The School for Scandal

Enduringly popular less for its plots than for its verbal brilliance

and wit, The School for Scandal (1777) was the most frequently

performed play of its time. Sir Peter Teazle has made the perennial

mistake of elderly bachelors in English comedy and married a much

younger wife in the hope that she will be too innocent to cross him. In

fact, Lady Teazle spends her time with Lady Sneerwell and the worst set

of scandalmongers in town, who have a beady eye on Charles Surface, the

reckless young libertine, in expectation of seeing him ruined. Charles,

however, turns out to possess the sterling virtues of generosity and

loyalty to friends and family; and it is his hypocritical brother

Joseph who ends up the villain of the piece. This edition discusses

Sheridan's earlier drafts for the play and sets it into its theatrical

context of anti-sentimentalism and its social context of the London

High Society in which Sheridan had begun to move.