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The School for Scandal: The Restoration Unrestored

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Andrew Schiller
Andrew Schiller*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois Navy Pier, Chicago 11
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Extract

Evocation of the spirit of a former age is one of the surest ways to demonstrate that the past can never be the present. Sheridan, in writing The School for Scandal, made an excursion into the Restoration, an act of literary nostalgia, and a recognition, perhaps, that he had been born a century too late. His purpose was clear: to write a neo-Restoration high comedy of manners. That he achieved it outwardly is certain. That he succeeded in resurrecting the spirit is a question—one which raises still another question: wherein lies the “spirit” of Restoration comedy?

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 71 , Issue 4-Part-1 , September 1956 , pp. 694 - 704
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1956

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References

1 R. C. Rhodes, in his edition of The Plays and Poems of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (New York, 1929), n, 5, says in his introduction to the play: “From his contemporaries The School for Scandal won for Sheridan the name of ‘the modern Congreve.‘ It was the highest title they had to bestow upon a master of the comedy of manners. Sheridan had almost deliberately invited the comparison: one of his first plans on assuming the management of Drury Lane was to revive the comedies of Congreve. … In this way he had prepared his actors and his audience for the great comedy which, even then, was still uncompleted.”

2 A History of Restoration Drama 1660–1700, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1928), p. 18S.

3 In Nicoll's terms, the “true” Restoration comedy of manners would be most nearly approached by The Man of Mode, Love for Love, and The Way of the World. Wycherley's two masterpieces, for instance, obviously fail to qualify. Can we say that The Country Wife lacks “crude” realism, or that its plot is subordinate? The Plain Dealer is scarcely a comedy at all; it is tense with emotion, bitterly realistic, and again the plot is of paramount importance. But why go on? Suffice it to point out that even the most typical plays fail on some counts. Is there any playgoer so insensitive as to find no emotion in The Man of Mode? Mrs. Loveit's jealous rages are real enough, and the little aubade between Dorimant and Bellinda in iv, ii is as tenderly romantic in its own way as its parallel scene in Romeo and Juliet. Congreve's two greatest comedies come closer, perhaps, to Nicoll's Platonic idea but still not close enough. Consider, for instance, whether the Fainall plot in The Way of the World does not get seriously emotional!

4 To be sure, it is foolish to try to be mechanically all-embracing in these matters. The limits of application of such a statement as this are bounded by the precision with which we can define the genre to which it applies. Or, putting it another way, the criterion of the elect-parvenu conflict might be arbitrarily applied as the definitive touchstone of the genre of Restoration high comedy of manners. Whichever way we take it there will necessarily be a shading off into generic limbo. A suggestive discussion of this problem of genre is to be found in Ch. i of Kathleen's Lynch's The Social Mode of Restoration Comedy (New York, 1926). Here it is argued that Restoration comedy is a reflection of social reality and that the mainspring of its irony is the conflict between the good form of the insiders and the bad form of the outsiders.

5 See John Harrington Smith, The Cay Couple in Restoration Comedy (Cambridge, Mass., 1948).

6 It does not follow, I might add, that the concept of the Fop implies a principle that the elect must maintain and confirm their election by living within a norm. This would indeed be a requirement contrary to the orthodox notion of election. What we have here, I think, is a case of moral fluctuations of degree within separate realms of kind. These fluctuations may be parallel, but never congruent.

7 The recurrence of stock characters is too obvious to illustrate. The continuity of attitudes, however, is so strong that it sometimes results in echoes of dialogue. Sir Fopling Flutter, for example, says “Writing, madam, ‘s a mechanic part of wit,” and Sir Benjamin Backbite's version is, “To say truth, ma'am, ‘tis very vulgar to print …”

8 Rhodes describes, in an appendix, the evolution of the play and reprints portions of the two antecedent versions.

9 “The Stage History of Sheridan's Less Known Plays,” unpubl. thesis, George Washington Univ., 1949, p. 111.