The Pleasures of Sheridan's "The Rivals:" A Critical Study in the Light of Stage History

Abstract

Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals is perhaps the most durable of English stage comedies.2 The School for Scandal and She Stoops to Conquer approach its continuing popularity on the English and American stages, and other comedies found remarkable, if not quite comparable, success in the acting tradition; the student of theatrical history is quite familiar with the records of some Shakespearean comedies, of the comedies of Jonson, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, of adaptations of Restoration comedies, and of the mediocrities of Cibber and Centlivre. But these plays have all suffered extended periods of neglect or have gratifyingly disappeared from the repertoire. Only these three comedies of the 1770s, with Sheridan's first play foremost among them, survived through the decline of stock companies in the late nineteenth century and into the modern repertoire with little break in continuity. The striking success of The Rivals is somewhat puzzling. Clearly the comedy lacks real moral seriousness or high aesthetic design: within the experience its successful representation creates for us we are unlikely to find the touching human warmth of AMuch Ado about Nothing, the savage moral truth of Tartuffe or The Plain Dealer, the brilliantly structured power of The Way of the World, or the flawlessly polished surface of The Importance of Being Earnest. Yet we should be able to account for the continuing popularity of The Rivals on critical as well as practical grounds. We can suggest certain reasons simply by examining the text; if these reasons are valid, the stage history should confirm them. A reading of The Rivals suggests that its appeal lies in a distinctly amiable plot and charming, if artificial, idiosyncratic characters. The plot is complex, but not overwhelmingly intricate or powerful in construction. It would be foolish, for instance, to locate our source of satisfaction primarily in this plot, or to conceive of this action as one carefully structured so as to compare implicitly two equally wrongheaded views of love-Lydia's romanticism and Faulkland's tortured selfdoubts. There are hints indeed of a parallel quality in the scenes between Jack and