A sideways look at 18th Century Comedy

"Comedy deals with the follies of the lower part of mankind and should excite laughter."
-Oliver Goldsmith, essay in Westminster Magazine, 1772.

Oliver Goldsmith and Sheridan felt a new kind of comedy had risen in 1770's England. They called it "sentimental comedy" because it focused on the virtues rather than the vices of middle-class society and attempted to engage the feelings of the audience rather than produce laughter. These comedies "employed characters who uttered lofty sentiments and whose sensibilities were delicately refined to appreciate goodness of heart and to be horrified at crassness of any sort." Goldsmith argued that because of the triviality of the subject, these comedies had no value as drama.

Though some would consider The Rivals a comedy of character in which "pleasure derives from individual effects and not from a sophisticated overall informing aesthetic design," other writers find deeper meaning in the play. For example, John Loftis in Sheridan and the Drama of Georgian England finds the comedy of character lies in the burlesque of the tyranny of the older generation (Sir Anthony and Mrs. Malaprop) against the whims of the younger generation (Lydia and Jack).

Sheridan's sympathy clearly lies with the elders, for he had no tolerance for financially imprudent marriages. In his portrait of Lydia's romantic fantasies and Faulkland's self-inflicted sufferings, he reminds us of the power of the uncontrolled imagination. They are targets in his critique on sentimental comedy, the intrusion into comedy of subjects appropriate to tragedy.

Jack Durant, in his book Richard Brinsley Sheridan, finds the playwright exposes the outrage of 18th century marriage customs where wealth and high birth count for everything. Sheridan also attacks the folly of dueling, dramatizing through the character of Sir Lucius O'Trigger the dehumanizing effects of the dueling code. Most importantly, he satirizes Lydia, Jack and Julia (who trumpets her own virtues) as offending the important code of common sense and moderation.

James Morwood in Sheridan Studies feels that Sheridan is writing of a "new age." In the opening dialogue between the Coachman and Fag, we learn the enlightened have discarded their wigs and Bath, not London, is the center of fashion and intrigue. Morwood finds the language of the play "strikingly realistic" and the new-fangled cursing a new kind of communication. In Act I scene ii, Lucy and Lydia are introduced, and Sheridan establishes the female protagonist as a woman of the moment who devours novels and frequents the library. While what she reads are romances of dubious value, at least she reads, a skill Sir Anthony feels is unnecessary for women. Sheridan is artfully lobbying for education for women, for "Mrs. Malaprop's charm school view is as empty a system as Lydia's education by novel." Finally, Morwood feels the important rivalry in the play is not between the suitors, but between the foolishness of the old and the absurdities of the young. The result is miscommunication, malapropism and a clash of styles.