The School for Scandal

About

Sheridan's 1777 masterpiece is the greatest English comedy of manners after Congreve: the scandal-mongering Lady Sneerwell and her circle of gossips drive a plot of reputation, real virtue versus performed virtue, and the testing of true character. The screen scene — in which Sir Peter Teazle discovers Lady Teazle hiding behind a screen in Joseph Surface's rooms — is one of the supreme moments of comic plotting in the English repertoire. The play had an enormous initial success and has barely left the stage since. Sheridan wrote it at twenty-five; he spent the rest of his long life in Parliament and never wrote another major play.