7 July: Boreham on Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Footlights and Forum
Today marks the anniversary of the death of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the very mention of whose name conjures up some of the most droll, most quaint, and most lovable characters in any literature. Who that has once been introduced to the Teazles and the Surfaces and the Absolutes can ever recall their faces without a smile? And Mrs. Malaprop alone is worth her weight in gold, which is saying a good deal!

As one stands beside that tomb in the Abbey in which the bones of Sheridan have rested for more than a century, the imagination is confused by the medley of incongruous scenes that must be visited before a just estimate of his personality, character, and work can safely be attempted. Sheridan played so many parts and played each part so wonderfully well! Byron declared that if Sheridan did a thing, he did it as nobody else could have done it. "He wrote the best drama, the best farce, the best address, and, to crown it all, delivered the finest oration ever conceived or heard in this country." Like Lord Beaconsfield, who was twelve when Sheridan died, and whose ideals may have been influenced by the example of his illustrious predecessor, he adorned both politics and literature; and it is difficult to decide as to the realm in which he shone with the greatest lustre. His life was a mosaic. Was ever such a tangle of armours and of duels, of tender poetry and violent passion, of stagecraft and statesmanship, of genuine felicity and degrading misery? It is a career of lightning changes, of amazing transformations, of sensational denouements. The fluctuations of light and shade are almost incredible. At every turn we are startled by the emergence of the unexpected. New factors are always rushing into operation from without; unsuspected powers are always displaying themselves from within.

Jack of All Trades And Failure At None
We read the story of Sheridan's youth, and we make up our minds that he is a sentimental young gallant, swept off his feet by his infatuation for the pretty daughter of a music master, with whom he had contracted a secret marriage. We turn the page and find him producing dramatic compositions of such elegance and beauty that the entire theatrical world enthrones him. We have scarcely accommodated ourselves to the change when, just as suddenly, our bewildering hero invades the world of statesmanship, instantly attains Cabinet rank, and becomes the colleague of Fox, the rival of Pitt and the most brilliant political orator that the British Parliament has ever known.

After a hectic and glamorous youth, Sheridan produced his first comedy, "The Rivals," at the age of 24. The play was at first simply murdered by the actors. Sheridan watched the performance in abject horror. With characteristic vigour, however, he immediately saw the manager and insisted on the summary dismissal of the principal offender. The rest of the cast were brought to their senses by the humiliation of their comrade, and, next night, the audience in Covent Garden formed a very different impression. The play was the talk of the town and its permanent success was assured. "The Rivals" was followed by "The Duenna," and this, in its turn, paved the way for his masterpiece, "The School for Scandal." By this time his popularity was so enormous that every minute was crowded with social engagements. He tells us that to pen this third drama, he had to steal from his bed at sunrise, and, at midnight, dash to his desk as soon as his last visitor had left. The comedy bears some traces of this fitful and piecemeal procedure; but, for all that, it took London by storm and was ranked as the finest production of its kind that the English stage had ever presented.

A Dizzy Pinnacle And Swift Descent
Before he was thirty, Sheridan stood for Parliament, was triumphantly returned, and, in the House, attracted instant attention. He was at once advanced to Cabinet rank. In the course of the phenomenal career that followed, he held many offices; yet it is not as a statesman, in the strict sense of the word, that he will be best remembered. With all the intensity of an ardent nature, he set himself to master the arts of rhetoric, and his success eclipsed his most audacious dreams. The speech in which he charged Warren Hastings with the spoliation of his Asiatic subjects—a speech that occupied five hours and a half—is still considered our purest model of parliamentary oratory. When at length the wizard resumed his seat, the House so far forgot its statuesque traditions as to indulge in a storm of clapping. A speculative publisher offered Sheridan a thousand pounds on the spot for the copyright of the speech; and Pitt protested against the question being put whilst the House was in such a ferment of excitement.

Sheridan should have died that day. Forty-seven years of age, he was at the zenith of his powers and at the height of his renown. The years that followed that dizzy moment robbed him of everything. One night in 1809, the glare of a tremendous conflagration reddened the windows of the House of Commons. Sheridan, seated in his place, never dreamed that it was his entire fortune that was being devoured by the flames. The incident was typical of the cataract of calamities that darkened all his later days. He lost everything, including his seat in Parliament and died, at the age of 65, amidst every circumstance of poverty, wretchedness, and bleak humiliation. Yet he possessed undoubted charm. One of the choices compliments ever paid him was offered by his boy. The dramatist was scolding Tom for some youthful misdemeanour. "Do you know," he asked, "what my father would have done if I had behaved as you have done?" "Sir," retorted the lad, "are you daring to suggest that your father was a better man than my father?" Time is a wonderful hearer, not only of wrenched limbs, but of damaged reputations. With the years we shall relegate to a kindly oblivion much that clouded Sheridan's fame, whilst treasuring the memory of his most attractive traits and worthiest achievements.

F W Boreham

Image: Richard Brinsley Sheridan