The Rivals - Summary, Character Sketches and Critical Questions
Summary of the Play The Rivals
The rivals has a multiple plot. The main plot is the love affair of Miss Lydia Languish and Captain Jack Absolute. Then there is a sub-plot which deals with the love affair of Miss Julia Mellville and Faulkland. There is another sub-plot dealing with Mrs. Malaprop’s passion for the Irish baronet, Sir Lucius O’Trigger. Nor can we forget Sir Anthony Absolute (Capt. Absolute’s father) and Bob Acres, a country squire, both of whom play important roles in the play.
Lydia – Absolute Affair
Lydia’s romantic inclinations
Lydia’s Love for Beverley (Absolute in disguise)
Sir Anthony not aware of his son’s love affair
Sir Anthony’s choice of Lydia as Absolute’s wife
Lydia determined to marry Beverley and no other man
A case of mistaken identity
However when Absolute happens to learn that the girl that his father has chosen is none other than Lydia, he goes and apologises for his misbehaviour and agrees to marry the girl that the father has chosen. Still he does not tell him that he has been courting the same girl under a different identity.
Sir Anthony sends Absolute to the house of Mrs. Malaprop to meet Lydia. Lydia is highly surprised when, expecting to meet Sir Anthony’s son, she finds herself face to face with her own Beverley. He tells her that he has come to meet her by duping her aunt and making her believe that he is Capt. Absolute. Lydia still does not know that Capt. Absolute and her lover Beverley are the same man. Nor does Mrs. Malaprop know that Capt. Absolute himself is Beverley. Sir Anthony also does not know anything about his son’s being in love with Lydia under the assumed identity of Beverley.
The discovery and Lydia’s annoyance
The Reconciliation
Julia Faulkland Affair
Julia, a ward of Sir Anthony is in love with Faulkland. Her late father had taken a pledge from her that she would marry Faulkland. She is also obliged to Faulkland for having saved her life from death by drowning on one occasion. However, she loves him not for these reasons but for his own sake. Faulkland is a fretful, fault-finding, and sceptical lover who is ever doubting her love and needs to be repeatedly assured that she loves him truly and for his own sake. When away from her, he is ever worried about her health and welfare.
When we first meet Faualkland, he has been away from her for some time. He is complaining to his friend, Capt. Absolut, that he is worried about the health and welfare of Julia. She might be feeling upset due to his absence or a change of weather might have affected her health adversely. Absolute informs him that she too is in Bath at the time along with her uncle and is in perfect good health. But now, he invents another cause to feel distressed. Absolute’s information about her good health is confirmed by Acres. He further informs him that she has been enjoying herself during his absence. She has been attending parties in the countryside and singing and dancing in them. He had perhaps expected her to be as distressed due to his absence as he was. He complains to Absolute that Julia has been leading a life of gaiety and mirth while he has been longing and pining for her and feeling miserable.
He calls on her but gets no opportunity to talk to her freely. He calls again. He complains that her cheerful conduct during his absence is a clear evidence that she does not love him. He tells her that if
He calls on her and tells her that he has got into a serious trouble, that his life is in danger and he will have to leave the country to save his life. Julia offers to stand by him in his hour of misfortune. She volunteers to accompany him and face all the hardships that might come their way cheerfully.
In this way, their love affair also comes to a happy conclusion.
Sir Lucius and Mrs. Malaprop Affair
Mrs. Malaprop, the elderly widow and aunt and guardian of Lydia takes fancy to Sir Lucius O’Trigger, an Irish baronet who is temporarily staying in Bath. She takes the initiative and starts writing love-letters to him under the assumed name of Delia. She sends these letters to him through her maid-servant Lucy. Lucy is a cunning woman. She has no scruples in making money by all means, fair or foul. She makes Sir Lucius believe that these letters are from Mrs. Malaprop’s young niece. Sir Lucius feeling happy at having won the affection of a young girl of seventeen keeps giving money to her.
On learning that Capt. Absolute is also a suitor of Lydia’s, Sir Lucius just cooks up an excuse to challenge him to a duel in the name of honour. Just when the duel between the two is about to begin, Sir Anthony arrives at the scene along with Mrs. Malaprop and other ladies. Lydia denies having written any letters to Sir Lucius. Mrs. Malaprop then steps forward and admits that she has been writing those letters out of the kindness and generosity of her heart. Thus there is no basis for Sir Lucius to fight a duel with Capt. Absolute because there is no rivalry between the two. Mrs. Malaprop suffers a great disappointment as Sir Lucius is not willing to accept her love. Sir Anthony tries to console her by paying her a compliment that she is still in her bloom. She, however is not pleased and blames all men of being barbarians.
Character Sketches
1. Captain Jack Absolute
Captain Jack Absolute may be
called the hero of the play The Rivals. He is the chief male character in the
major plot of the play. He is the son of a rich baronet, Sir Anthony Absolute,
and holds the rank of a captain in the army. But he hides his true identity and
masquerades as a poor low paid ensign to humour the romantic whims of his
sweetheart, Lydia Languish, who does not want to love a rich man and prefers to
elope and marry against the wishes of her aunt and guardian, Mrs. Malaprop.
He is a realistic and practical
man. He wants to keep his real identity a secret till he is sure that Lydia
will not forsake him after discovering who he really is. He is practical in
another respect also. He can elope with Lydia immediately and marry her in the
way she wishes. But he does not do so because he does not want to lose the
share of her property that she would get by marrying the man her aunt wants her
to. He waits for the right time to disclose his identity and get the consent of
her aunt. Even when he goes to meet Lydia in obedience to his father, he makes
her believe that he has thrown dust into the eyes of her aunt and given her the
impression that he is Captain Absolute.
He is a very confident and clever
fellow. He plays Ensign Beverley to perfection without allowing Lydia to
suspect that it is an assumed identity. He deals with his father very cleverly
when he tells him to marry the girl of his choice. But when he discovers that
the girl that his father wants him to marry is none other than Lydia, he loses
no time in going to his father and apologising for his defiant behaviour
earlier. Without disclosing that he has come to know who the girl is, he
pretends that he would marry any girl of his father’s choice howsoever ugly she
may be. He also assures Mrs. Malaprop that he would be proud of calling himself
her nephew by marrying Lydia. To the very end, he is able to conceal from Acres
that he himself is Ensign Beverley. Even when Acres wants him to take his
challenge to Beverley, he does not let him know that he himself is Beverley.
He is very bold and has the
courage to stand his ground even at the risk of losing his father’s affection
and even his property. He defies the dictatorial manner in which his father
wants to impose his choice on him. He also has the courage to accept fearlessly
Sir Lucious O’Trigger’s challenge to a duel.
As a lover, he is a perfect foil
to Faulkland. While Faulkland is captious and suspicious, he has full faith in his
sweetheart and does not worry unnecessarily. As he says, Faulkland prepares the
bitter cup for himself, the bitter cup for him is prepared by Lydia. He does
not allow imaginary fears to worry himself as does Faulkland. Even in a
critical situation, he does not lose his calm. He is a sincere lover and would
not desert her even to please his father. But he never finds any fault with her
and never doubts her love for him.
Although he is a loving and
obedient son, he is not prepared to desert his sweetheart even at his father’s
bidding. He plainly tells him that he loves another girl and would marry no
other girl in the world. It is true that he befools his father on several
occasions. He tells him that he is in Bath for recruitment. On another occasion
when his father recognises him in spite of his attempt to escape him, he tells
him falsely that he was going to Lydia to make up his quarrel with her. When on
the day of the duel, his father finds something hard under his coat, he tries
to befool him by saying that he is
carrying some gifts for Lydia.
Captain Absolute is a man of
ready wit and has a keen sense of humour. He can enjoy a good laugh at the
expense of others. He has also the ability to be sarcastic and ironical when
the occasion demands. He laughs at the cost of Faulkland when Acres describes
to him the playful activities of Julia in the countryside. Again he enjoys the
situation thoroughly when he reads the letter challenging him to a duel without
knowing it. The answers he gives to his father when defying his dictatorial
attitude and again when pretending to be repentant are full of wit and humour.
He even suggests that he would marry the old lady if his father has a mind to
marry the niece.
He is not a morbid man like
Faulkland who is always bringing misery on himself by imaginary fears and
unfounded doubts. Nor is he a ridiculous character like Sir Lucious who gets
easily befooled and tries to pick a quarrel with him although there is no real
ground for doing so.
Captain absolute is really the
key character in the play. He is at the centre of the principal plot of the
play. His love in disguise is the chief interest in the play. Faulkland
considers him in his assumed identity to be his rival in love. Sir Lucious too
thinks that he is in love with the same girl as is writing love letters to him.
The prospect of his fighting a duel with Sir Lucious lends additional interest
to the play. The revelation of his true identity in the end solves all the
problems relating to the main plot. Without him, the play would really lose
much of its interest.
Lydia Languish
Lydia Languish is the heroine of
the play The Rivals. She is the central female character in the main plot of
the play. She is the niece of Mrs. Malaprop. She is a very rich girl. Even her
lapdog eats out of gold. She feeds her parrot with pearls. Her thread papers
are made of bank-notes. According to her father’s will, she will inherit her
father’s wealth only if she marries with the consent of her aunt and guardian,
Mrs. Malaprop.
Lydia is a girl with strange
romantic notions. Unlike most of the girls, she does not want a rich and highly
placed lover. She wants to have an affair with a poor and lowly placed young
man. It is to satisfy her romantic whim that Captain Absolute has to assume the
character of a low paid ensign Beverley. When the true identity of Captain
Absolute becomes known to her, she is terribly disappointed and bitterly scolds
him and bursts into tears. She stops speaking to him and it seems that she will
break her relations with him because of this reason.
Lydia does not want to marry a
man of her aunt’s choice with her consent even though that means the loss of
all the wealth that her father has left her. She wants to marry a poor fellow
in defiance of her aunt’s wishes. She does not want a routine marriage. She
wants to elope with her lover, go to Scotland and marry him there.
She has an odd taste and
whimsical ideas about love. In order to have a quarrel with her lover just to
amuse herself, she writes herself a letter informing her that Beverley, her
lover was making love to another girl and then she accuses him of infidelity.
She is a very bold girl. She
openly defies her aunt. When the aunt tells her to promise to forget her poor
lover and agree to marry the rich man she has chosen, she bluntly tells her to
her face that she will do nothing of the kind and she will hate the man of her
choice.
Lydia is fond of reading. She
keeps borrowing loads of books from the circulating libraries. But the books she
likes to read are of the sentimental type. She does not like religious or
moralising books that her aunt would have her read. She keeps the books she
really likes to read hidden from her aunt. To throw dust in her eyes, she keeps
one or two books of the moralising type at her bedside.
We find a strange contradiction in Lydia’s
character. She can see the absurdity of Julia in loving a captious, capricious
and suspicious man out of gratitude for saving her life and in accordance with
the wishes of her father. She also sees the absurdity in Mrs. Malaprop’s
falling in love. But she does not see the absurdity of her own whimsically
romantic idea of love and marriage.
Sir Anthony Absolute
Sir Anthony Absolute is the
father of Captain Absolute, the hero of the main plot in the play. He makes an
immense contribution to the comic character of the play. He is a typical old
baronet who possesses all the characteristics of his class of people. He
suffers from gout. It is his fear of another attack of gout that brings him to
Bath which his son too happens to be visiting.
He is an autocratic dictatorial
father. He demands complete and unquestioned obedience from his son. If his son
shows any reluctance in obeying him, he runs into a frenzy and begins to abuse
him in the worst possible manner. He even threatens to disown him, to unbeget
him and turn him out of his house. When Capt. Absolute was a boy, he used to
thrash him if he ever tried to disobey him. Even now when his son is a young
man, he expects him to do his bidding blindly. He insists on his son marrying
the girl he has chosen for him although he is in love with another girl and
frankly tells him so. He wants to impose his own will on the son without caring
for his sentiments.
Sir Anthony is a very short
tempered man and runs into a mad rage at the slightest reason. He goes mad with
anger when his son tells him that he loves another girl and therefore cannot
marry the girl he wants him to marry. He hurls all sorts of abuses on him and
threatens to unbeget him and turn him out. He would force his son to marry even
the ugliest girl in the world if he chooses her. This is surprising because as
a young man, he would never have agreed to marry an ugly girl even to please
his father.
However, his anger is short
lived. When Capt. Absolute learns that the girl his father has chosen is none
other than the girl he loves, he apologises and poses to be repentant. Sir
Anthony loses no time in forgetting his anger and readily pardons him for his
earlier defiance.
Sir Anthony is against the habit
of reading. He is particularly against women having this habit. He feels that
Lydia’s habit of reading is responsible for her defiance of her aunt and
guardian as it has filled her head with strange romantic notions. He believes
that girls should be trained in household jobs rather than be allowed to read.
Sir Anthony is the richest source
of comedy in the play. We laugh at him as well with him. His fits of
rage, the abusive language that
he uses for his son, his threats, his insistence on getting his son married to
any girl of his choice – all these things make us split our sides with
laughter. Another source of laughter is his wit. His sarcastic remarks, his
taunts, his description of the ugly girl with every imaginable deformity make
us split our sides with laughter. On learning that his son has been courting
the very girl he wants him to marry, he says that he is happy at the way he has
befooled him. Imagining that Jack has taken some liberty with Lydia which has
annoyed her, he says that it is in the blood of the Absolutes to be too eager
in love. In fact, everything he says in the play makes us burst into peals of
laughter.
In spite of all his oddities, he
is a lovable character. There is nothing cynical or misanthropic about him. He
never means to hurt anybody. He is always full of zest for life. His
description of the beauty of Lydia has no match. He is not a simpleton as some
may suppose. He cannot easily be deceived. He is quick to see the truth as is
clear on many occasions.
His role at the end of the play
shows his intelligence. The way he averts the duel between Captain Absolute and
Sir Lucius, the way he reconciles Lydia with Capt. Absolute and Julia with
Faulkland all show how intelligent and resourceful he is. The consolation he
offers to those who have been disappointed also shows how he can rise to the
occasion. Indeed if we are asked to name the most loveable character in the
play, our choice will fall on him. The only other rival to him in this respect
is Mrs. Malaprop.
Mrs. Malaprop
Mrs. Malaprop is one of the best
known comic characters in English Comedy. She is the richest source of laughter
in the play. Her role in the play has made her an immortal figure in the
history of English drama.
There is a strange contradiction
in her character. She has been intercepting Beverley’s letter to her niece and
does everything in her power to put an end to her love affair with him. But she
has herself taken fancy to the tall Irish gentleman, Sir Lucius and writes
letters to her under the assumed name of Delia.
Mrs. Malaprop has a strange way
of illustrating her point of view with examples from her personal life. When
Lydia says that she cannot forget Beverley, she says that nothing is as easy as
to forget if you decide to do so. When her husband died, she soon forgot him as
if he had never existed. Again when Lydia says that she cannot marry the man
she hates, she says that hatred is the best thing to begin a marriage with. She
had herself married the man she hated and the result was her happy marriage.
The most memorable thing about
her is her incorrect use of words. It is this trait of her character that has
made her immortal and given rise to the term Malapropism for this kind of wrong
use of words. Parson Adams in Joseph Andrews by fielding is modelled on her.
She believes that she has the greatest command over the English language.
Indeed, she is proud of her ‘nice derangement (arrangement) of epitaphs
(epithets)’. She is ever trying to impress people with her range of vocabulary
without ever realising that she is making herself a laughing stock by using the
wrong words in place of the right ones. Illiterate for obliterate, contagious
for contiguous, illegible for eligible, locality for loquacity and reprehend
for apprehend are just a few examples of her misguided choice of words. She may
not be the first character of this
type. But she is such a ‘queen of the dictionary’ (as Sir Anthony calls her) that
the tendency for such inappropriate usage has got its name from her.
In spite of her great confidence
in her intelligence and sagacity, she can easily be duped. Her maid-servant
Lucy dupes her very easily. This simpleton looking girl proves too clever for
her. She believes that Lucy would never betray her when the latter promises
that she would not breathe a word to anybody about her letters to Sir Lucius.
But Lucy not only divulges the secret to Fag but also makes Sir Lucius believe
that the letters are written by the young niece instead of her aunt. Capt.
Absolute throws dust in her eyes by reading to her a letter supposedly written
by Beverley (but actually written by himself) in which he describes her as the
‘old weather beaten she dragon’. He also makes her agree to connive at Lydia’s
elopement with Beverley saying that he would manage to catch Beverley at the
last minute and carry Lydia off himself.
Although Mrs. Malaprop is against
giving girls the kind of education given to boys, she is not totally against
their education. She believes that a girl should be sent at the age of nine to a
boarding school in order to learn a little ‘ingenuity and artifice’ and acquire
a good knowledge of ‘orthography’ so that she may not misspell and mispronounce
words as most of the girls do. Some knowledge of ‘geometry’ (geography) is also
necessary for a girl according to her.
Mrs. Malaprop is always telling
her niece what to do and what not to do. She tells her that a young woman has
no business to think, that violent memories do not become a young woman, that
lying does not become a young woman and caparisons (comparisons) do not become
a young woman. Her repetition of the same language every time makes her look
comic and sends the audience into uncontrollable laughter.
To conclude, we may say that Mrs.
Malaprop is a character whom it is not easy to forget. She leaves an indelible
impression on the mind of the audience who yearn to come across her again and
again.
Faulkland
Faukland is the hero of the
subordinate love story in The Rivals written by R. B. Sheridan. He is in love with
Julia who is the niece of Sir Anthony Absolute and a cousin of Capt. Absolute,
the hero of the main love story.
Faulkland is an eccentric in
love. He is never happy. Whatever the circumstances, he is forced by his nature
to discover some cause for being unhappy or worried about. Lydia describes him
as capricious, jealous, ungrateful and imperious as a lover who has been
delaying his marriage to Julia. Absolute’s opinion of him is no different from
Lydia’s. He describes him as “the most teasing, captious, incorrigible lover”.
Really, as Capt. Absolute says, he always carries in his mind a confounded
mixture of doubts, fears, hopes and wishes. When he is away from Julia, he is
worried all the time about her health and happiness. He feels miserable lest any
change of weather should have an adverse effect on her health. A shower, a
blast of wind, the heat of noon or the dews of evening may make her feel ill.
He is worried that his absence may be making her feel as sad and anxious as he
is. But when he learns that Julia has been perfectly hale and hearty in his
absence and has been enjoying herself, attending parties, singing and dancing
in the countryside, he is again upset because it arouses his suspicion that she
does not care for him.
Again his expectations of her are
somewhat odd. He does not want her to love him for his charming looks or for
his intelligence. He does not want her to love him out of gratitude for having
saved her life from death by drowning or because of the pledge that her father
had taken from them to love and marry each other. He wants her to love him only
for the sake of love. We all know that love must have some ground to stand
upon. We love somebody because we find some loveable quality in him or her. But
Faulkland wants to be loved for no reason but love.
Faulkland has a strange
philosophy of love. “The mutual tear that steals down the cheek of parting
lovers is a compact that no smile shall live there till they meet again.” In
other words, a person in love should be shedding tears all the time during the
absence of his or her lover.
Another example of his strange
capriciousness is seen when, offended by his perpetual fault finding and
suspiciousness, Julia goes away in tears. He is distressed and wonders whether
she would come back or not. If he feels that she is coming back, he blames her
of lacking steadiness and looks upon her leaving in a temper as a female trick.
But if she feels that she is not coming back, he blames her of being obstinate
and cruel. When she does not come back, he blames himself of being suspicious
and vows never to suspect her again. The oddest thing about him is that even
after this vow, he is unable to get over his suspicious nature. To make sure of
her love for him, he subjects her to a test.
On receiving a letter from Julia
telling her that she has forgiven him, he should be feeling jubilant. But he
does not. He blames her of being too forward. He believes that a girl should
not take the initiative for reconciliation. She should not forgive her lover’s
misconduct on her own without his seeking it. It is the male who must take the
first step. Now he plans to subject her to a test to ascertain her love for
him. At their next meeting, he tells her falsely that his life is in danger and
he must flee the country. When Julia assures him that she will never desert
him, that she will accompany him wherever he goes and face all the hardships
that come their way, he admits that he was telling a lie. Once again, Julia
feels terribly offended and with justification. Again he feels guilty of having
hurt her. It seems to be his habit to err again and again and then to feel
guilty and miserable. He is really incorrigible.
Once again, it is Julia who takes
the initiative for reconciliation. Thanks to the recommendation of Sir Anthony,
they are reconciled and married. It is only to be hoped that they will have a
happy married life. His whimsical and capricious ways and his odd philosophy of
love keeps tickling the audience throughout the play. Truly, as Absolute says,
he prepares the bitter cup for himself and keeps preparing it again and again.
Faulkland is every inch a comic
character. It is wrong to see him as a concession to the sentimentalism
prevailing on the stage before Sheridan. Sheridan hated sentimentalism and,
along with Goldsmith, tried to cure the stage of the syndrome of
sentimentalism. The so called sentimental scenes are not a concession. Sheridan
is parodying the sentimentalism of his predecessors and making us laugh at it
by providing an overdose of sentimentalism. We do not any sympathy for
Faulkland’s distress. Rather we laugh at him heartily for keeping himself
miserable without any reason to be so.
Julia Mellville
Julia Mellville is the heroine of
the subordinate love story in R. B. Sheridan’s anti-sentimental comedy The
Rivals. She is the niece of Sir Anthony Absolute. Her father being dead, she is
living with his uncle as his ward.
Julia is in love with Faulkland.
She is sincere and steadfast in her love for him. Faulkland with his
suspicious, jealous, capricious and fault finding nature repeatedly gives her
reason for being offended and turning away from him for ever. But she does not
abandon him though she would be perfectly justified if she did so. After every
quarrel with Faulkland, it is she who takes the initiative for reconciliation.
Although after every quarrel, Faulkland feels guilty and vows never to offend
her again, he never takes the initiative for patching things up by offering an
apology for his misbehaviour. It goes to her credit that even after being
sinned against again and again, she remains loyal to him and never thinks of
leaving him for another. Even Lydia finds fault with her for being a slave to
the caprice, whim and jealousy of ungrateful Faulkland. But she can always find
an excuse for his behaviour and defends him by describing him as generous,
proud and noble and being “unused to the fopperies of love”. To her, he is too
proud and too noble to be jealous, captious but without dissembling, fretful without
rudeness, negligent to the little duties of love because of being unused to the
fopperies of love. She feels that his passion for her is ardent and sincere and
it engrosses his whole soul. His only fault according to her is that he expects
every thought and emotion of his mistress to move in unison with his.
The two scenes in which we see
Julia and Faukland together in the play, we find her overflowing with emotion.
She is totally absorbed in the intensity and ardour of her passion for
Faulkland. She resents his suspiciousness and feels distressed at his doubts.
But again and again, her deep feeling for him rises to the surface and compels
her to forgive him even without his asking for it.
Julia is excessively sentimental
in love. Her sentimentalism robs her of all self-control as well as
self-respect. Any normal woman would expect her lover to make amends for his
shabby behaviour before forgiving him. But Julia cannot wait so long. No wonder
that Faulkland suspects her of being too forward as he thinks that the
initiative should come from him. We feel that she is herself responsible for
making Faulkland too exacting in love.
Julia is a girl with a weak
resolution. After being subjected to a test of love, she decides never to meet
Faulkland again. But she does not have the strength to stick to her resolution.
At the very first opportunity after that, she again takes the initiative for
reconciliation. She sees him dejected and her heart melts again.
In spite of her great friendship
with Lydia, she does not frankly tell her everything that passes between her
and Faulkland. She conceals from her the fact that Faulkland has again been
torturing her because she would not accuse him before a sister. In comparison
with Lydia, who tells her everything, she is somewhat secretive as she does not
want anyone to think ill of Faulkland.
It is not however true that she
cannot at all defend herself before Faulkland. When he accuses him of being
happy even in his absence after Acres tells him of her dancing and singing in
the countryside when he was away, she asks him
whether he gives more weight to what Acres says than her tried and tested love
for him. She tells him that she tried to look happy because she did not want
people to think that she had no confidence in his love for her. It is true,
however, that she cannot hold her own for long.
We may say in the end that Julia
represents the constant woman who is deeply and permanently attached to the man
to whom she has given her heart. As such, she certainly deserves our respect.
But she also excites our ridicule because of her excessive sentimentality.
Plot Construction
Sheridan’s conformity to the
classical sense of plot construction has often been praised by critics. The
plot construction of The Rivals has also been appreciated by almost all the
dramatic critics. The play has a neat plot that develops amusingly and very
clearly.
The plot of the play has been
skilfully designed and carefully executed from the beginning to the end. The
development of the plot is combined with some excellent dialogue. The
characters are neatly balanced and sufficiently differentiated from one
another. The overall plan has been skilfully executed leading to immense
liveliness of action without sacrificing its unity.
The play contains three plots –
two major ones and a minor one. All the three plots deal with the theme of
love. The main plot is the love affair of Capt. Absolute and Lydia Languish.
The love affair of Faulkland and Julia constitutes the subplot of the play. The
third plot, which is a minor one, is the love affair of Mrs. Malaprop and Sir
Lucius O’Trigger. The plot is not a complex one. The characters in the three
plots do not do much to help or retard the development of the other plots. But
the three plots develop simultaneously. The parallel development of all the
three plots is the most striking feature of the structure of the play. Although
the plots are not closely interwoven yet they are closely interlinked by making
the characters in one interact with the characters in the others.
Another laudable feature of the
plot structure of the play is that it has taken care of the unities of time and
place though not of the unity of action. The entire action of the play takes
place in the town of Bath and is spread over not more than twenty four hours.
One of the devices used to
closely interlink the plots is that the various characters in them are close
friends or relations. The two principal lovers, Capt. Absolute and Faulkland
are fairly intimate with each other and exchange confidences about their love
affairs as often as they meet. Similarly, the two heroines, Lydia and Julia are
close friends and they too exchange confidences frequently regarding their love
affairs. Mrs. Malaprop, the heroine of the minor plot is the aunt cum guardian
of Lydia, the heroine of the major love story. Sir Anthony Absolute is the
father of Capt. Absolute, the hero of the major love story as well the uncle
and guardian of Julia, the heroine of the subordinate love story. At the same
time, he is on friendly terms with Mrs.Malaprop.
Acres, who himself is a suitor of
Lydia, is also a close friend of Capt. Absolute although he does not know that
it is Absolute who, in the assumed identity of Beverley, is his rival for the
affection of Lydia. He also knows Julia fairly well to have knowledge of what
she has been doing in the countryside while Faulkland was away and tells him
that she has not only been in perfect good health during his absence but has
been enjoying herself by attending parties and singing and dancing in them.
Sir Lucius, the recipient of love
letters from Mrs. Malaprop, is fairly close to Acres, the rival of Beverley,
who is none other than Capt. Absolute, and incites him to fight a duel with his
supposed rival. He is under the impression that the letters he is getting are
from Mrs. Malaprop’s niece, Delia (Lydia).
Capt. Absolute is a cousin of
Julia, the heroine of the sub-plot as well as a close friend of her suitor,
Faulkland. Lucy, the maid servant who carries Malaprop’s letters to Sir Lucius,
is closely acquainted with Capt, Absolute’s valet, Fag and they talk about the
love affairs of their employers whenever they happen to meet.
These connections between the
characters in the different plots of the play interlink all of them. The result
is that although the three plots develop independently, they do not develop in
complete isolation.
The Rivals as an Anti-sentimental Comedy
Sheridan was one of the two
champions of anti-sentimental comedy, the other being Oliver Goldsmith. The
Rivals is an anti-sentimental comedy, a pure comedy without any trace of
sentimentalism. Anti-sentimental comedy was a reaction and a revolt against the
sentimental comedy which dominated the stage in the early years of the 18th
century. The sentimental comedy itself was a revolt against the comedy of
manners which had been popular during the Restoration period. The comedy of
manners was full of light hearted fun and humour. It claimed to portray
realistically the immorality, vice and hypocrisy prevalent in the upper class
society of the time. It aimed at satirising and ridiculing these negative
tendencies among the upper class society. Although replete with humour from the
beginning to the end, it had earned a bad name for its immorality.
The sentimental comedy was a
reaction against the immorality of the comedy of manners. It extolled virtue
and condemned vice. The writers of this comedy tried to preach moral lessons
through their plays. The sentimental comedy had replaced laughter and humour by
pathos and sentimentalism. It was a comedy only in name. Actually it would be
better to call it a tragedy with a happy ending. The audiences were made to
shed tears throughout the play at the sufferings of the virtuous people. But in
the last scene, all the issues were resolved and the play ended in the victory
of virtue over vice.
During the later years of the 18th
century, Oliver Goldsmith and R. B. Sheridan rejected this kind of comedy and
replaced it with a kind of comedy which brought back the fun and humour of the
Restoration comedy of manners to the stage without the immorality, indecency
and obscenity that it was notorious for. This genre of comedy came to be known
as the anti-sentimental comedy among the literary circles.
The Rivals is an anti-sentimental
comedy through and through. Although the theme of all the plots in the play is
love, there is no trace of immorality in the play. The main plot revolves round
the love affair of Capt. Absolute and Lydia Languish. There is no scope for
sentimentalism in it. Lydia is an exaggerated version of a typical romantic
heroine. She is full of absurd romantic ideas which she has borrowed perhaps
the sentimental stories that she is fond of reading. She takes delight in
defying her aunt and guardian, Mrs. Malaprop. Although fabulously rich, she
wants a lover who is lowly placed both socially and financially. She hates
regular marriage in the church with the consent of her guardian and prefers a run-away marriage
in Scotland. She is prepared to forfeit even the wealth left to her by her rich
father. It is due to these funny romantic notions of hers that Capt. Absolute
is forced to assume a fictitious identity and court her as a low paid ensign
Beverley. Sheridan’s intention clearly is to ridicule her romanticism by
carrying it to a ridiculous extreme.
The minor plot revolves round
Mrs. Malaprop’s ambition of trapping the tall Irish gentleman, Sir Lucius as a
lover. The very idea of an old withered away widow entering a love affair is
ridiculous in itself. To add to it, she writes love letters to him under the
assumed name of Delia. And the plot reaches the height of absurdity as Sir
Lucius believes that these letters are from her young niece. Another funny
thing in the plot is that Lucy, the maid-servant of Mrs. Malaprop, makes Sir
Lucius believe that his sweetheart is a young beauty rather than an old hag. Her
disclosure of the correspondence to Fag, the valet of Capt. Absolute, although
she has sworn to Mrs. Malaprop not to speak a word about it to anybody is
another source of laughter.
The subordinate love story of
Julia and Faulkland appears to have touches of sentimentalism in it. Even a
critic of the status of Dr. Price has been misled into declaring that the
Julia-Faulkland affair is Sheridan’s concession to sentimentalism. On the surface of it, Faulkland appears to be
a sentimental lover. He is all the time tortured by his suspicions, jealousies
and anxieties on account of his beloved. He feels distressed at the imaginary
thought of his sweetheart falling ill as a result of a shower, or a blast of
cold wind or heat of noon or the dews of the evening during his absence. But
instead of being delighted on hearing that she has been quite in good health
and has actually been enjoying herself by attending parties and singing and
dancing with zest in those parties, he is filled with distress. He is filled
with jealousy and suspicion. He had expected her to be as anxious and miserable
as he himself has been. But a deep look at his sentimentalism shows that
instead of being true sentimentalism, it is a parody of sentimentalism. By
taking it to a ridiculous extreme where nothing pleases him, Sheridan intends
to ridicule his romantic sentimentalism rather than make us sympathise with
him. He wants not to be loved for his looks or intelligence, or out of a sense
of duty or obligation. In short, he does not want to be loved for anything
which can justify the rise of passion in the heart of a young lady. He wants to
be loved out of love alone. By exaggerating the sentimentalism of both
Faulkland and Julia, Sheridan holds both of them up to ridicule. We are
expected not to pity them or sympathise with them but to have a hearty laugh at
their discomfitures.
The portrayal of other characters
also is also an evidence of the anti-sentimental character of the play. Captain
Absolute is not a romantic lover although he assumes the character of Beverley
for the sake of courting his whimsical lady. He is a practical man who would
not like to forfeit the rich dowry that Lydia would bring. Mrs. Malaprop is a
conventional practical woman whose attitude to marriage is business-like. Sir
Anthony too is a practical, worldly man who is interested in a respectable kind
of matrimonial alliance for his son, though he is an admirer of beauty also.
Bob Acres is a country boor with no romantic or sentimental pretensions. In
fact, he has no pretensions of any kind. In the end of the play, he shows
himself to be more practical than anybody else. “If I can’t get a wife without
fighting for her, by my valour, I’ll die a bachelor. Sir Lucius is absurd
because of his insistence on fighting duels. He believes in fighting a duel not
because of any sentiments but because of honour.
Throughout the play, the audience
split their sides with laughter. There is no moral lesson in the play. Instead
of getting into the pulpit and preaching to his audience, Sheridan chooses to
be realistic and portray the manners of the age the way the comedy of manners
did. But he has also taken care not to bring in even the slightest touch of
immorality in the depiction of the manners of the upper classes.
The Rivals as a Comedy of Manners
Comedy of manners was a type of comedy which flourished
during the Restoration period. It was popularised by playwrights like Congreve
and Wycherley. It makes fun of the follies and foibles of the fashionable upper
class society of the time. It draws its material from the fashions, the
manners, the interests and the mode of speaking of the upper circle of society.
The scenes are laid in the drawing rooms, the coffee houses, fashionable
streets, gardens and parks. The plots are complicated and are based on love
intrigues. These comedies are notable for their witty dialogues. But they have
often been criticised by critics and readers for their coarseness and
immorality.
This kind of comedy fell out of favour during the first half
of the 18th century and was replaced by sentimental comedy which
banished humour and laughter and substituted pathos for it. It made preaching
of moral sermons its chief concern. During the later part of the 18th
century, the comedy of manners was revived by playwrights like Oliver Goldsmith
and R. B. Sheridan. But its new version was free from the immorality for which
the comedy of manners of the Restoration age was notorious.
Sheridan’s play The Rivals is a very good example of the
comedy of manners purged of its immorality, indecency and obscenity. Like the
comedy of manners, it has a complicated plot. There are three love affairs in
it which are developed simultaneously. The audience’s interest keeps shifting
from one to the other. But the main plot and the sub-plots have been skilfully
interlinked by making some characters common in them.
Again, like the comedy of manners, The Rivals is full of wit
and humour. The witty dialogues of characters like Sir Anthony, Capt. Absolute,
Sir Lucius and Bob Acres are the soul of the play. Mrs. Malaprop’s ‘nice
derangement of epitaphs’ is another rich source of laughter in the play.
Furthermore, the play is a satire on the upper class society
of Sheridan’s time. The scene of the play is set in Bath which at that time was
a famous centre of fashionable life. All the moneyed people used to visit it to
drink its mineral waters, and to gossip, dance and attend the theatre.
The Faulkland-Julia love affair is a parody of the
sentimental comedy of the 18th century. By exaggerating the
sentimental absurdities of Julia and the eccentricities of Faulkland, Sheridan
makes fun of the sentimental tendencies of the sentimental comedy. The
impatience in love of Julia and the ever fretfulness of Faulkland, who cannot
be happy under any circumstances, holds up to ridicule the sentimentalism of
Sheridan’s predecessors.
The play also satirises the romantic craze witnessed in the
fashionable young girls of the day. Lydia’s strange notions of love, romance
and marriage which she has borrowed from the sentimental stories that she is
fond of reading ridicule similar tendencies in most of the upper class ladies.
Sheridan shoots shafts of satire on the authoritative
attitude of the dictatorial fathers of the times. Sir Anthony, who demands
absolute obedience from his son even in the matter of his marriage and wants to
impose a girl of his choice on him in spite of the fact that the boy is in love
with another girl is typical of such fathers. It is another thing that the girl
that Absolute loves and the girl that his father has chosen is the same.
Sheridan also satirizes the fashions of the time in the
play. When Bob Acres comes to Bath, he decides to discard his country clothes
and begins to dress in accordance with the fashion prevailing in the city. He
looks so different from his earlier self that, as David remarks, even his
mother would not recognise him. He also tries to learn the French dances
popular in the fashionable circles although his ‘true-born English legs’ find
it hard to follow them.
Swearing, another habit popular in the fashionable circles,
is another object of satire. Almost every male character intersperses his
dialogues with oaths of different kinds. The most exquisite specimen in this
regard is Bob Acres who has devised a new way of swearing according to the
occasion. He has even coined a name – oath referential - for the kind of the
innovative oaths he uses rather too frequently.
Another target of satire in the play is duelling which was
common among the people of the upper classes in the name of defending their
honour. The way Sir Lucius instigates Bob Acres to fight a duel with Beverley
for loving the same girl as he does is quite amusing. Again, he himself insists
on fighting a duel with Capt. Absolute due to a difference of opinion although
he has never expressed any opinion with which he may differ.
The portrayal of Sir Lucius is also satirical in intention.
He is easily duped by Lucy who gives him the impression that the letters she
brings are from the niece and not the aunt, which ultimately leads him to
challenge Absolute to a duel.
Mrs. Malaprop, the tough old aunt of Lydia is also a target
of ridicule. We are made to laugh at the contradiction in her character. She
puts restrictions on her niece though she herself, despite being an elderly
widow, is writing love letters to Sir Lucius.
Although Sheridan satirises and holds up to ridicule the
manners and fashions of the upper classes in the play, he scrupulously avoids
preaching any lessons in morality in the play. He does not step into the pulpit
to preach that virtue is rewarded and vice punished in the end. In fact, we can
say that the play is strictly amoral. There is not even the slightest trace of
any attempt at moral edification.
In view of all this, we can say that The Rivals is a comedy
of manners like the Restoration Comedy of Manners. The only difference is that
there is no element of coarseness and immorality which was characteristic of
the comedy of manners.
Plzz send the notes of role of servants in the rivals
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