The Rivals is a satire of Sheridan’s contemporary society. The elaborate lengths to which each of the couples must go in order to be together satirizes the difficulties of courtship rituals at the time, compounded as they were by additional barriers of generation, class, and gender expectations. Sheridan introduces one of the play’s main satirical subjects at the start of Act 1, Scene 1, as Fag and the Coachman gossip about the love lives of their superiors:
COACHMAN: but pray, why does your master pass only for Ensign? – now if he had shammed General indeed –
FAG: Ah! Thomas, there lies the mystery o’the matter. Harkee, Thomas, my master is in love with a lady of a very singular taste: a lady who likes him better as a half-pay Ensign than if she knew he was son and heir to Sir Anthony Absolute, a baronet of three thousand a year!
COACHMAN: That is an odd taste indeed! – but has she got the stuff, Mr Fag; is she rich, hey?
FAG: Rich! – why, I believe she owns half the stocks!
In the passage above, the pair of servants remark on the oddity of Lydia Languish’s desire to pursue romance with a poor man over a wealthy one, when she herself has so much money she “could pay the national debt.” It is soon revealed later in the play that Lydia’s fanciful romantic notions of courtship are derived from her novel-reading habits. Thus, Sheridan’s depiction of Lydia satirizes changing conceptions of courtship and expectations for women’s roles in determining the course of their relationships.
Sheridan also satirizes the pretension of the upper classes through the dialogue of his characters—Mrs. Malaprop most especially—who often misspeak to hilarious effect, thereby revealing their lack of education and refinement:
Mrs. Malaprop: He is the very pineapple of politeness! You are not ignorant, Captain, that this giddy girl has somehow contrived to fix her affections on a beggarly, strolling, eavesdropping Ensign, whom none of us have seen, and nobody knows anything of. [...] I am sure I have done everything in my power since I exploded the affair! [...] Oh! it gives me the hydrostatics to such a degree!
In this single passage in Act 3, Scene 3, Mrs. Malaprop mistakes pinnacle for “pineapple,” exposed for “exploded,” and hysterics for “hydrostatics”! All in all, she makes 11 malapropisms in this scene alone, and far more throughout the rest of the play. Mrs. Malaprop’s excessive verbal faux pas satirize the habits of the upper and rising middle classes to appear more educated and respectable than they truly were.
The Rivals is a satire of Sheridan’s contemporary society. The elaborate lengths to which each of the couples must go in order to be together satirizes the difficulties of courtship rituals at the time, compounded as they were by additional barriers of generation, class, and gender expectations. Sheridan introduces one of the play’s main satirical subjects at the start of Act 1, Scene 1, as Fag and the Coachman gossip about the love lives of their superiors:
COACHMAN: but pray, why does your master pass only for Ensign? – now if he had shammed General indeed –
FAG: Ah! Thomas, there lies the mystery o’the matter. Harkee, Thomas, my master is in love with a lady of a very singular taste: a lady who likes him better as a half-pay Ensign than if she knew he was son and heir to Sir Anthony Absolute, a baronet of three thousand a year!
COACHMAN: That is an odd taste indeed! – but has she got the stuff, Mr Fag; is she rich, hey?
FAG: Rich! – why, I believe she owns half the stocks!
In the passage above, the pair of servants remark on the oddity of Lydia Languish’s desire to pursue romance with a poor man over a wealthy one, when she herself has so much money she “could pay the national debt.” It is soon revealed later in the play that Lydia’s fanciful romantic notions of courtship are derived from her novel-reading habits. Thus, Sheridan’s depiction of Lydia satirizes changing conceptions of courtship and expectations for women’s roles in determining the course of their relationships.
Sheridan also satirizes the pretension of the upper classes through the dialogue of his characters—Mrs. Malaprop most especially—who often misspeak to hilarious effect, thereby revealing their lack of education and refinement:
Mrs. Malaprop: He is the very pineapple of politeness! You are not ignorant, Captain, that this giddy girl has somehow contrived to fix her affections on a beggarly, strolling, eavesdropping Ensign, whom none of us have seen, and nobody knows anything of. [...] I am sure I have done everything in my power since I exploded the affair! [...] Oh! it gives me the hydrostatics to such a degree!
In this single passage in Act 3, Scene 3, Mrs. Malaprop mistakes pinnacle for “pineapple,” exposed for “exploded,” and hysterics for “hydrostatics”! All in all, she makes 11 malapropisms in this scene alone, and far more throughout the rest of the play. Mrs. Malaprop’s excessive verbal faux pas satirize the habits of the upper and rising middle classes to appear more educated and respectable than they truly were.
