The Theatre
" The School for Scandal." By Richard Brinslcy Sheridan. At the Old Vic Theatre.
GoLosauTu in The Good-Natued Man found a title which, applied to the author's attitude in place of his subject-matter, would have summed up his contemporary, Sheridan. His serenity was proof alike against emotion and against bad temper. In his satire we can discern only the faintest trace of resentment. Devoid of malice, it makes the characters he portrays appear ridiculous, but only accidentally detestable, and his ridicule is governed by little more than a passing irritation. His pasquinades are raised throughout on a ground-bass of sympathetic laughter. By the end of the play such irritation as he has felt has evaporated, and the curtain falls on a tail-piece of bland and cheerful amiability. Sheridan appears as anxious to make amends to his characters as to please his audience.
Yet he cannot be blamed. for his benevolence. The theatre, then as now, was primarily a place of entertainment, with
the difference that it was then principally for the world of fashion, where the quality of a play, as Hannah More relates, was of less importance than the distinction of the spectators. The dramatic convention which Sheridan inherited from his predecessors was forced upon him by the reluctance with which his audience accepted novelty : they required not a mirror held upte nature, but to the round of polite existence. lie inherited also his characters : Sir Peter Teazle, Charles Surface, Sir Oliver, Crabtree are all members of a generation grown up in the sentimental comedy of the previous decades, whose pedigrees stretch back as far as Menander. The plot owes, as in all plays of the period, certain retrospective debts.
The School for Scandal is not one of the great comedies. It is only in comedy that that character which springs directly from human nature can be continuously apparent, and Sheridan was:eompelled to sacrifice some of that advantage by his attendance on a convention which reduced a proportion of his Characters to types. Yet, slightly larger than life and equipped with the relevance of contemporary mannerisms; they provide by their extravagance, and hypocrisy, in the frame of this skilfully constructed play, a brilliant portrait of the characteristics rampant in an idle, decadent society; a portrait which to the original audience was doubly significant, because the conditions it portrayed exemplified something which played a recognized part in their own existence, and for the audience of to-day has the virtues of a delightful enter- tainment, whose appeal is not to our sense of virtue but to the intelligence.
The present production is unsatisfactory in several respects. Mr. Malcolm Keen's Sir Peter was unnecessarily vague and unnecessarily fussy : gestures do not acquire significance through continuous repetition. Miss Ashcroft's Lady Teazle was in a minor key into which it might not have been expected that she would relapse. Mr. Hickman found in Charles Surface a simpering effervescent impishness which seemed unwarranted and was certainly inexpressive. Mr. Roger Livesey's Joseph Surface was original, uncouth, and successful. Mr. George Devine and Mr. Alaistair Sim provided elaborate sketches of Moses and Crabtree which remained on the right side of burlesque. Mr. Harcourt Williams' production presents the play in a manner which does not precisely enhance, but does
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