The three plays collected in this volume demonstrate Sheridan's unerring ability to create unrivalled comedy out of ingenious plots, witty repartee, farcical situations and flamboyant characters. And while he never overtly moralizes, Sheridan uses brilliant comedy to deflate hypocrisy and satirize the manners of his age. In The Rivals, Captain Absolute becomes his own rival for the hand of Lydia Languish--wooing her under another name, while her aunt, the verbally inept Mrs Malaprop, wishes her to marry the real Captain. School for Scandal continues the theme of imposture when Sir Oliver...

The intrigues of such aptly named characters as Lady Sneerwell, Sir Joseph Surface, Lady Candour, and Sir Benjamin Backbite have amused theater audiences for more than two centuries. They are the invention of the Irish-born playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and they unfold, collide, and backfire hilariously in his masterpiece, The School for Scandal, a play still considered by many the best comedy of manners in English.
It is a comedy with two plots, one involving Sir Oliver Surface's attempts to discover the worthier of his two nephews, and the other unleashing Lady...

...A preface to a play seems generally to be considered as a kind of closet-prologue, in which--if his piece has been successful--the author solicits that indulgence from the reader which he had before experienced from the audience: but as the scope and immediate object of a play is to please a mixed assembly in representation (whose judgment in the theatre at least is decisive, ) its degree of reputation is usually as determined as public, before it can be prepared for the cooler tribunal of the study. Thus any farther solicitude on the part of the writer becomes unnecessary at least, if not...

...A preface to a play seems generally to be considered as a kind of closet-prologue, in which--if his piece has been successful--the author solicits that indulgence from the reader which he had before experienced from the audience: but as the scope and immediate object of a play is to please a mixed assembly in representation (whose judgment in the theatre at least is decisive, ) its degree of reputation is usually as determined as public, before it can be prepared for the cooler tribunal of the study. Thus any farther solicitude on the part of the writer becomes unnecessary at least, if not...

Excerpt: ...Mrs. MALAPROP That's you, sir. ABSOLUTE Reads. Has universally the character of being an accomplished gentleman and a man of honour.-Well, that's handsome enough. Mrs. MALAPROP Oh, the fellow has some design in writing so. ABSOLUTE That he had, I'll answer for him, ma'am. Mrs. MALAPROP But go on, sir-you'll see presently. ABSOLUTE Reads. As for the old weather-beaten she-dragon who guards you-Who can he mean by that? Mrs. MALAPROP Me, sir -me -he means me -There-what do you think now?-but go on a little further. ABSOLUTE Impudent scoundrel -Reads. it shall go hard but I will elude...

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751 -1816) was an Irish playwright and Whig statesman. On May 8, 1777, Sheridan directed his masterpiece, A School for Scandal, at the Drury Lane Theater. In 1780 Sheridan entered Parliament as the ally of Charles James Fox on the side of the American Colonials. The Duenna is a three act comic opera. A duenna is a chaperone who is in charge of caring for a younger person.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751 -1816) was an Irish playwright and Whig statesman. On May 8, 1777, Sheridan directed his masterpiece, A School for Scandal, at the Drury Lane Theater. School for Scandal is a comedy of manners contrasting two brothers who are both are courting the same woman. Joseph, a hypocrite, is interested in her fortune, and Charles, a spendthrift, is in love with her. A gossipy group of friends complicate matters.