The School For Scandal

The School For scandal is a play written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It follows two brothers, charles and Joseph Teazle. Charles is the more extravagant brother who is in love with Marie, peter Teazles ward, but deemed innapropriate because of his spendthrift behaviour. Joseph surface seems more acceptable, appearing amiable and honourable. However, throught the play it shows that while Joseph seems more honourable on the surface, he is actually the most devious, plotting with lady Sneerwell to split up Maria and Charles so that he can have Marias fortune, and having an affair with the wife of his guardian, Mrs Teazle. Eventually all is revealed and it is made clear that while Charles may still be a spendthrift he is in fact the better of the two brothers. The play was first performed in London at Drury Lane Theatre on May 8 1777 To begin the research for this project, i will begin by researching the 18th century fashion of the time that the play was initially written as well as modern fashion collections to fuse the two. While reading the play I found the characters names were all used to appropriatley describe their characters; Snake is a snake, the Surface brothers are not what they appear on the surface, Lady Candour likes to gossip etc. So their characters all seem like characitures of people. The play seems to be a social commentary on the frivilous nature of the times, as the 1770s was a time of famed extravagence, one of the causes of the french revolution not long afterwards. The social commentary on an aspect of society that would later lead to a countries revolution for some reason reminded me of Animal farm, a book telling the story of the russian revolution through farmyard animals. The idea of using animals to further reflect aspects of the characters personalities could be interesting. Also, while reading the play through the with the class, words used to desicribe charaters were often animal based, mrs candour was described as a sheep, Backbite and crabtree were described as slimy etc. So i think using animals for each character is appropriate.