Moore noted the resemblance of this aside to Pope’s line, in the “Rape of the Lock”:—
“At every word, a reputation dies.”
This scandal scene of Sheridan’s had predecessors in the comedies of Congreve and of Wycherley, not to go back as far as the Misanthrope of Molière. Hard and cruel as Sheridan’s scene now seems to us, it is gentle indeed when contrasted with the cudgel-play of Congreve and Wycherley. It is possible that Sheridan owed some of his comparative suavity to the example of Addison, who contributed to No. 17 of the Spectator, a “Fine Lady’s Journal,” in which there is a passage of tittle-tattle more like Sheridan than Wycherley or Congreve. ↩
Geneste, in his History of the English Stage, draws attention to a parallel passage in the Trinummus of Plautus, and suggests that it would furnish a very pat motto for this play:
“Quod si exquiratur usque ab stirpe auctoritas,
Unde quicquid auditum dicant, nisi id appareat.
Famigeratori res sit cum damno et malo:
Hoc ita si fiat, publico fiat bono.
Pauci sint faxim, qui sciant quod nesciunt;
Occlusioremque habeant stultiloquentiam.”
In 1777 a committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into the laws concerning usury and annuities; and on its report in May, the month in which this play was first acted, a bill was brought in and passed, providing that all contracts with minors for annuities shall be void, and that those procuring them and solicitors charging more than ten shillings per cent shall be subject to fine or imprisonment. ↩
The traditional business of the scene is for Sir Peter and Lady Teazle here to take each other by the hand and to repeat, in unison, “Never! never! never!” ↩
In the original draft of the several scenes which Sheridan finally combined into the School for Scandal, this phrase, “bags and bouquets,” was said to Sir Peter as he was complaining of Lady Teazle’s extravagances. This utilization at last of a phrase at first rejected elsewhere is highly characteristic of Sheridan. ↩
Sheridan has been accused, justly enough, of making his servants talk as their masters; but this is an old failing of writers of comedy, although few of them would have risked this accurate use of the legal phraseology which Sheridan at all times affected. But there is in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour (Act III., Scene II.) a speech of Knowell’s servant, Brainworm, in which we find the very same technical term as we have in the text: “This smoky varnish being washed off, and three or four patches removed, I appear your worship’s [servant] in reversion, after the decease of your good father, Brainworm.” Sheridan’s Trip and Fag recall the amusing personages of High Life Below Stairs, suggested by a paper of Steele’s, “On Servants,” in the Spectator, No. 88. ↩
It has been asserted (in Notes and Queries, 5th S., ii., 245, and elsewhere) that Sheridan derived this song from a ballad in Suckling’s play, the Goblins; but a careful comparison of the two songs shows that there is really no foundation for the charge. The music to Sheridan’s song was composed by his father-in-law, Thomas Linley, who had been his partner in The Duenna. ↩
In Foote’s Minor, there is a spendthrift son, whose father visits him in disguise to test him; and in Foote’s Arthur, a father returns in disguise, and, to his great delight, hears his son disclose the most admirable sentiments; but there is no real likeness between either of Foote’s scenes and this of Sheridan’s, the real original of which is perhaps to be found in his mother’s Sidney Biddulph, in which an East Indian uncle returns to test a nephew and a niece. Yet there is possibly a slight resemblance between “little Premium the broker,” and “little Transfer, the broker,” in the Minor. ↩
An erring tradition authorizes Moses to interpolate freely and frequently throughout the rest of the scene a more or less meaningless “I’ll take my oath of that.” As the part of Moses is generally taken by the low comedian who also appears as Tony Lumpkin, this gag may be a reminiscence of the comic scene in She Stoops to Conquer, in which Tony offers to swear to his mother’s assertion that Miss Hardcastle’s jewels have been stolen. ↩
The absurdity of an auction with only one bidder has been commented upon often, but surely Sheridan never intended the auction to be taken seriously. The pretence of an auction is surely a freak of Charles’s humour and high spirits. ↩
The School for Scandal was one of the plays performed by the English actors on their famous visit to Paris in 1827—a visit which revealed the might and range of the English drama to the French and thereby served to make possible the Romanticist revolt of 1830. Victor Hugo was an assiduous follower of the English performances; and it may be that this scene of the School for Scandal suggested to him the scene with the portraits in Hernani. ↩
In a note to an anonymous pamphlet biographical sketch of Sheridan, published in 1799, there is quoted a remark of a lady which is not without point and pertinency: “Mr. Sheridan is a fool if he pays a bill (of which, by the by, he is not accused) of one of the tradesmen
