School for Scandal Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Sir Oliver Surface

Wealthy uncle of Charles and Joseph Surface. After returning to England from the East Indies, he disguises himself to find out the truth about his nephews.

Sir Peter Teazle

Upright gentleman of about age fifty who has recently married a young woman. Fooled by Joseph Surface's pretensions, he promotes a marriage between Joseph and Maria

Leonard J. Leff (7)

'After being exposed in Act V, Joseph hides his complicit guilt and trails after Lady Sneerwell to check "her revengeful spirit." Sir Oliver performs the bene¬diction proclaiming the couple "oil and vinegar." Indeed, Joseph is too much the thoroughgoing hypocrite, Lady Sneerwell too much the breaker of reputa¬tions (especially after being wounded once more), and Snake too much the mercenary not to continue their masquerading.'

Leonard J. Leff (2)

'Among these thieves, there is apparently no honor. Unwisely, Lady Sneerwell showed her "weakness" to Snake and "real view" to Joseph (Li); her reward in Act V, Scene iii, is unmasking by both.'

Jack D. Durant (6)

'And as if in support of this premise, the complicating force of wit in The School for Scandal consistently rallies to the cause of malice, emphasizing the close kinship between complexity and vice.'

Jack D. Durant (5)

'At the very outset, for example, Snake congratulates Lady Sneerwell for the special "delicacy of hint, and mellowness of sneer" distinguishing her scanda1.2° In effect he admires the art whereby she disciplines herself to vice, her skill in translating simple truth into complex falsehood, simple innocence into com¬plex imputations of treachery. All the stratagems of the scandal college involve such processes of complication, identifying complexity with vice.'

Jack D. Durant

'But in The School for Scandal he at last found the right form for his ethical and aesthetic commitment. Not at all the morally vacu¬ous, if supercivilized, farce critics usually read it as being, and not the mere theatrical tour de force which "teaches no lesson and points no distinctive moral,"12 The School for Scandal defines through form and action a vital paradigm of Christian benevolence. It is in effect a comic charity sermon.'

Jack D. Durant (8)

'By the end of the auction scene (Act IV scene i), the abstract issues of the play stand clearly drawn. Vice has emphatically allied itself with all kinds of complexity; virtue with simplicity and directness.'

Jack D. Durant (7)

'Consequently they perceive, as Joseph does in Act II, that it bears them along by its own force, rendering them the more vulnerable as it races out of control. "Sincerely," says Joseph, "I begin to wish I had never made such a point of gaining so very good a character, for it has led me into so many cursed rogueries that I doubt I shall be exposed at last." (II. ii. 300-304)'

Jack D. Durant (2)

'Critics are right who remark of it that it succeeds more in generating illusions of wickedness than in confronting wickedness itself.13 They are right in saying that Joseph Surface seems not greatly worse than Charles, that both brothers seem basically sym¬pathetic characters.'

Jack D. Durant (3)

'Evil in The School for Scandal is dangerously imminent, as the characters engage in practices certain to corrupt their essential good natures.'

J. R. deJ. Jackson

'Her statement that reason and not passion will rule her actions is out of character with her behaviour and sentiments throughout the rest of the play; but if the flirtation scene is to be concluded with Sheridan's sophisticated paradox there can be no alternative preamble.'

Leonard J. Leff (8)

'In addition to exposing Joseph, she reforms. By the final scene of the play, she has made her peace with Sir Peter; pledging good faith, she forsakes scandal— the central disguise motif in the play.' [Lady Teazel]

Jack D. Durant (11)

'In the case of the scandal college, and especially of Lady Sneerwell, the play suggests that vice can become habitual, that the arts of malice can gradually stifle basic good nature. Through Lady Teazle's experience, however, it also suggests that in regain¬ing virtue one needs chiefly to decline the disciplines of vice, in effect returning one's diploma to the scandal college. From its basic premise of Christian benevolism, then, The School for Scandal makes cogent statements about the self-complicating properties of hypocrisy, about false sentiment, malicious candor, wicked insinuation.'

Leonard J. Leff (9)

'In the important opening scene, however, the audience has teamed that hypocrisy is disguised by a mask of sentiment. In Snake's and Lady Sneerwell's presence Joseph sympathizes with the fate of his brother and recognizes the necessity of supporting him despite his misconduct.'

Jack D. Durant (10)

'Indeed, the play declines to pass severe judgment against any¬one. It rather implies that by nature all people are good—even those who cultivate the arts of malice.'

Jack D. Durant (9)

'Joseph's hypocrisy and unnatural artifice, Charles's openness and natural spontaneity, Sir Peter's blindness in crediting Joseph's sentiments, Lady Teazle's pretensions in crediting his arguments. And on a more comprehensive plane simple directness, as an agent of virtue in the play, here assails and disarms complexity, as an agent of vice.'

Andrew Schiller (5)

'Perhaps it is not pressing too hard to point out, in this connection, that there may be some significance in the fact that scandal, in this play, is thought of as being exerted more potently through the printed than the spoken word. Snake is the prototype of our modern "gossip columnist."'

Leonard J. Leff (3)

'Snake—whose movements "should not go unobserved" 9—is more devious than Lady Sneerwell. As an inserter of paragraphs, he is perhaps a "new journalist," similar to writers for The Town and Country Magazine (founded 1769) or The Morning Post (1772). Like them, he is only disguised as a journalist, for his paragraphs contain not facts but gossip and slander; indeed, the Post filled every issue with "libelous paragraphs."'

Leonard J. Leff (11)

'The School for Scandal is thus a well-unified play, one which establishes an attitude toward scandal, manifests it through a series of elaborate disguise motifs, and eventually condemns and dismisses masquerade by presenting the unification of two characters who stand for a world without masks.'

Leonard J. Leff (5)

'The elder brother Surface, he is a master of deceit, and it is no surprise that when he occasionally lapses into metaphor, the figure of speech should sound the note of disguise.'

Jack D. Durant (4)

'The ethical position of The School for Scandal accords perfectly with these sermons. Charity and basic human benevolence relate themselves in the play to spontaneity, directness, simplicity. Malice and un-charity relate themselves to deviousness, deceit, complexity.'

Leonard J. Leff

'The first group is divided into those who mask with malevolent intent (Snake, Lady Sneerwell and the scandalmongers, and Joseph) and those who mask without malevolence though not always with noble intent (Lady Teazle, Sir Peter Teazle, and Sir Oliver Surface). The second group consists of Rowley, Maria, and Charles Surface.'

Andrew Schiller (4)

'The real matter at hand, at least in the terms I have postulated, is to determine whether or not The School for Scandal expresses the conflict of the parvenu class versus the elect. Consider the plot matter of the play as separated roughly into four motifs; (1) The scandal plot; (2) The cuckolding-revenge plot; (3) The town-country antithesis; (4) The two brothers ("male Cinderella") motif. Each of these elements, together with its respective appendages, conies right out of the traditional stockpile. Nothing is easier than to show a "source" for every scene in the play—nothing is more futile. Conversely, the very fact that Sheridan used the same ingredients to bake a different cake serves to emphasize distinctions which are very much to the point.'

Andrew Schiller (6)

'The second of the major motifs is that of revenge by cuckolding. In the conversation between Lady Teazle and Joseph Surface (mil), the following dialogue takes place: Lady T: . . . you know I admit you as a lover no farther than fashion requires. Joseph S. True—a mere platonic cicisbeo—what every London wife is entitled to. Lady T. 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 vex me ever so, it never shall provoke me to . . . Joseph S. The only revenge is your power. Well—I applaud your moderation.'

Andrew Schiller

'The socially elect are a moral law unto themselves, since their virtue is innate, heredi¬tary and self-defined. Of the rest, there are some who strive to enter the circle of the elect. In their inevitable failure they make themselves even more ridiculous, thereby dramatizing the difference between the castes, and in this revelation lies the comedy.'

Andrew Schiller (3)

'There is a Witty Pair—the hero and heroine—and they contrast neatly in their basic attitudes. The man is sexually experienced, but fundamentally innocent; the woman is a virgin, but more truly worldly-wise. Superficially, the man is cynical about love and marriage, convinced that the one cannot survive the other. The woman, on the other hand, is basically idealistic in that she usually sees the two (or is brought to see them) as compatible. Eventually she reduces the man to her desperate terms, and the comedy ends in their marriage. Balanced against the youthful Witty Pair, there is generally an older Bawdy Pair. Either or both, in this case, may be debauched, and either previously or currently married (in a few cases even to one another). In this couple the cynicism goes deep, since they have experienced in some way the death of love in marriage.'

Leonard J. Leff (10)

'Throughout the play "sentiment" is a euphemism for treachery and hypocrisy. Thus, Sir Peter's words play the fool with him when Rowley and Sir Oliver tease him about being gulled by Joseph's disguise. In the penultimate scene of the play, laughed at by his peers, Sir Peter spits out his mistake: "Yes, yes, his sentiments! Ha! ha! ha! Hypocritical villain!"'

Andrew Schiller (2)

'Thus it is possible to say that the theater as an institution was the spokesman of a class, and that the playwrights consistently thought in terms of issues which were vital to those whom they spoke for.'

Leonard J. Leff (4)

'Thus, when the play is over, the scandalmongers, Lady Sneerwell, and Snake leave the distinct impression that their art of disguise has been impaired little if at all.'

Leonard J. Leff (6)

'Unlike his brother Charles, Joseph consciously masks his real character from the world. In earlier drafts of the play, the brothers' surnames were variously Plausible, Pliable, and Pliant, but Sheridan's final choice—Surface—readily suggests the predominant motif in the play.'

J. R. deJ. Jackson (2)

'We can conclude that some at least of the dialogue of The School for Scandal has no effect upon or relevance to the plot. The second offers an explanation of inconsistency of characterization in the play— characters are given one another's lines, and these sometimes prove inappropriate. The third shows the kind of modification of character which results from the polishing of Sheridan's prose. And the fourth demonstrates the importance of the aphorism in the action of the play.'

Libertinism

A libertine is one devoid of most moral restraints, which are seen as unnecessary or undesirable, especially one who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behavior sanctified by the larger society. Libertines place value on physical pleasures, meaning those experienced through the senses.

Satire

A literary work in which the author ridicules the vices and follies of mankind, usually for the purpose of producing some change in attitude or action. Also, the use of wit, exaggeration, and ridicule to present a serious criticism of individual, customs, or social and political institutions.

Sir Benjamin Backbite

Annoying young man who pursues Maria and engages in slanderous conversation.

Old Crabtree

Backbite's uncle and a tale-bearer.

Snake

Cat's paw of Lady Sneerwell. He spreads false rumors designed to help Lady Sneerwell achieve her goals.

Maria

Desirable and wealthy young ward of Sir Peter Teazle. She is a woman of principle who refuses to gossip.

Mr. Stanley

Dublin merchant who was ruined by business reversals. He is related to Charles and Joseph Surface, to whom he wrote for financial assistance. Sir Oliver assumes Stanley's identity when he is investigating his nephews.

Sir Harry Bumper

Friend of Charles Surface

Rowley

Helpful servant and friend of Sir Peter Teazle and a former servant of the father of the Surface brothers. He is an upright fellow who sees through Joseph's hypocrisy. Aware of Snake's nefarious behavior, he pays him to reveal that the stories he has been spreading for Lady Sneerwell and Joseph are lies.

Moses

Moneylender who assists Sir Oliver in his scheme to find out the truth about Charles and Joseph Surface.

Mrs. Candour

Prolific gossip who says how wrong it is to spread rumors, then indulges in her favorite pastime—spreading rumors.

Careless

Rowdy friend of Charles Surface.

Sentimentalism

Sentimentalism presented a new view of human nature which prized feeling over thinking, passion over reason, and personal instincts of "pity, tenderness, and benevolence" over social duties.

Trip

Servant of Charles Surface.

William

Servant of Joseph Surface

Charles Surface

Young bachelor notorious for his extravagance and dissipation. However, his dissolute behavior may only be a passing phase. At heart, he is a good and generous person. He and Maria are in love.

Joseph Surface

Young bachelor who pretends to be an honorable gentlemen but is really a double-dealing scoundrel. He is the older brother of Charles Surface. Joseph is in love with the fortune Maria is to receive. He plots with Lady Sneerwell to break up Charles and Maria. Meanwhile, he attempts to seduce the wife of Sir Peter Teazle.

Lady Sneezle

Young widow of a knight. She is attracted to Charles Surface and plots with Joseph Surface to break up Charles and Maria.

Lady Teazle

Young wife of Sir Peter. She and her husband have their little spats. When he visits Joseph Surface one day, he discovers his wife hiding behind a screen and at first thinks she has been having an affair with Joseph, whom he now brands as a villain