The School for Scandal

The School for Scandal is a comedy of manners, a play satirizing the behavior and customs of upper classes through witty dialogue and an intricate plot with comic situations that expose various shortcomings of the characters. In general, the characters consist of stock types—such as the bore, the flirt, the gossip, the wastrel, the rich uncle, etc.—rather than individuals with unique qualities. Comedies of manners in Sheridan’s time typically avoided the romantic sentimentality that characterized many other stage dramas of the 18th century. In this play, the author mainly satirizes malicious gossip and hypocrisy in the fashionable society of London at that time. The School for Scandal is one of the most engaging high comedies in the English language, a work which according to Hazlitt, “has a genial spirit of frankness and generosity about it.”