Richard Sheridan’s 1775 play The Rivals is his first attempt to craft an 18th-century adaptation of a genre known as the comedy of manners. As a genre, the comedy of manners has a long history in English literature, but its heyday occurred during the Restoration Period in the 17th century. Two classic British examples of the genre are William Wycherley’s 1675 play The Country-Wife and William Congreve’s 1700 masterpiece The Way of the World. Some characteristics common to the comedy of manners include heavy use of satire, the advocation of realism over artificiality and superficiality, and elaborate, twisting plot lines. Sheridan also pokes fun at his contemporaries and the contrived manners of Georgian society via witty dialogue, clever sequences of deception, and abundant sexual innuendo.
Sheridan’s later works continue to explore the comedy of manners as a genre, especially in his 1777 masterpiece The School for Scandal. Although Sheridan adapted the genre to suit the sensibilities of his contemporary audience by toning down the presence of explicit sexual innuendos and including elements of the sentimental comedy genre, his work is heavily influenced by the writing of Wycherley and Congreve. Sheridan’s 18th-century plays revived the comedy of manners as a popular genre and are considered some of the finest examples of English comedic writing.
