one and the same person, the gallant young lover who has introduced himself to the heroine as Ensign Beverly instead of the heir of Sir Anthony Absolute that he really is. Complication arises when the young man's father appears on the scene bent on having him married at once in his own person. Lydia Languish, who has sentimentally looked forward to an elopement and to the loss of her fortune with delight, is naturally disappointed when she finds that she is still to be well-to-do and conventional. Sir Anthony, with his fits of temper, Mrs. Malaprop, with her distinctive vocabulary, and Bob Acres with his swagger might have had prototypes but were nevertheless irresist ibly effective in their own persons. A society that prided itself on its grace and sophistication, and that smiled at those who fell short of its ideals, enjoyed the play and gave it full approval.

Sheridan naturally desired to follow up his first success as quickly as possible. On May 2 he sought to amuse the public with a short farce, St. Patrick's Day. Much more important than this, however, was The Duenna, a comic opera on the libretto of which Sheridan had lavished some of his best effort and for which his father-inlaw had written the music. The work was produced in November, and was a tremendous success, being given no less than seventy-five performances in its first season and surpassing even the famous run of The Beggar's Opera. Sheridan, now at the age of twenty-four, was acclaimed as the foremost English writer of comedy of the day.

"Garrick, rendered uneasy by these successes at the rival house of Covent Garden, revenged himself effectually in 1775 by parting with his half-share of the patent at Drury Lane to a syndicate, at the head of which was

Sheridan." The The post of manager of London's most famous theatre that the young dramatist now assumed was one that he was to hold with varying success for most of the rest of his life. An early attempt, however, to remodel Vanbrugh's The Relapse under a new title practically failed. Something was needed and needed immediately to repair the loss of Garrick. Sheridan rose to the occasion with The School for Scandal (May 8, 1777), generally considered his masterpiece.

This play, like The Rivals, seems to have been the result of Sheridan's acquaintance with fashionable society at Bath. The careful construction of the play at once elicited favorable comment. Especially praised was the situation, in the fourth act, where Sir Peter discovers Lady Teazle in Joseph Surface's study. The test of time has fully confirmed the praise thus bestowed on the " screen scene." "It remains not merely the most notable scene in the English comedy of manners, but one of the masterpieces. of English dramatic art. Only less noteworthy are the picture scene' in the house of Charles Surface, the scandal scenes, and the conversations between Sir Peter and Lady Teazle. Though more dependent upon the wit of the dialogue, they brilliantly illustrate Sheridan's dramatic skill." 8

Sheridan's next production was The Critic (October 30, 1779), a burlesque on the general order of The Rehearsal originally produced as an afterpiece. In this play with his usual success he not only satirized sentimentalism and such a contemporary character as the sensitive and jealous Cumberland (" Sir Fretful Plagiary "), but with a masterhand swept the entire range of dramatic absurdity. 'Seccombe, 216. Nettleton, 303.

"It is the triumph of sheer wit over the usual transitoriness of burlesque."

After these successes, when a brilliant career as a dramatist seemed all before him, Sheridan suddenly shifted his chief interest to politics, becoming within the next twenty years one of the most famous orators in Parliament. This participation in public life naturally led to more or less neglect of Drury Lane, which for a while was saved from disaster only by the work of a group of unusually able performers. In 1798 and 1799 Sheridan temporarily saved the situation by two adaptations from the German of Kotzebue, The Strangers and Pizarro. In 1791, however, the theatre had been condemned as unsafe and had to be reconstructed at great expense; in 1809 it was totally destroyed with heavy personal loss to the manager. When it was rebuilt new officials took charge and Sheridan was forced to retire. Other troubles had already come to him -domestic, financial, political. He passed away at sixtyfive and was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. Neither he nor Goldsmith founded a school. He himself was but the last and the most brilliant representative of the comedy of manners that had become so popular in the Restoration era, and that had had such a long tradition in English dramatic annals.

77. Close of the Century.-The latter part of the eighteenth century was hardly a period favorable to the composition of plays. For a longer time than ever before or since the drama sank beneath the dignity of literature. Much of the explanation of this is to be found in the larger forces at work in the life of the English people. The age was primarily democratic and industrial, and far removed from the nationalistic ideals of Elizabeth. Not

kings and queens, or heroes and heroines, but common men and women were chiefly of interest. Accordingly the country launched upon a great era of social and political reform. Howard worked for the improvement of prisons, Wilberforce and other abolitionists began their agitation, and the decade 1790-1800 witnessed the founding of numerous missionary and philanthropic societies. Some offset to these Whig tendencies might have been found in romanticism; but this impulse had not yet risen to its height, nor had the theories and ideas of liberty crystallized into drama.

In such an era of discussion and reform the drama no longer fulfilled the function it once performed. In the age of Elizabeth the playhouse monopolized the attention of the world of fashion. Now, however, it had to compete with the novel, the newspaper, the opera, and all the other media of enlightenment and entertainment. The drama itself moreover had now built up a tradition and a literature that kept many away from the theatre. The scholar, hardly attracted by the current offerings of the stage, turned to the perusal of the older dramatists in the study. In an age of increasing criticism, largely of Shakespeare, Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was easily most eminent. Years before (1749) he had offered to Garrick, and Garrick had accepted, a rather lifeless tragedy, Irene, a story of the temptation placed before a Greek maiden by the offer of a throne rejected by the loyal Aspasia. In spite of considerable effort, as a dramatist and poet Johnson did not quite succeed in winning the laurels he sought; he was to win a fame far more enduring, however, by the critical efforts that very often he thought ephemeral.

Within the theatre itself moreover developed forces that hardly promoted the composition of serious drama. From what has been said it is evident that the stage was maintained in the latter part of the century only by the more fashionable part of the population. The play became a society function; Garrick, Macklin, Foote, and Mrs. Siddons were discussed in the parlors of the "bluestockings;" and polite conversation considered the relative merits of Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Nor was the situation improved by the sentimentalism that in varying forms was still cultivated, or by the "bullies" of the day who were tolerated and who frequently browbeat the actors. The chief force in making the drama less intellectual, however, was the emphasis placed on scenery and costume, the effect of which was not unlike that at the present day. "In the days of Quin, the characters appeared in a conventional dress, incongruous to us because unfamiliar, which raised the actors above the limitations of actual existence and made them denizens of the suggestive stageworld. But when Garrick played Macbeth in a scarlet and gold military uniform and dressed Hotspur in a laced frock and Ramillies wig, he was introducing realism, which destroyed the universality of the characters; so that, after two generations of the new tradition, neither Lamb nor Hazlitt could endure to see Shakespeare acted; and Goethe, at a time when the picture stage had firm hold of Germany, regarded Shakespeare more as a poet to be read in seclusion than as a dramatist to be appreciated in the theatre." 9

Some names, however, of those who wrote plays within the period are deserving at least of passing mention and Routh, C. H. E. L., XI, 314.