How far do you feel it is poss

Sheridan and Wilde both use setting, costume and scenery to comment. They satirise social conventions. Their relationship with their audiences was a double-edged sword. Wilde loved and despised his audience and their class system. Sheridan’s Lady Sneerwell embodies this backstabbing when she says, “I confess, I have since known no pleasure equal to reducing others to the level of my own injured reputation”. (The School for Scandal, Act 1, Scene 1, Page 6)

The society is concerned with surfaces rather than deep emotions/thoughts. The Importance of Being Earnest, focused on the elite, making fun of their absur

Pearson, Hesketh, The Life of Oscar Wilde, London, Methuen and co Ltd, 1952.

The School for Scandal, is perhaps the most famous English language social comedy. It is the Ultimate Comedy of Manners. The linchpin of the dramatic plot revolves around the social conventions and customs of a leisured class. “ His appeal is to intelligence, pure and simple”. (Bergson, H, Pg 4.) However there is a distinction between intellectual involvement and indifference. “Indifference is the deadly foe of all comedy”. (Corrigan, R, Pg 5). A Comedy of Manners works best, evoking laughter, when the audience is not too far removed from the society in the play, either by time, or place or temperament. Sheridan scripted plays that he knew would appeal to his audience, much as Wilde did.

Reputation, as Sheridan and Wilde knew very well, is a fragile construction easily bruised or broken. In contemporary parlance, “character” and “reputation” were nearly synonymous. A person whose reputation was blotted had lost his or her “character” or public moral identity. In the scandalous college of Sheridan’s play, fashionable gossips try to out new rumours and improve on the malicious style. At eighteenth century salons like Lady Sneerwell’s, ladies and gentleman gathered to sip scandal-broth (tea) and read the “scandal-sheets” (newspapers). Lady Sneerwell encourages her peers-“O, Lud, you are going to be moral and forget that you are among friends”(The School for Scandal, Act 1, Scene 1, Page 8).

Corrigan, Robert, Comedy and the Comic Spirit, Scranton PA: Chandler Publishing Co., 1965.

Some topics in this essay:
Fundamental Wilde’s, Importance Earnest, Comedy Manners, Lady Bracknell, Sheridan Wilde, School Scandal, Lady Sneerwell, Moses Sheridan’s, Miss Prism, Lady Bracknell’s, importance earnest, 1 page, school scandal, act 1, act 1 page, comedy manners, lady bracknell, act 1 scene, scene 1, lady sneerwell, 1 scene 1, scene 1 page, 1 scene, confess pleasure, london nick hern,