The School For Scandal Analysis

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The School for Scandal is a play written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It was first performed in London, 1777, in Drury Lane Theatre. It is his most well-known play, and is often considered to be one of the greatest comedies of manners. The play sets in London in the 1770s and represents the everyday life of the upper-class. It was great success and it had a refreshing effect on the public after the long years of the sentimental drama. It satirizes the behaviour of upper classes with all of their customs and it avoids all of the elements of an eighteenth-century sentimental drama. Therefore, my paper intends to provide an analysis on The School for Scandal as the parody of sentimental comedy.
Sentimental comedy was a specific form of the eighteenth-century …show more content…

The delineation of these characters is aimed at provoking entertainment and laughter to the audience”(An analysis of The School for Scandal). This proves that the play is strongly opposed to sentimental plays, which the audience is not allowed to laugh at. This is a feature of comedies of manners, where entertainment and laughter was the aim. Furthermore, there are stock type characters in the play for example Sir Oliver, the rich uncle, or the gossiping widows. However, there are characters “with unique traits”, …show more content…

This is how the characters are distributed into two groups in the play. They can be considered as the “protagonists and the antagonists”, in a sense that the antagonists try to sabotage and destroy the relationships and characters of the

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