Richard Brinsley Sheridan

This collection reinvigorates Sheridan studies by presenting his spectacular life and extraordinary works in the intricate political, social, and cultural context of Georgian London. The author of The Rivals, The Duenna, The School for Scandal, and the The Critic was also an innovative theatrical manager, a flashy profligate, and the mainstay of political opposition in the decisive decades of the late eighteen and early nineteenth centuries.

Jack E. DeRochi is associate professor of English at Winthrop University. He has published several articles on late eighteenth-century drama and satire in such publications as Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Research and Studies in American Humor. His essay on the emergence of the masculine gothic was included in Prologues, Epilogues, Curtain-Raisers and Afterpieces: The Rest of the Eighteenth-Century London Stage (2007). Daniel J. Ennis is professor of English at Coastal Carolina University. He is the author of Enter the Press-Gang: Representations of Naval Impressment in Eighteenth-Century British Literature (2002) and edited, with Judith B. Slagle, a collection of essays entitled Prologues, Epilogues, Curtain-Raisers and Afterpieces: The Rest of the Eighteenth-Century London Stage (2007). He has published essays on John Dryden, Christopher Smart and Lord Byron among others.

Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Jack E. DeRochi and Daniel J. Ennis One: The Many Lives of Richard Brinsley Sheridan Jack E. DeRochi Two: Sheridan's Early Style Robert Jones Three: The Literary Origins of Sir Lucius O'Trigger David Haley Four: Reflections upon Maintaining a Competitive Edge: The Duenna and her Peers at Drury Lane Mita Choudhury Five: Schools Beyond Scandal, 1776-1800 Emily Friedman Six: The Rule of Scandal: Sheridan in the Age of Wilde and Shaw John Vance Seven: Naumachia and the Structure of The Critic Daniel J. Ennis Eight: The Lees and Sheridan: An Unexamined Connection Steven Gores Nine: Sheridan's Courtroom Dramas: The Impeachment of Warren Hastings and the Trial of the Bounty Mutineers Glynis Ridley Ten: Pizarro's Spectacular Dialectics: Sheridan's Bridge to the Cosmopolitical Future Daniel O'Quinn Eleven: Sheridan and Women Marianna D'Ezio Twelve: Caricaturing Sheridan David Francis Taylor Bibliography Index About the Contributors