon who guards you-Who can he mean by that? Mrs. MALAPROP Me, sir -me -he means me -There-what do you think now?-but go on a little further. ABSOLUTE Impudent scoundrel -Reads. it shall go hard but I will elude her vigilance, as I am told that the same ridiculous vanity, which makes her dress up her coarse features, and deck her dull chat with hard words which she don't understand-- Mrs. MALAPROP There, sir, an attack upon my language what do you think of that?-an aspersion upon my parts of speech was ever such a brute Sure, if I reprehend any thing in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs ABSOLUTE He deserves to be hanged and quartered let me see-Reads. same ridiculous vanity-- Mrs. MALAPROP You need not read it again, sir. ABSOLUTE I beg pardon, ma'am.-Reads. does also lay her open to the grossest deceptions from flattery and pretended admiration-an impudent coxcomb -so that I have a scheme to see you shortly with the old harridan's consent, and even to make her a go-between in our interview.-Was ever such assurance Mrs. MALAPROP Did you ever hear anything like it?-he'll elude my vigilance, will he-yes, yes ha ha he's very likely to enter these doors;-we'll try who can plot best ABSOLUTE So we will, ma'am-so we will Ha ha ha a conceited puppy, ha ha ha -Well, but Mrs. Malaprop, as the girl seems so infatuated by this fellow, suppose you were to wink at her corresponding with him for a little time-let her even plot an elopement with him-then do you connive at her...

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price A classic comedy of manners, ridiculing affectation and pretentiousness. Joseph Surface is apparently a model citizen; his brother Charles is a dissolute wastrel. But when the schemings of the scandalmongers go awry, the reverse is shown to be true. Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play The School for Scandal was first performed in London at Drury Lane Theatre in 1777. This edition, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is edited and introduced by Colin Counsell.

The Rivals and Polly Honeycombe revolve around young women who wish the world would conform to novelistic convention. Unlike most eighteenth-century heroines keen on novel reading, however, Lydia Languish and Polly Honeycombe are neither deluded nor in any real danger. Rather, they inhabit a world in which everyone is engaged in some sort of quixotic performance; the more appealing characters are just willing to admit it. Both farcical and wise, these plays teasingly celebrate the perennial appeal of fiction, while never letting us forget how much it relies upon the everyday rituals of performance. The introduction to this Broadview edition explores the interrelations between print and performance in the eighteenth century, including a detailed and well-illustrated account of what it was like to go to the theatre. Appendices include material on the original casts, the often dubious reputation of novel reading and circulating libraries, Sheridan's high-profile elopement with Elizabeth Linley (which made him a celebrity before he ever staged a word), and the narrative possibilities conjured up by setting The Rivals in the resort city of Bath.

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

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

Often called the best comedy of manners in English, and one of the most produced of all theatre classics, this delightful play brilliantly displays Sheridan's mastery of the mechanics of stage comedy, his flair for witty dialogue, and his obvious delight in skewering the affectation and pretentiousness of aristocratic Londoners of the 1770s. Publisher's Note.