Various Features of the Play “The School for Scandal”

Mrs. Ritu Bajaj

Associate Professor

Department of English

Hans Rah Mahila Maha Vidyalaya, Jalandhar

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• In the school for Scandal, Sheridan revealed the selfishness, envy, hypocrisy of the society of the time with remarkable skill and a sure knowledge of theatrical effect. He captured the current forms of fashionable speech and heightened them with fine phrases and sustained wit. He constructed a comedy of manners that had more striking situations in it than any other in English. His characters delighted an audience and made it think. It is without dispute the most brilliant comedy written in the 18^th century and one of the most successful ever produced on the stage

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• The school for Scandal illustrates to an appreciable extent the neo-classical interpretation of Aristotle’s brief remarks about comedy, just as it illustrates Pope’s famous definition of true wit (in An Essay on Criticism). A didactic play in its laughing and satirical rendering of the vice of scandal-mongering, it focuses attention on a group of contemptible characters who illustrate the forms assumed by malicious hypocrisy.

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• Its satirical target is as clearly defined as those in the comedies of Moliere, Ben Jonson and Aristophanes, and the target represents the antithesis of the charity celebrated in the plot. The comedy is neatly unified thematically in its satirical review of a vice and exemplary display of a corollary virtue. If we are troubled by an insufficient casual relationship among the different plot-lines let us remember the structure of Jonson’s comic masterpieces, in which thematic unity is more apparent than relationships among the successive episodes.

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• Sheridan’s separate plot-lines of Lady Teazle’s marital dissatisfaction and Charles’s and Joseph’s competitive courtship of Maria meet together in Sir Peter’s discovery of his wife in Joseph’s study and if the chatter of Lady Sneerwell’s circle fails to advance the action it provides information about the relationship between the brother Surface and the Teazle family and conveys a sense of the moral environment in which they live.

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• Even the unities of time and place are loosely observed, though in 1777 a decade after Dr. Johnson’s famous assault on them in his Preface to Shakespeare, very few critics bothered whether the action in this play took more than 24 hours or whether the places where the action occurs were situated close together in fashionable London. One of the excellences of The School for Scandal is the classical sense of form which Sheridan shows here and the skill with which he has constructed in plot.

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• The characters do not here fall, by accident, into readymade situations. On the other hand they control the plot throughout. It was part of Charles’s nature to sell his family portraits and it was part of Lady Teazle’s nature to accept the invitations to visit Joseph. The weakness of English comedy had always been a division of interest between plot and under-plot, and Sheridan’s earlier work was by no means free from this defect. But though The School for Scandal deals with the crisis of not less than four lives, their destinies cross one another in the culminating point. It is this intersection of interests which gives an almost unparalleled dramatic interest to the two great scenes.

• In the portrait scene (also called the auction scene), Joseph and the Teazles are present only by implications, in the screen scene, all four meet at what the spectators realize at once as one of the important moments of their lives. The School for Scandal is characterized by a dazzling glitter of wit. It has indeed been urged that even the stupid characters are here made witty, and that there is a surfeit of wit. Much of the play is partly familia, but here it strikes us always with the pleasure of novelty, the quarrelsome couple here the old husband and the young wife from the country, the two brothers, one impulsive and Reckless, the other mouthing fine sentiments and plotting mischief the Scandal club of Lady Sneerwell and more besides are familiar.

• Yet here are felt to be endowed with new life. Apart from the dialogue the pride of the play is doubtless the perfect manipulation of the intrigue leading inevitably to the thrilling resolution in the famous screen scene. More than conjugal anxieties are here resolved, at this crucial moment Sheridan pays his cutting respect to the sentimentalists. In this play he introduces no such sentimental scenes as are to be found in The Rivals.

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• He presents Charles Surface the true man of feeling who gaily avoids fine sentiments, and Joseph, the hypocritical man of feeling who conceals malice under falsely moral or noble sentiments. Thus, early is the screen scene, Joseph has reproached Charles for having given Sir Petercause to suspect Lady Teazle. I am sorry to find, Charles, you have lately given that worthy man grounds for great uneasiness and before the screen goes down Sir Peter has urged Charles to be like Joseph. He is a man of sentiment. Well there is nothing in the world so noble as a man of sentiment.

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• After the screen is down, Charles make his retort about sentiments :
• “Egad, you seem all to have been diverting yourselves here at hide and seek, and I don’t see who is out of the secret. Shall I beg your ladyship to inform me? Not a word – Brother will you be pleased to explain this matter? What ! Is morality dumb too? – Sir Peter, though I found you in the dark, perhaps you are not so now! All mute !..... So, I will leave you to yourselves. Brother, I am sorry to find you have given that worthy man grounds for so much uneasiness. Sir Peter, there is nothing in the world so noble as a man of sentiment.”

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• If Sheridan’s object was to discredit sentimentalism, this retort should have accomplished it, but sentimentalism is only an ingredient in the rich sauce of his satire. He gives us the quintessence of a scandal-loving society, its brilliantly lacquered veneer, its less lovely basic substance. He can be serious, but is not too serious, he keeps to the comic aspects of the foibles of the day and enlivens the whole with incessant sparkling wit. The plot and the satire can scarcely be separated from each other. Certainly the conversational sharpness is not confined to Lady Sneerwell’s circle.

• Some of the most piercing lines are spoken between Sir Peter and Lady Teazle. The conversations of Lady Sneerwell and her friends are consistently brought into a functional relationship with the rivalry between the Surface brother. Joseph and Lady Teazle are members of the scandal mongering circle. The idle banter of the circle conveys not only Sheridan’s thematic preoccupations but factual information about Charles and Joseph. Sheridan uses both the cautionary method of dramatic satire and the exemplary method of moral fable. (Moleire had done the same thing. Moliere had also rewarded virtuous characters and shown a reverence for marriage).

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• In the hands of another dramatist of that period, the theme of this play might have developed into sentimental drama. The Teazles domestic life would have provided comic relief. Maria a defenseless ward in Sir Peter’s household, slandered by the Scandal Club and pestered by Joseph’s insidious attentions, would have become the pathetic heroine. Sir Oliver, probably her father in disguise, would have appeared in the fifth Act to rescue her from persecution and to restore her to her faithful Charles, who had plunged into dissipation because she was too modest to reciprocated his love.

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• That Sheridan was quite capable of so tearful a treatment is proved by his Ode to Scandal but here he confined himself, with admirable skill and judgment to making vice ridiculous. Most of the characters exemplify some vice or weakness with that consistent exaggeration which provokes laughter because on the stage, it seems true to life. In the marriage of Sir Peter and Lady Teazle we encounter a relationship that is reminiscent of the comedies of an earlier age.

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• An elderly but rich man gets married to a beautiful young woman who accepts him in order to escape from an obscure and poor life. This alliance has some similarity to the relationship between Mr. Fondle wife and Laetitia in Congreve’s The Old Bachelor or even to that between Mr. Pinchwife and Margery in Wycherely’s The Country Wife. The change in Lady Teazle, from the quiet country girl before marriage to a self-assertive gossiping lady afterwards, reminds us of the change in the silent woman of Jonson’s Epicene and the rapidity with which Lady Teazle acquires the skills of a coquette recalls the education of Agnes the intended wife of Arnolphe in Moliere’s L’Ecole des femmes.

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• Unlike Sheridan, the 17^th century dramatists were uniformly harsh in their satirical handling of an old man’s folly in aspiring to marriage with a young girl. Sir Peter seems destined for the cuckoldry which actually8 befalls Fondlewife and Pinch wife. Yet the cuckoldry does not materialize and it shows the difference between Sheridan and the earlier comedy. Sheridan provides early in the play a forewarning that Lady Teazle has not altogether lost the moral principles that guided her youth in the country. When Joseph Surface asks her in an idiom of male libertinism, when she will come to give him her opinion of his library, she replies with unexpected force – No – no I begin to think it would be imprudent-and you know I admit you as a lover no further than fashion requires.

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• Joseph - True, a mere Platonic Cisibeo- what every London wife is entitled to
• Lady Teazle – Certainly one must not be out of the fashion. However I have so much of my country prejudices left that –though Sir Peter’s ill humour may vex me ever so- it shall never provoke me to –
• Joseph – The only revenge is your power – well, I applaud your moderation.
• Lady Teazle : Go-you are an insinuating wretch.
• Yet Lady Teazle later does visit Joesph’s library-and the result is the famous screen scene. She explains to Joesph that Sir Peter has become jealous of Charles (and Joseph in an aside expresses pleasure that his scandalous friends keep that up).

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• Lady Teazle has reached the dangerous conclusion that if her husband suspects her without cause, it follows that the best way of curing his jealousy is to give him reason for it. The unexpected arrival of Sir Peter saves Lady Teazle from agreeing to an illicit relationship with Joseph. Hidden behind the screen, she now overhears Sir Peter reveal to Joseph the generous financial provision he has made for her security and like many other 18^th century characters in the sentimental tradition she realizes the folly which she had been on the verge of committing and resolves to amend her conduct.

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• Sheridan differs from Congreve and Wycherley in exercising a greater restraint in portraying sexual relationships. But more is involved, above all, a greater tolerance and kindliness in handling violations of prudent and rational norms of conduct. Despite the matrimonial harmony established between Sir Peter and Lady Teazle at the end of the play, they remain a couple ill-matched in age and temperament. Sir Peter’s initial indiscretion in marrying a very much younger woman is not and cannot be remedied.

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• It is merely forgiven and we are implicitly asked to believe that it no longer matters greatly. Sheridan indeed treats Sir Peter as a kind of later Sir Roger de Coverley, in whom folly and imperceptiveness become endearing qualities because they arise from an emotional spontaneity. Yet, in spite of the indulgence shown to Sir Peter in his marriage- and to Charles Surface in his prodigality and dissipation-the tone of the play is acerbic. The scandal scenes recur like a thematic refrain. Sheridan’s indignation at deliberate scandal-mongering, especially the published kind appearing in such journals as The Town and Country Magazine mentioned by Snake, gives a timely quality to his social satire.

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• The neatly turned epigrams, in which malice is bearable because it is clever, establish the social environment in which the characters live out their lives. The malice of the gossips in the play poses questions concerning human benevolence. And so, by way of a contrast between the scandalmongers and the men of good-will, there is established the distinctive tone of the play, that balance between sentiment and satire typical of the Age of Johnson at its best.

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• In the play itself the word sentiment is used to convey the hypocritical fondness of Joseph for moralistic platitudes. Of sentimentalism in the derogatory sense, implying a deliberate exploitation of emotion. Sheridan is singularly free and in fact the play is remarkable for the contrary qualities of sustained gaiety and satirical astringency. Yet the ethical assumptions controlling the implied evaluations of his characters are largely those responsible for the sentimental movement in 18^th century literature.

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• Sheridan is at one with the sentimentalists in focusing attention on episodes that illustrate the presence or absence of benevolence in his characters. Like Sterne and Goldsmith he has the redeeming gifts of style, wit and intelligence, but also like them –in a Sentimental Journey and The Vicar of Wakefield-he explores the principal theme of the writers we consider to be sentimentalists, the emotional responsiveness of some if not all men to the distresses of others. This is merely to say that Sheridan, though determination not to be over emphatic or clumsy in depicting situations of emotional intensity was a man of his times, responding to human relationships like other writers of the later 18^th century and in a very different manner from that in which Congreve responded to them at the end of the 17^th century.

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• It is true that Sheridan in this play made use of well-worn situations and character relationships, but he showed virtuosity as to give them a new imaginative force. Many authors had contrived scenes in which some characters overheard others divulging secrets, but it was left to Sheridan to employ the device so that the destinies of four people were affected when the screen fell. A frank, good natured man taken in by a hypocritical person was not a new conception but Sheridan made a fresh and dazzling contrast in the portrayal of Charles and Joseph Surface.

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• The theme of attempted seduction was also not new, but Sheridan here gave it greater significance and spirit. Lady Teazle does not lose her virtue as she listens to Joseph’s insidious arguments, but there is not a more effective piece of dialogue in English comedy than the last few lines in his attempt to seduce her. Lady Teazle repents not from fear as some critics have suggested, but from the knowledge that Sir Peter is as good natured as she had supposed when she married him. In a society where their marriage had been ridiculed and Sir Peter’s rigid code mocked, her mistake was natural.

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• She had been so keen to come into the limelight in her artificial circle of friends that she had not been able to see into the truth of her relationship with her husband. The rivalry between the two brothers is not presented in isolation, nor is if the focus of interest for the reader. Charles does not actually appear before us until the third Act. Joseph appears prominently from the very first scene of the play, but he is after all a member of Lady Sneerwell’s circle. He is one whose conversation represents the malice and the hypocrisy which are the targets of Sheridan’s satire.

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• So also Lady Teazle, although her matrimonial relations with her husband belong schematically with that part of the story which pertains to the brothers (because her husband is Maria’s guardian). In a full experience of the play the satirical dialogue, and the vividly depicted hypocrites who speak it create the dominant impression. The rivalry for Maria does indeed provide the framing action with a beginning middle and end. Yet, if our sympathies are engaged on behalf of Charles and Maria, we complete the play not with a pleasure in seeing benevolence rewarded but with the painful remembrance of the group of malicious persons.

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• Sheridan himself emphasizes the prominence of the scandal scenes in his dedicatory poem of Mrs. Crewe. Garrick’s prologue, which in its central portions is an adroit imitation of the conversation of Lady Sneerwell’s circle ‘s circle, has a similar focus. Like everything else about this play, the prologue by Garrick and the epilogue by George Colman the Elder achieve an uncommon level of excellence, and they suggest also what Garrick and Colman considered to be Sheridan’s accomplishments and limitations. In the epilogue Colman turns to the aspect of the play that is regarded as a defect.

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• Sheridan’s failure to confront realistically the incompatibility of Sir Peter and Lady Teazle. Colman follows the familiar convention of permitting a character to regret a repentance which promises dull domesticity. (The regret comes from Lady Teazle who feels that her reconciliation with her husband condemns her to a life of dismal doom.) Even before the play was first performed, Colman saw the weakness of Sheridan’s fable.

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• Sheridan’s depiction of Lady Teazle’s repentance (over her adulterous intentions) and Charles’s triumph (over the other characters) are criticized as showing the dramatist’s over-realiance on a benign and supervising providence to reward benevolent or reclaimable characters. It is pointed out that Sheridan assumes a sanctity in the marriage bond which prevents a realistic examination of the sexual passion.

• All this is true, but is not the whole truth. This is a play in which the continuity of plot is obviously subordinate to the satirical purpose of the dialogue. This play has a sustained quality of witty prose dialogue which only Dryden and Congreve equaled or surpassed in the late 17^th century. In casual conversation, ,Sheridan’s characters-representing envy, greed, ingratitude, detraction, malice-often rise to acute social and psychological insights. Nor can we say that the satire directed against scandal-mongering and hypocrisy has become irrelevant in our times in the 20^th century.

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