Performing at Drury Lane and around the Prince of Wales
John Bowen
A TRAITOR'S KISS: THE LIFE OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN by Fintan O'Toole Granta, £20, pp.516 Ris a classic playwright, regularly revived, who wrote only two full-length plays, The Rivals and The School for Scan- dal, a comic opera, The Duenna, two short- er pieces, St Patrick's Day (now never performed) and The Critic, a pantomime, Robinson Crusoe, and two adaptations, A Trip to Scarborough from Vanbrugh's The Relapse and Pizarro, a tragedy full of the most noble sentiments but no wit, adapted from Die Spanier in Peru by August Kotze- bue who wrote over 200 melodramas and was more popular than Schiller.
He was born in Ireland, left at the age of seven and never returned, although in later life he referred to Ireland as 'my country'. His father was an actor, teacher of elocu- tion and theatre-manager, who fought a duel to prove that an actor could be a gen- tleman. The son fought two duels to prove that an actor's son could be a gentleman. His older brother was the favourite; he himself was sent to Harrow. His mother died in France shortly after his 15th birth- day. Nobody wrote to tell him: the news was broken by his headmaster. At school he was 'much given to crying when alone'. All his life he was afraid of the dark.
He married, after various romantic com- plications including an elopement, a beau- tiful woman, Elizabeth, a professional singer, the daughter of Thomas Linley. After their marriage he forbade her to sing in public: a gentleman's wife is not paid to sing. Nor is a gentleman expected to be faithful to his wife.
The plays for which he is remembered were written between 1775 and 1779. In 1776 he bought half the patent of the The- atre Royal, Drury Lane and two years later acquired the rest. He was at first a success- ful manager, rebuilt the theatre to make it larger, then found it harder to fill. He had begun a political career by that time, and had less time to run a theatre, though the box-office receipts helped him to find cash for his day-to-day expenses. In 1809 the theatre burned down and was again rebuilt, but he himself lost control. He had political ambitions and was elect- ed for Stafford in 1780; politics was a more suitable occupation for a gentleman than the theatre. He drank heavily — port and claret — at Brooks's with friends, as gentle- men did. One of the gentlemen who were his friends was Charles James Fox. He voted with Fox and spoke on his side. Iron- ic yet elevated in sentiment, inspirational yet full of sense, the speeches were applauded: he treated the Commons like a theatre audience. Politics was not a way to riches, or not for a friend of Fox; in a par- liamentary career of 32 years, he only held office twice and never for long. He was usually in debt, as gentlemen often were, but could not be arrested while he held his parliamentary seat. One of his other gen- tlemanly friends was the Prince of Wales, whose debts were colossal. He helped to persuade Parliament to pay those debts, helped the Prince conceal from Parliament his marriage to a Catholic, became the Prince's close confidant and man of busi- ness, worked assiduously towards the trans- formation of the Prince of Wales into the Prince Regent, and when that filially hap- pened was promptly betrayed by faithless Prinny.
In 1812 he lost his seat, and twice endured a debtors' prison. He had already been going downhill for some time, had become depressed and a little mad, written obscene anonymous letters (with drawings) to his ex-mistress, Lady Duncannon, and his speeches in the Commons had often been drunkenly incoherent.
This is a long book and a bit of a trudge; the prose is not embellished by such gems as Steven Watson's description in The Reign of George III of 'the ageing Sheridan ...like some tipsy moth blundering around the phosphorescent prince'. The placing of Sheridan always in the foreground leads to a distortion of the general picture. There is no bibliography, and one has to search the Notes to find out what sources Mr O'Toole has consulted. When it comes to the impeachment of Warren Hastings, there is not much about India or the East India Company. O'Toole does not mention Hast- ings's position as a member of the minority on his own Council, or the use by Pitt and Dundas of the impeachment to humble the Company as a means of controlling it. Instead we are told that, owing to the effect of Sheridan's brilliant performance 'Pitt was ... forced to put his weight behind the impeachment'. Pull the other one, Mr O'Toole! Members of the Commons, then as now, might applaud a brilliant orator, but when it came to voting they followed their interest.
Sheridan is the subject, Irish politics the theme. The book begins in Ireland with the insurrection of 1641 more than 100 years before Sheridan was born and ends with the philosopher William Godwin at Sheri- dan's grave remembering the two of them at a convivial evening talking animatedly with two Irish patriots about Love.
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