Letture critiche per esame di English literature 2 - Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Distancing from the social values that inform so much of Carolean comedy in favour of moral values of a

more traditional and timeless sort > the main victim is the rake, in the end of the play it’s marginalised as an

antisocial being.

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Such changes required adjustments to comic conventions that altered both the Fletcherian and Jonsonian

approaches to comedy. Libertine values are replaced by a new set of social virtues that emphasise the

importance of honesty, decency, amiability, and integrity. Good nature and benevolence increasingly mark

the characters, with conversion to these new values frequently central to the plot. The characters may be

boring as a result, but they are also more human and more real, more like their audience. In the end the

couples are happily reunited.

- Lisa A. Freeman, “The social life of eighteenth-century comedy”

Comedy had changed over the course of the eighteenth century, as playwrights left behind the acerbic wit

and libertine cynicism of the Restoration stage and in response to the changing composition of their

expanding audience, increasingly adopted what was announced as a more refined, polished or genteel tone

in their dramatic works.

During the Restoration and early eighteenth century there were CRITICAL DEBATE on the divide between

humours comedy (commedia umoristica) and comedies of wit (commedia di spirito), and the second half of

the eighteenth century was divide between laughing comedy (comedies of wit and humours) and the

sentimental comedy, a new dramatic genre that appealed to the middling classes and that highlighted

sentiment, demonstrations of virtue, and forms of sensibility.

Defenders of laughing comedies (like Oliver Goldsmith) portrayed sentimental comedy as species of Bastard

Tragedy that had usurped the place of True Comedy, and painted themselves as patriotic crusaders of an

English comic tradition >> moreover, most plays from the period fall into neither category of comedy, they were

only a generic mixes.

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Comedy isn’t about the vices (vizi) of the aristocratic classes (which dominated the Restoration stage) but it is

upon the manners, follies, and worries (preoccupazioni) of the middling classes whose influence and power

were in the ascendancy.

As the middling classes pressed to gain social legitimacy and recognition, the definition of gentle, what it

meant to be a gentleman, had a considerable change, from a dependence on birth and inheritance to the

acquisition of manners.

As the influence and aspirations of the commercial classes grew, politeness became the new currency not

only in the social economy but also in the intrigues particular to comedy. Articulated under the headings of

good breeding (buona educazione), good nature, good manners (buone maniere) and good conversation,

POLITENESS CONSTITUTED A FORM OF CAPITAL which could drive plots and with which characters could

be invested >> comic imperative of ensuring marital exchange.

The most popular comedies from the period: Everyone Has His Fault, The English Merchant, She Stoops

to Conquer and The School for Scandal (a witty comedy of manners, satiric objects: scandal, the hypocrisy

of sentiment and features two major plots) > in these plays:

● playwrights treated marriage as a social institution regulated by the economic and class interests of

the period

● plots of those comedies administered a process of character valuation that would exemplify an

apposite exchange of credit, property and status

In the eighteenth centuries, the term character was referred to a person of good character is an individual

with a reputation for moral integrity and good manners >> The School for Scandal is a comedy of detection

(poliziesca) in which the true value of character must be determined before an exchange can take place.

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In this kind of social economy, scandal could inflict severe damage not only on reputation but also upon the

credit and material benefits that reputation produces. Character, as a form of currency but also as a form of

property, subject to crimes such as theft (furto), forgery (falsificazione) and fraud.

With the presence of daughters, the comic resolution required not merely the transfer of property to the son

but the transfer of the daughter as property to a husband.

In “She stoops to conquer” Marlow has not the chance to acquire what was considered a requisite skill in

eighteenth-century social life, the ability to display good character and good manners when engaging in polite

conversation > two meanings of conversation: spoken or sexual intercourse. He had to learn women's values.

Whether in laughing or in sentimental comedies, or in an amalgam of the two, the protagonists in

eighteenth-century comedy (in contrast to the protagonists of Restoration comedies) paid attention the social

and economic worries that regulated both the marriage market and the assignments of value to character

that generated its currency (it was important the sensibility > tent to melodramatic).

- Eugene McCarthy, “THE THEME OF LIBERTY” in She Stoops to Conquer

In the play Goldsmith consistently uses contrasts and deceptions creating attention to differences

between characters while letting others appear in several forms, both intentionally and ignorantly

(misunderstanding). These contrasts and multiple deceptions (inganni) on almost every level of the play

work together to achieve a final resolution into a unity, a proper comic conclusion and a statement of the play's

theme.

There are many patterns of DOUBLENESS in the characters:

The old-new contrast relates to the setting and to Hardcastle's inability to understand what is going on

➔ Mr Hardcastel (rigid mentality) and Mrs Hardcastel

◆

The real-apparent (or true-false) contrast in various characters confuses still more people

➔ Presence of Miss Hardcastle > wears MASKS > satisfies her father by wearing the old fashion

◆ of his choice every evening, and the new fashion of her choice every morning. She shift her

identity

Tony Lumpkin > wears MASKS > instigates Marlow's and Hastings' initial confusion of the

◆ house for an inn. He is important in the relationship that develops between Miss Hardcastle and

Marlow, and even more important in the relationship of Neville and Hastings.

the house-inn confusion (which Goldsmith had in mind as one of the original titles for the play

◆ "The Old House a New Inn". Not only does Marlow mistake the house for an inn and Hardcastle

for the innkeeper, but due to their contrary conceptions of old and new they cannot

communicate even with the same words.

double use of "Solomon" in the play > Marlow's invention of "Mr. Solomons" reference to

◆ Solomon in the puppet show (old fashion)

Marlow's modest-impudent contrast

➔

Goldsmith has made certain to leave no character or situation outside his system of contrasts and

oppositions

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It is the theme of Liberty which links these dualities into a single dramatic unity. The word "liberty" is used

infrequently but its meaning is present under various other terms.

- Tony uses the term "liberty" to mean his freedom to marry whom he pleases.

- Hardcastle uses the word to announce the magnanimity of his household but he realises his inability to

control people

- Marlow once he has worked out his identity, he can reach the liberty of self-knowledge and a comic

sensibility about himself.

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Goldsmith did not call the play a laughing comedy simply because characters laugh aloud in the play; the

laughter is an essential part of the play's resolution and for Marlow's understanding of himself. Every

character does what he wants and takes various forms to fool others until the play's final comic conclusion

and reestablishment of order.

This "Liberty theme" is what makes sense of the contrasts and duplicities throughout the play > enables

everyone to have some double activity.

Goldsmith's lifetime concern with liberty under the aspects of tyranny, lost freedoms and oppression

suggests the possibility that he is interested in the idea of liberty in this play.

Recent criticism has attempted to contrast the belief in Goldsmith's "thematic poverty".

- David Garrick wished not to stage the play in the first place and then was embarrassed by his

misjudgment

- Ricardo Quintana has recognized that the play's construction, full of confusions, is impeccable and

wise (saggezza)

- Christine S. Wiesenthal, “Representation and Experimentation in the Major Comedies of

Richard Brinsley Sheridan”

Most critical discussions of Sheridan's use of language, gesture and image limit themselves to general

considerations of his "comic dialogue" or his "comedy of situation" and they have failed to appreciate

Sheridan's personal "comic vision" in his plays with the themes and the actual stuff of representation.

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His three major comedies are The Rivals (1775), The School for Scandal (1777) and The Critic (1779) and

in these we see not only his experimenting with narrative and dramatic forms of representation, but also his

focus in linguistic and pictorial OBJECTS: from letters, manuscripts, and newspapers, to maps, pictures,

screens > a lot of signs and symbols proliferate in Sheridan's great comedies.

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The Critic is a burlesque whereas the other two are the great "neo-Restoration" comedies

The Critic brings themes about language and art that reflect a progressively more experimental play with the

modes and means of representation.

Words, images and gestures become increasingly less "safe" and less effective as means of representing

reality or conveying artistic intent. Sheridan's searching and exploration of the possibilities in the dramatic

representation provides a means of understanding The Critic as the formal culmination of his development as

a comic dramatist.

Ultimately, to trace a trajectory from The Rivals to The Critic, from his first serio-comedy to his last parodic

burlesque, is to trace the genesis not only of an artistic genius, but also of a "comic" sensibility.

The importance of both language and gesture in Sheridan's first comedy is indicated even before the play

begins, in the dialogue form of the prologue. Indeed, one way The Rivals can be read is as a play which

explores dimensions of discourse, and especially that of comic language. In the play, due to the double plot

there's the opposition of "Laughing" and "Sentimental" > use of the brilliant language

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The comic essence of Sheridan's language begins to manifest itself when we pay attention to the language's

aesthetic presence > use of puns (giochi di parole). Indicating the "playful aesthetic presence" through puns

and personification, it becomes increasingly difficult to take the language of the play "straight".

If Sheridan's language in The Rivals illustrates some of the drawbacks and the strengths o