RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN
(1751-1816)
59. The | School | For | Scandal. | A | Comedy. | [Quotation] Dublin: | Printed for J. Ewling.
The first performance of the play occurred May 8, 1777, at the Drury Lane Theatre, which had been opened under Sheridan's management the previous year. A publisher immediately offered five hundred guineas for a corrected copy of the comedy, and Sheridan promised to prepare it for the press; but Mr. W. Fraser Rae tells us that when importuned for the revised manuscript Sheridan "always replied that he had never been able to satisfy himself as to the version which he wished to be published, and the comedy, with any of his final corrections, has not yet been given to the world."
The Ewling edition was printed from an acting copy which Sheridan had given to his sister, Mrs. LeFanu of Dublin, who, for one hundred guineas and free admission to the theater for herself and family, had let it go to Mr. Roger of the Theatre Royal. A dated edition appeared in Dublin in 1781.
The omission of the author's name from the title-page recalls the foolish statement made by Dr. Watkins on the authority of Isaac Reed, "that the play was written by a young lady, the daughter of a merchant in Thames Street [whose name and the number of whose house are judiciously withheld], that, at the beginning of the season when Mr. Sheridan commenced his management, the manuscript was put into his hands for judgment, soon after which the fair writer, who was then in a stage of decline, went to Bristol Hot Wells, where she died."
Duodecimo.
Collation: vi, 93 pp., 1 l.