SHERIDAN AND “THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL”
Sheridan, the statesman, orator, and wit, wrote of the fashionable world, and for it. In conformity with its conventional existence and its taste for regularity, he admitted no improbabilities into the plot of “The School for Scandal.”〖Harvard Classics, xviii, 205.〗 As men and women of fashion tried to be elegant, witty, or epigrammatic in speech, he aimed to bestow like graces upon the dialogue of his personages—to make Joseph Surface sententious, Charles sprightly, Lady Teazle invincible in repartee. To a society that was too fastidious to be entertained by naive simplicity, rude manners, and boisterous merriment, Sheridan wanted to reveal the comic aspects of its usual life. He laughed at the scandal mongers who, after tearing others’ reputations to tatters, departed without a shred of their own, at the foolish though innocent young wife who was fascinated by the perilous pleasures of a fast set, and at the affected young hypocrite whose devious schemes undid him. He was not without kindliness of heart, as the humor of the final scene between Sir Peter and Lady Teazle shows; but satire was his aim.