I saw a 'Tilted Wig' production of this classic play from 1777 performed at the Devonshire Park Theatre in Eastbourne on the evening of 19th March 2024. It inspired me to read the text.
There a several plots, intertwined. Sir Peter Teazle, an elderly man, has recently married a young wife from the country (shades of William Wycherley's 1675 play The Country Wife with perhaps a dash of the Commedia dell'Arte although Sir Peter is much too nice to be a proper Pantalone; the mastermind who ensures the goodies win in the end is the servant Rowley, which is a very old theme indeed) and she has embraced 'fashionable' society, joining a set led by Lady Sneerwell which enjoys scandalous gossip. Lady Teazle is tempted by thoughts of an affair with Joseph Surface, a hypocrite, who fancies Lady T but has designs (for her money) on Sir Peter's ward, Maria, who herself loves Joseph's profligate and debt-ridden young brother Charles, who loves Maria (and is also loved by Lady Sneerwell, although he doesn't know that). Meanwhile Sir Oliver, the uncle of the Surface brothers, is returning from India where he has been living for so long that the boys don't know what he looks like (despite treasuring a portrait of him painted in his youth). He plans to 'test' them before deciding whether to leave his considerable fortune to them. So he pretends to be a moneylender in order to test Charles and a poor relation seeking financial support in order to test Joseph. The play climaxes with a farce scene which sees both Lady Teazle hiding behind a screen from her husband and Sir Peter hiding in a closet from Charles. In the end, despite scandalous reports of a duel, the evildoers are unmasked and good triumphs.
The play was a critical and commercial success, building on the reputation of Sheridan's debut hit The Rivals.
The play repeats anti-semitic tropes about Jews and usury; in the performance I saw, the moneylender was rebranded as a black wide-boy (though I'm not sure that replacing one racist slur with another is necessarily an improvement).
The first scene is a discussion between Mr Snake and Lady Sneerwell that explains the status quo ante to the audience and lays bare some of the characters and their motivations: it's a tell don't show that would be regarded as rather clumsy in modern theatre. The need to set up the situations means that the first half of the play is a sometimes slow build-up. The fun gets going properly in the second half, with the auction scene, the farce, and the wonderfully conflicting reports of the consequent duel.
Selected Quotes:
- "Wit loses its respect with me when I see it in company with malice." (1.1)
- "'Tis now six months since Lady Teazle made me the happiest of men - and I have been the miserablest dog ever since." (1.2)
- "The fault is entirely hers ... I am myself the sweetest-tempered man alive and hate a teasing temper - and so I tell her a hundred times a day." (1.2)
- "If you wanted authority over me, you should have adopted me and not married me. I am sure you were old enough." (2.1)
- "You had no taste when you married me." (2.1)
- "I hate to see prudence clinging to the green suckers of youth; 'tis like ivy round a sapling and spoils the growth of the tree." (2.3)
- "I don't care how soon we leave off quarrelling, provided you'll own you were tired first." (3.1)
- "There's the great degeneracy of the age! Many of our acquaintance have taste, spirit, and politeness, but plague on't, they won't drink." 3.3)
- "Here’s to the maiden of bashful fifteen;
- Here’s to the widow of fifty;
- Here’s to the flaunting extravagant quean,
- And here’s to the housewife that’s thrifty." (3.3)
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