Sheridan has often been called the English Beaumarchais. The comedies of Beaumarchais, “The Barber of Seville” and “The Marriage of Figaro” were precisely contemporaneous with Sheridan’s, and, like the latter, they were a reaction against sentimentalism, against the so-called _comédie larmoyante_ or tearful comedies of La Chaussée and other French dramatists. With Beaumarchais laughter and mirth returned once more to the French stage. He goes back for a model to Molière, as Sheridan goes back to English Restoration comedy, and particularly to Congreve, whom he resembles in the wit of his dialogue and the vivacity of his character painting, but whom he greatly excels in the invention of plot and situation. Congreve’s plots are intricate and hard to follow, highly improbable and destitute of climaxes. On the other hand, Sheridan is a master of plot. The duel scene in “The Rivals,” the auction scene and the famous screen scene in “The School for Scandal” are three of the most skilfully managed situations in English comedy. Congreve’s best play, “The Way of the World” (1700), was a failure on the stage. But whatever Sheridan’s shortcomings, a want of practical effectiveness, of acting quality, was never one of them. Sheridan revived society drama, what Lamb called the artificial comedy of the seventeenth century. Lydia Languish, with her romantic notions, and Mrs. Malaprop with her “nice derangement of epitaphs” are artificial characters. Bob Acres is for the most part delightfully natural, but his system of referential or sentimental swearing—“Odds blushes and blooms” and the like—is an artificial touch. The weakest feature of “The Rivals” is the underplot, the love affairs of Faulkland and Julia. Faulkland’s particular variety of jealousy is a “humor” of the Ben Jonsonian sort, a sentimental alloy, as Charles Lamb pronounced it, and anyway infinitely tiresome. In modern acting versions this business is usually abridged. As Jefferson played it, Julia’s part was cut out altogether, and Faulkland makes only one appearance (Act II, Scene I), where his presence is necessary for the going on of the main action.