The School for Scandal, Richard Brinsley Sheridan [i am reading a book .TXT] 📗

Yet, the play is not wholly cold. Sheridan’s wit could be genial as well as icy⁠—of which there could be no better proof than the success with which he has enlisted our sympathies for the characters of his comedy. Sir Peter Teazle is an old fool, who has married a young wife; but we are all glad when we see a prospect of his future happiness. Lady Teazle is flighty and foolish; and yet we cannot help but like her. Charles we all wish well; and as for Joseph, we feel from the first so sure of his ultimate discomfiture, that we are ready to let him off with the light punishment of exposure. There are, it is true, here and there blemishes to be detected on the general surface, an occasional hardness of feeling, an apparent lack, at times, of taste and delicacy⁠—for instance, the bloodthirsty way in which the scandalmongers pounce upon their prey, the almost brutal expression by Lady Teazle of her willingness to be a widow, the ironical speech of Charles after the fall of the screen; but these are more the fault of the age than of the author.

The great defect of the School for Scandal⁠—the one thing which shows the difference between a comic writer of the type of Sheridan and a great dramatist like Shakespeare is the unvarying wit of the characters. And not only are the characters all witty, but they all talk alike. Their wit is Sheridan’s wit, which is very good wit indeed; but it is Sheridan’s own, and not Sir Peter Teazle’s, or Backbite’s, or Careless’s, or Lady Sneerwell’s. It is one man in his time playing many parts. It is the one voice always; though the hands be the hands of Esau, the voice is the voice of Jacob. And this quick wit and ready repartee is not confined to the ladies and gentlemen; the master is no better off than the man, and Careless airs the same wit as Charles. As Sheridan said in the Critic, he was “not for making slavish distinctions in a free country, and giving all the fine language to the upper sort of people.” It is a fact that the characters all talk too well; the comedy would be far less entertaining if they did not. The stage is not life, and it is not meant to be; a mere transcript of ordinary talk would be insufferable. Condensation is necessary; and selection also, and a heightening and brightening of talk. No doubt Sheridan pushed this license to its utmost limit⁠—at times even beyond it; but in consequence his comedy, if a little less artistic in the reading, is far more lively in the acting. It has been said that in Shakespeare we find not the language we would use in the situations, but the language we should wish to use⁠—that we should talk so if we could. We cannot all of us be as witty as the, characters of the School for Scandal but who of us would not if he could?

Wit of this kind is not to be had without labour. Because Sheridan sometimes borrowed, it does not follow that he was incapable of originating; or, because he always prepared when possible, that he was incapable of impromptu. But he believed in doing his best on all occasions. If caught unawares, his natural wit was ready; if, however, he had time for preparation, he spared no pains. He grudged no labour. He was willing to heat and hammer again and again⁠—to file, and polish, and adjust, and oil, until the delicate machinery ran smoothly, and to the satisfaction even of his fastidious eye. Even in his early youth Sheridan had the faculty of toiling over his work to his immediate improvement; his friend Halhed complimented him on this in a letter written in 1770. As Sheridan himself said in two lines of Clio’s Protest, published in 1770 a couplet often credited to Rogers:

“You write with ease, to show your breeding,
But easy writing ’s curst hard reading.”

The School for Scandal was not easy writing then, and it is not hard reading now. Not content with a wealth of wit alone⁠—for he did not hold with the old maxim which says that jests, like salt, should be used sparingly; he salted with a lavish hand, and his plays have perhaps been preserved to us by this Attic salt⁠—he sought the utmost refinement of language. An accomplished speaker himself, he smoothed every sentence till it ran trippingly on the tongue. His dialogue is easy to speak as his songs are easy to sing. To add in any way to the lustre and brilliance of the slightest sentence of the School for Scandal, to burnish a bit of dialogue, or brighten a soliloquy, could never cost Sheridan, lazy though he was, too much labour. “This kind of writing,” as M. Taine says, “artificial and condensed as the satires of La Bruyere, is like a cut vial, into which the author has distilled, without reservation, all his reflections, his reading, his understanding.” That this is true of Sheridan is obvious. In the School for Scandal he has done the best he could; he put into it all he had in him; it is the complete expression of his genius; beyond it he could not go.

After its first great success, the School for Scandal was not long in crossing to America; and its usual luck followed it to these shores. Ireland, in his admirable Records of the New York Stage, which it is always a duty and a pleasure to praise, noted what was probably its first performance in New York, on the evening of December 16, 1785, and on this occasion the comedy was cast to the full strength of the best company which had been then seen in America. Its success was instant and emphatic; and from that