The lack of self-respect in particular characters in the play, like Lady Sneerwell and Joseph, sends the message that some people have higher priorities than self-respect. Lady Sneerwell's deep desire to gain Charles to marry her leads her to a chain of unrespectable acts of intrigues and backbiting, in the process, conspiring with equally dubious characters like Joseph and Snake who also follow selfish and destructive agendas of their own. Forming a derogatory School for Scandal all alone speaks against self-respect as against all of those perpetuating that School. While it seems outwardly pleasurable to prey on other people's mistakes, misfortunes and weaknesses, perpetrators of scandals and hypocrisy do not gain the superiority they want among themselves. Lady Sneerwell, Sir and Lady Backbite, Mrs. Candour and Joseph may share a common objective of destroying relationships and reputation but this destructiveness does not build them up in the real sense, but creates distrust in one another, aware of one another's insincerity.
Still another message is the overwhelming influence of society towards its members. Lady Sneerwell's School has been founded on luxury and a false sense of superiority before Sir Oliver comes into the scene to smash the illusion. For some time, her School was the direction to take in order to feel accepted. Lady Teazle is misled by the School into thinking that the way to be "in" is to have illicit relationships, hence her affair with Joseph, which is soon revealed and to her shame and at a price. Lady Sneerwell's hypocrite friends may have little or better work to do than seeking out the frailties of others or assign these frailties to those who obstruct their intents. And because it seems easier to join the established flow than go against it, other mentors in this School yield to the policy of character assassination in indoctrinating their trainees and others socially weaker than themselves.
The play also brings to light the power of money, as in the case of Snake, whose previous loyalty to Lady Sneerwell in producing false testimony on a relationship between her and Charles is tested and defeated by bribery in a latter Act and Scene. This suggests that Snake must be financially vulnerable to the point of recanting his earlier witness. The same message on the influence of money is transmitted in the case of Charles who auctions the family heirloom to the disappointment of his disguised uncle. At the same time, Charles reveals his fidelity to his unknown uncle by retaining the latter's portrait. Thus, he inadvertently shows his loyalty and gratitude to him. The message is that we can never utterly know who are truly loyal to us in open situations, because true loyalty is spontaneous and in many cases, unexpressed or hidden.
The most important message of the play is the power that words have over human affairs, lives and decisions, even destiny. The School abuses that power and subjects it to the mean objectives and wiles of its members. Tales, suspicions, and judgments are often formed, transmitted and endure verbally. The injurious words of the School have defamed Charles as a spendthrift and Lady Teazle as an adulteress. At the same time, the tongues of Lady Sneerwell and company have consistently deified Joseph as a paragon of virtue. In time, repeated gossips become accepted as people become careless with their speech. The play warns that gossips and false judgments produce much unhappiness or influence people to commit more mistakes to gossip about. Lady Teazle's experience illustrates this. Sir Peter, instead of confronting his wife or Charles directly, is driven by gossips to approach Joseph in the quest for truth. In the process, Sir Peter is led to that truth but not in the way he intends.
In the time of Drury Lane Theater where the play was a clamoring success (Matthews 1987) in its first presentation on May 8, 1777, characters like Lady Sneerwell and her friends sat in 18th century salons where they sipped scandal-broth and perused "scandal-sheets" or newspapers for juicy gossips. This scenario has persisted into the 21st century with its classy version of scandal sheets. In 1988, Paul Marcus' California production had Lady Sneerwell and Sir Benjamin Backbite reading the National Enquirer. Peter Wood presented Joseph Surface in 1990 (Matthews).
The contemporary 21st century School for Scandal is located in a glass-blocked, sophisticated penthouse with its fashionably costumed (Rodriguez 2000) mentors and students and top-of-the-line equipment, appliances, tools and gadgets installed and operating in optimum efficiency. They no longer put on powdered wigs but high-punk fashion and trendy songs that relate to the current era. Whatever props and costumes have been applied through the centuries, the presentation of Sheridan's appealing comedy has...
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