Summary
The play starts with two prologues that set up the themes of scandal, rumors, and public appearance.
Act I begins by presenting Lady Sneerwell, a wealthy widow, and her servant, Snake, gossiping as they usually do. Lady Sneerwell gossips because, in her past, someone destroyed her reputation.
Lady Sneerwell reveals to Snake why she is so involved in matters concerning Sir Peter Teazle, his ward Maria, and the young brothers Charles and Joseph Surface: Joseph loves Maria, but Maria loves Charles, whom Lady Sneerwell also loves. Lady Sneerwell and Joseph have been plotting to make Maria and Charles drift apart by putting out a rumor that Charles and Sir Peter’s wife, Teazle, are having an affair. Lady Sneerwell will be sending Snake to execute this plot.
After Lady Sneerwell finishes explaining, Joseph enters. Snake leaves, and Joseph then tells Lady Sneerwell that he suspects Snake of not being entirely faithful to them and their secret plan, because Snake has been in conversation with Rowley, who was his father's steward.
Maria now enters, having tried to escape Sir Benjamin Backbite, another man vying for her love, and his uncle Crabtree. She complains that she did not want to stay with Backbite and his uncle because they were talking badly about others.
Maria is followed by Mrs. Candour, and then by Sir Benjamin Backbite and his uncle Crabtree, who start gossiping that the Surface brothers' rich uncle will soon return to England from the East Indies. Crabtree also lauds Sir Benjamin's poetic sensibilities. They then start gossiping about Charles’ financial situation, so Maria chooses to leave. Mrs. Candour follows her to try to help, and then Crabtree and Benjamin follow as well.
Scene II begins with a soliloquy by Sir Peter about his wife’s spending habits. Rowley arrives and the two talk about Maria, discussing how she rejected Joseph and seems to like Charles. Rowley defends Charles and then tells Sir Peter that Sir Oliver arrived from the East Indies. Sir Peter fears that Sir Oliver will make fun of him for getting married, but he is excited to see a friend whom he last saw sixteen years ago.
Analysis
Beginning with a prologue was fairly commonplace at the time of Sheridan's writing. These prologues are used to directly address the audience and set up some of the themes or issues of the play. Sometimes, these prologues were not even written by the playwright, much like the forward of a book. In this play, the audience first sees a "portrait" written by the playwright, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, followed by a prologue written by a man named Mr. Garric.
From the beginning of the play proper, characters' names are important for understanding characters' personalities and Sheridan's sense of humor and irony. In the first scene, Lady Sneerwell talks to Snake openly about their plot to spread a nasty, false rumor about Charles Surface and Lady Sneerwell's personal reasons for enjoying creating scandal. Lady Sneerwell's name combines her social status (Lady) with her major character trait of judging others (Sneerwell). Snake's name is slightly more metaphorical, evoking ideas of sneakiness. This sneakiness is why Lady Sneerwell chooses him to do her bidding; ironically, it is also the character trait that allows Snake to reveal Lady Sneerwell's plot in the end.
Lady Sneerwell's forwardness and honesty with Snake might be surprising in a Comedy of Manners. For example, she says directly, "Wounded myself, in the early part of my life, by the envenomed tongue of slander, I confess I have since known no pleasure equal to the reducing others to the level of my own injured reputation" (p.15). However, this honesty and self-awareness in the first scene allows the audience to contrast her manner in private with her behavior in the public sphere, where she constantly throws attention on others rather than drawing it to her own situation.
Act I Scene I introduces many of the important characters and relationships of the play. When Maria is introduced, there is immediate contrast between her own manner and beliefs and those of the rest of the characters. In Maria's second line of the play, she explains why she fled from conversation with Benjamin Backbite, saying, "his conversation is a perpetual libel on all his acquaintance" (p.23), meaning that he, like Lady Sneerwell, is a gossip. Throughout the play, Maria is used as a symbol of innocence and purity. The love Joseph, Charles, and Benjamin all have for her could suggest either that society still sought morality in the midst of all the scandal and gossip that most people partook in, or that women specifically were expected to be seen as moral and pure.
One of the major issue raised in Act I is the relation between mean gossip and wit. Maria suggests that she loses respect for wit when wit is used to hurt or spread gossip about another; in her words, when she "see[s] it in company with malice" (p.23). However, Lady Sneerwell responds that the two concepts (mean gossip and wit) are inextricably linked. Sheridan is perhaps challenging his audience, and especially viewers who are highly educated or writers themselves, to contemplate whether all wit must have a "barb that makes it stick" (p.24). If nothing else, as a writer of satire, Sheridan certainly had to confront the relation between wit and meanness personally.
