There is one particular in which Congreve and Sheridan sin alike. They make all the characters witty. “Tell me if Congreve’s fools are fools indeed,” wrote Pope. And Sheridan can never resist the temptation of putting clever sayings into the mouths of simpletons. The romantic Miss Languish is nearly as witty as the very unromantic Lady Teazle. I need not quote the good things that Fag and Lucy say, but Thomas the coachman, and the stupid old family servant David say things equally good. It is David, e.g., who, when his master remarks that if he is killed in the duel his honor will follow him to the grave, rejoins, “Now that’s just the place where I could make shift to do without it.” Sir Anthony is witty, Bob Acres himself is witty, and even Mrs. Malaprop—foolish old woman—delivers repartees. Mrs. Malaprop’s verbal blunders, by the way, are a good instance of that artificial high polish so characteristic of Sheridan’s art. There are people in earlier comedies who make ludicrous misapplications of words—Shakespeare’s Dogberry, e.g., or Dame Quickly, but they do it naturally and occasionally. Sheridan reduces these accidents to a system—a science. No one in real life was ever so perseveringly and so brilliantly wrong as Mrs. Malaprop. Dramatically this is out of character and is, therefore, a fault, though a fault easy to forgive since it results in so much clever talk. It is a fault, as I have said, which Congreve shares with Sheridan, his heir and continuator. Perhaps the lines of character are not cut quite so deep in Sheridan as in Congreve nor has his dialogue the elder dramatist’s condensed, epigrammatic solidity. But on the whole, “The Rivals” and “The School for Scandal” are better plays than Congreve ever wrote. THE POETRY OF THE CAVALIERS