III
While it is more than three hundred years since Shakspere wrote the ‘Merchant of Venice,’ it is less than a hundred and fifty since Sheridan wrote the ‘School for Scandal.’ The gap that yawns between us and Sheridan is not so wide or so deep as the gulf that divides us from Shakspere; but it is obvious enough. Even a hundred years ago Charles Lamb declared that the audiences of his time were becoming more and more unlike those of Sheridan’s day, and that this increasing unlikeness was forcing the actors to modify their methods, a little against their wills. Sheridan’s two brilliant comedies continue to delight us by their solidity of structure, their vigor of characterization and their insistent sparkle of dialog. In the ‘Rivals’ Sheridan is following in the footsteps of his fellow Irishman, Farquhar, and in the ‘School for Scandal’ he is matching himself against Congreve. In both he was carrying on the tradition of Restoration comedy, with its coldheartedness, its hard glitter, its delineation of modes rather than morals. It is perhaps too much to assert that most of his characters are unfeeling; but it is not too much to say that they are regardless of the feelings of others—perhaps because their own emotions are only skin-deep.
It is true that in the ‘Rivals’ Sheridan threw a sop to the admirers of Sentimental Comedy and introduced a couple of high-strung and weepful lovers, Falkland and Julia, who are forever sentimentalizing. But this precious pair have been found so uninteresting that in most of the later performances of the ‘Rivals’—all too infrequent, alas!—they have been omitted altogether or disgraced by relegation to the background.
The vogue of Sentimental Comedy was waning when Sheridan wrote, and it disappeared before he died, yet the playgoers of London and of New York were becoming more tender-hearted than their ancestors who had delighted in the metallic harshness of character-delineation customary in Restoration comedy. They were beginning to look for characters with whom they could sympathize and to desire the villains to remain consistent in their villainy. They were unwilling to remain in what Lamb termed “the regions of pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns.” Lamb called the ‘School for Scandal’ incongruous in that it is “a mixture of sentimental incompatibilities,” Charles Surface being “a pleasant reality” while Joseph Surface was “a no less pleasant poetical foil to it.”
The original performer of Joseph was John Palmer; and Lamb asserted that it required his consummate art “to reconcile the discordant elements.” Then the critic suggested, and this was a century ago, that
a player with Jack’s talents, if we had one now, would not dare do the part in the same manner. He would instinctively avoid every turn which might tend to unrealize, and so to make the character fascinating. He must take his cue from the spectators, who would expect a bad man and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other as the death-beds of those geniuses are contrasted in the prints.
A little later in the same essay—the incomparable analysis of ‘Artificial Comedy’—Lamb pointed out that “Charles must be loved and Joseph hated,” adding that
to balance one disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings (while King played it) were evidently as much played off at you as they were meant to concern anybody on the stage,—he must be a real person, capable in law of sustaining an injury,—a person towards whom duties are to be acknowledged,—the genuine crim. con. antagonist of the villainous seducer Joseph. To realize him more, his sufferings under his unfortunate match must have the downright pungency of life,—must (or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same predicament would move you in a neighbor or old friend.
I cannot count the number of occasions on which I have enjoyed the performance of the ‘School for Scandal,’—but they must amount to a score at the least. I recall most clearly John Gilbert’s Sir Peter; and I can testify that he had preserved the tradition of King. He was the fretful old bachelor bridegroom, who, when the screen fell and discovered Lady Teazle in the library of Joseph Surface, was wounded not in his heart but in his vanity. He preserved the comic idea, as Sheridan had designed. But John Gilbert was the only Sir Peter I can recall who was able to achieve this histrionic feat.
Of all the many Lady Teazles it has been my good fortune to see, Fanny Davenport stands out most sharply in my memory,—perhaps because she was the first I had ever beheld and perhaps because she was then in the springtime of her buoyant beauty. Certainly when the screen fell she was a lovely picture, like Niobe all tears. Her repentance was sincere beyond all question. She renounced the comic idea, which is that Lady Teazle has been caught in a compromising situation by the elderly husband with whom she is in the habit of quarrelling. Fanny Davenport saw only the pathos of the situation; and she made us see it and feel it and feel for her and hope that her impossible husband would accept her honest explanation,—the explanation which indeed he would have to accept since we as eye-witnesses are ready to testify that it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
But this rendering of the part is discomposing to the comic idea; and it forces a modification of method upon the actor of Charles Surface. It is in deference to the comic idea that when the screen falls Sheridan made Charles see the humor of the situation and only the humor of it. He is called upon to chaff Sir Peter and Lady Teazle and Joseph, one after the other. If the actor speaks these lines with due regard to the comic idea which created Sir Peter as a peevish old bachelor bridegroom and Lady Teazle as a frivolous woman of fashion, and if the actor of Sir Peter and the actress of Lady Teazle take the situation not only seriously but pathetically as they would in a twentieth century problem-play, then Charles’s speech is heartless and almost brutal. Now Charles is a character as sympathetic to the audience in his way as Lady Teazle is in hers. Charles is to be loved as Joseph is to be hated. And so the impersonator of Charles is compelled to modify his method, to transpose his lines and to recognize that the robust raillery natural to him and appropriate to the predicament must be toned down in deference to our more delicate susceptibilities.
He laughs at Sir Peter first; and then he turns to Joseph, who is fair game and whom the spectators are glad to see held up to scorn. He says “you seem all to have been diverting yourselves here at hide and seek and I don’t see who is out of the secret.” With this he turns to Lady Teazle and asks, “Shall I beg your ladyship to inform me?” So saying he looks at her and perceiving that she is standing silent and ashamed, with downcast eyes, he makes her a bow of apology for his levity. Finally with another thrust at his brother, the unmasked hypocrite, he takes his departure airily, leaving them face to face. If the comic idea suffers from this contradiction of the intent of the comic dramatist, it must find what consolation it can in its sense of humor.