"Bath, August 22d, 1775.
"Tell Sheridan his play has been acted at Southampton:—above a hundred people were turned away the first night. They say there never was any thing so universally liked. They have very good success at Bristol, and have played The Rivals several times:—Miss Barsanti, Lydia, and Mrs. Canning, Julia."
To enter into a regular analysis of this lively play, the best comment on which is to be found in the many smiling faces that are lighted up around wherever it appears, is a task of criticism that will hardly be thought necessary. With much less wit, it exhibits perhaps more humor than The School for Scandal, and the dialogue, though by no means so pointed or sparkling, is, in this respect, more natural, as coming nearer the current coin of ordinary conversation; whereas, the circulating medium of The School for Scandal is diamonds. The characters of The Rivals, on the contrary, are not such as occur very commonly in the world; and, instead of producing striking effects with natural and obvious materials, which is the great art and difficulty of a painter of human life, he has here overcharged most of his persons with whims and absurdities, for which the circumstances they are engaged in afford but a very disproportionate vent. Accordingly, for our insight into their characters, we are indebted rather to their confessions than their actions. Lydia Languish, in proclaiming the extravagance of her own romantic notions, prepares us for events much more ludicrous and eccentric, than those in which the plot allows her to be concerned; and the young lady herself is scarcely more disappointed than we are, at the tameness with which her amour concludes. Among the various ingredients supposed to be mixed up in the composition of Sir Lucius O'Trigger, his love of fighting is the only one whose flavor is very strongly brought out; and the wayward, captious jealousy of Falkland, though so highly colored in his own representation of it, is productive of no incident answerable to such an announcement:—the imposture which he practises upon Julia being perhaps weakened in its effect, by our recollection of the same device in the Nut-brown Maid and Peregrine Pickle.
The character of Sir Anthony Absolute is, perhaps, the best sustained and most natural of any, and the scenes between him and Captain Absolute are richly, genuinely dramatic. His surprise at the apathy with which his son receives the glowing picture which he draws of the charms of his destined bride, and the effect of the question, "And which is to be mine, Sir,—the niece or the aunt?" are in the truest style of humor. Mrs. Malaprop's mistakes, in what she herself calls "orthodoxy," have been often objected to as improbable from a woman in her rank of life; but, though some of them, it must be owned, are extravagant and farcical, they are almost all amusing,—and the luckiness of her simile, "as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile," will be acknowledged as long as there are writers to be run away with, by the wilfulness of this truly "headstrong" species of composition.
Of the faults of Sheridan both in his witty and serious styles—the occasional effort of the one, and the too frequent false finery of the other—some examples may be cited from the dialogue of this play. Among the former kind is the following elaborate conceit:—
"Falk. Has Lydia changed her mind? I should have thought her duty and inclination would now have pointed to the same object.
"Abs. Ay, just as the eyes of a person who squints: when her love-eye was fixed on me, t'other—her eye of duty—was finely obliqued: but when duty bade her point that the same way, off turned t'other on a swivel, and secured its retreat with a frown."
This, though ingenious, is far too labored—and of that false taste by which sometimes, in his graver style, he was seduced into the display of second-rate ornament, the following speeches of Julia afford specimens:—
"Then on the bosom of your wedded Julia, you may lull your keen regret to slumbering; while virtuous love, with a cherub's hand, shall smooth the brow of upbraiding thought, and pluck the thorn from compunction."
Again:—"When hearts deserving happiness would unite their fortunes, virtue would crown them with an unfading garland of modest hurtless flowers: but ill-judging passion will force the gaudier rose into the wreath, whose thorn offends them when its leaves are dropt."