The Rivals (Criticism)

Criticism

Carole Hamilton

Hamilton is an English teacher at Cary Academy, an innovative private college preparatory school in Cary, North Carolina. In this essay, Hamilton examines the construction of ethos as a central theme of the play and as a key issue in eighteenth-century British society.

In 1780, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s father, Thomas Sheridan, saw his much-awaited pronouncing dictionary, ten years in the making, come to print. The idea had come from Thomas Sheridan’s godfather, the satirist Jonathan Swift, who had dreamt of a British counterpart to the language standards of the French Academy. After Swift died, Thomas took on the task. As Swift had anticipated, this work found an immediate audience, and ran to eleven printings in its first year. Buyers wanted a reliable pronunciation guide that would help them move into a higher social class, by adopting an ethos of intellectual prowess. Ethos is the Greek term for “character.”

Aristotle had written that to be a credible person, one essentially must create the person others will see, in order to earn their respect and trust, through a combination of ethos (character), logos (vocabulary), and pathos (emotional appeal). Sheridan, a talented orator who would pursue a thirty-year career in the British Parliament, knew the importance of a person’s way of speaking in establishing credibility.

One of the most hilarious characters in The Rivals is Mrs. Malaprop, whose name has become synonymous with failed attempts at using big words correctly. The character of Mrs. Malaprop is a showcase role for talented actresses with a flair for oratory and style. Mark Auburn in his 1977 Sheridan’s Comedies recommends that “[t]he actress playing Malaprop is well-advised to emphasize each malapropism with self-satisfaction, vain pluming and preening, and conscious stress: in this way the incredible vanity will provide absurd contrast to [her] learned ignorance.” Despite her protestations that she would not want her daughter to be a

“progeny of learning,” or to study the “inflammatory branches of learning” such as “Greek, Hebrew, or Algebra,” Mrs. Malaprop herself takes pride in her “oracular tongue,” her ability to speak in what she comically refers to as “a nice derangement of epitaphs.”

Mrs. Malaprop professes to Sir Anthony that a young girl should strive to be what she calls “mistress of orthodoxy” so that she will not “miss-spell and mis-pronounce words so shamefully as girls usually do.” She does not want them to learn too much, so she disapproves of their reading novels, which she and Sir Anthony agree would corrupt them, as it has Lydia. Therefore, Mrs. Malaprop asserts, a girl’s education should be limited: “the extent of her erudition should consist in her knowing her simple letters, without their mischievous combinations.” Her own endeavor to appear educated is compromised by the very method she proposes, for her education is incomplete: she knows only enough to pronounce big words, not how to use them correctly. Her mistakes are comic, and her ethos is comic because her desires are fueled by vanity. Vanity prevents her from recognizing that Jack Absolute is reading his own letter aloud to her, and that he authored its numerous insults aimed at her “ridiculous vanity which makes her dress up her course features, and deck her dull chat with hard words — which she don’t understand.”

The letter goes on to state outright that her blindness “does lay her open to the grossest deceptions from flattery and pretended admiration.” She is duped by her own ego, and she is the only one who fails to get the joke. Mrs. Malaprop thinks that girls should attend school only to acquire “a little ingenuity and artifice,” but her own artifice is as shallow as make-up. Her attempted ethos fails because she does not fully understand the power of oration, as though she has bought the pronouncing dictionary and stopped there. She tries to get by with the surface features, never comprehending what she lacks, yet all-too-ready to prescribe her method to others. The ironies of her absurd linguistic errors and her blindness to the impression she makes is a powerful reminder of the importance of verbal skills in establishing credibility.

Bob Acres offers another role for talented comic actors. Bob exhausts every opportunity to create for himself the ethos of the country gentleman. However, it is apparent to everyone from his valet to his dueling partner that no gentrified silk purse will emerge from this country sow’s ear. From “training” his hair for the latest style and capering ridiculously across the stage as he rehearses fencing moves, to practicing his own style of “referential oaths,” Bob cuts not a suave figure, but a ridiculous and pathetic one. He rues his gracelessness, saying that although he can dance a country dance well enough, his English legs “don’t understand their curst French lingo!”

Of course, dancing is a form of communication, and one that his country bumpkin body cannot speak. Sir Lucius O’Trigger easily feeds into Bob’s pretensions and persuades him to challenge his rival for Lydia’s hand to a duel. But O’Trigger has to dictate the letter for him, because Bob lacks the decorum necessary to set the right tone of self-righteous politeness. Bob knows that words can help create an external ethos of ruthlessness to frighten his opponent. Therefore, he asks his friend Captain Absolute — actually Bob’s would-be opponent in the guise of Ensign Beverley — to refer to him as “Fighting Bob,” a ruthless opponent who “generally kills a man a week” and now is in “a devouring rage.” Bob supplies the epitaphs, but out of cowardice, he asks Jack to deliver them. Bob doesn’t trust himself to project his new ethos in person.

Bob’s valet David provides a useful foil to his master. David refuses to join in Bob’s mania, instead reminding his master that honor holds no value in the grave. David’s speech, in contrast to that of Bob Acres or Mrs. Malaprop, is simple and lacks artifice. He represents the sober voice of reason in this play of inflated egos, providing a sane view of the characters’s folly that the audience can use as a measure.

Bob desires the status of the gentry, but his ethos lacks depth, just like Mrs. Malaprop’s, because his adopted style of speech cannot mask his true state of mind at the time — fear, just as Mrs. Malaprop cannot mask her lack of education. Because they speak from a fantasy idea of themselves and not from the heart, their projects of ethos-creation fail, making them comic figures.

Unlike Mrs. Malaprop and Bob Acres, Julia always speaks from her heart. There is no disconnect between her words and her essential person, therefore, she has no need to manufacture an external ethos. Not surprisingly, Julia is a good orator. She chooses her words with care, in order to represent the truth as she sees it, not the fantasy she

wishes were true. She patiently explains to Lydia that Faulkand’s lack of trust stems from his inexperience at love. Her speech, a sermon on the topic of honest love, rings with truth. Her diction and wording portray her natural ethos of impeccable moral character. Furthermore, never do her words contradict her true feelings. Her true character shines through, and she is credible to everyone — except for Faulkland. Faulkland suffers from a “fear of ethos” engendered by living in a world full of social climbers who present an artificial exterior. Faulkland wrongly accuses Julia of not loving him but merely esteeming him, of not feeling sad enough when he is away. Not until he has tested her beyond the limits of her patient endurance does Faulkland realize his mistake. His failure to recognize a true character when he sees one is understandable, given that he is surrounded by those who present a false ethos whenever they can.

In The Rivals as in eighteenth-century society, ethos-creation goes on amongst the servant class as well, although they focus mostly on matters of dress. They seem to forget, as the audience cannot fail to do, that their language gives them away. The fashion fa§ade of Sir Anthony’s coachman Thomas is as transparent as Bob Acres’s heroic ethos. Thomas sports a wig, that symbol of strained image construction, but as Fag quickly points out, wigs are now hopelessly passé.

With or without the wig, the audience recognizes Thomas’s lower-class status as soon as they hear his heavy brogue, filled with such linguistic giveaways as “look’ee” and “Odd rabbit it.” They appear in the first act in the play, setting the stage for the series of ethos-manufacturing characters to come, whose fragile constructions also will be rent asunder as the plot unfolds. Fag dons gloves like a nobleman and generally dresses better than does Thomas, but, it is his more formal speech, and his ability to control his language when surprised, that marks him as higher in the servant pecking order than Thomas. Fag maintains his cool with a “hold — mark! mark!” in contrast to Thomas’s simplistic outburst, “Zooks!” Like their masters, these servants wish to convey an ethos of social superiority, but their failure to change their style of speaking makes it impossible for them to rise above the level of the servant class.

Not all of the characters gear their ethos toward social advancement. Lydia and Jack have an entirely different purpose in mind — they seek the higher purpose of love. Lydia’s purpose adopts the ethos of the woman who falls in love beneath her class, an idea she has gleaned from the sentimental novels that she consumes by the dozens. She also dreams of marrying against her aunt’s wishes and being forced to relinquish her 30,000 pound annuity, thus ridding herself of “burden on the wings of love.”

Unfortunately, her ethos becomes as static and fixed in her mind and heart as the print from which it derives. She is trapped in a rigid fantasy and therefore unable to respond spontaneously when Jack deviates from the script. Instead of being happy that Ensign Beverley and Captain Absolute are the same man, and that he has her aunt’s approval, Lydia sulks. In her frustration, she cannot even reply to him, but instead seems to address her internal life script when she says, “So! — there will be no elopement after all!” Mrs. Malaprop declares that “her brain’s turned by reading,” expressing a concern common in eighteenth-century society. As the reviewer for the January 27, 1775, Morning Chronicle of London exclaimed, “almost every genteel family now presents us a Lydia Languish!” The fear was growing that sentimental novels would transform impressionable young ladies into weepy maidens languishing for love.

Jack Absolute is the hero because he portrays someone who can convert a lost young lady back to proper behavior. He does so by pretending to go along with her sentimental script, masquerading as Ensign Beverley, who fits Lydia’s bill for an impoverished lover. Jack does not share Lydia’s fantasy, but he constructs an ethos that fits the mold. Of course, the imposter Beverley excels at oratory, speaking sentimental language even better than the lovers in her books. He waxes poetic as he assures Lydia that the “gloom of adversity shall make the flame of [their] pure love show doubly bright.”

He intends eventually to tell her the truth, but his plans go awry when he must appear as a “new” suitor, Jack Absolute. After calling upon “Ye Powers of Impudence” — an apostrophe to the god of imposters — he can barely croak out a few words in a froggy voice. It is an ethos crisis, and his oratorical skills desert him. He cannot utter words that will undo the damage his masquerade has caused. Jack’s ethos fails under pressure because his constructed ethos cannot adapt to the changing situation and because it does not represent his true heart.

Julia alone can speak intelligently and effectively under the pressure of changing situations. It is no coincidence that the character with the truest heart also has the best oratorical skill. Each of her speeches is an oratory worthy of a British Parliamentarian, which her creator would soon become. A good orator not only projects a credible character and speaks with eloquence, he or she also can do so spontaneously, responding to the new information while drawing on a storehouse of knowledge and wisdom. Those who masquerade under a manufactured ethos cannot do so, skewed as they are by their blind faith in their inflated, false egos.

Sheridan seems to have created Julia and her comic peers as an experiment to explore how best to create a credible ethos. Sheridan himself was a newcomer to the London theatrical world, with no credibility as of yet, but with a remarkable eye for identifying imposters around him. His success lay in his ability to hold a mirror up to the society that he wanted to join, and to convince it of his own credible ethos in the process.

Source: Carole Hamilton, Critical Essay on The Rivals, in Drama for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.

What Do I Read Next?

• In Samuel Richardson’s 1740-1741 Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded, a young servant girl fights to repulse the advances of her master, eventually forcing him to legitimize his desire through marriage.
• Frances Burney’s Evalina; Or, The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World(1778) is the story of a witty and plucky young girl who selects her mate from a host of admirers.
• Elizabeth Inchbald’s A Simple Story(1791) relates the plight of a young girl who falls in love with her protector, who inconveniently happens to be a priest.
• In Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote (1752), a naïve female protagonist — influenced by reading too many romantic novels — persists in being completely honest, no matter what the circumstances, to the bafflement of her friends and would-be lovers.
• London Assurance(1841), by Dion Boucicault, is a drawing room farce with aptly metaphorical character names, and it also portrays the plight of a son whose father wants to marry him off to the very girl with whom he has already fallen in love.
• Oscar Wilde’s Comedy of Manners The Importance of Being Earnest(1895) is a spectacularly witty take on the theme of the mistaken identity of a lover.