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A Twentieth-Century Response to The Critic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
Extract
No doubt conditioned by the pointed use of the rehearsal format in Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author as a vehicle for that playwright's theme of philosophical relativism, I have often conjectured that similar thematic concerns are implicit in almost any play using such a device. Once the artifices of the theatre are laid bare, and the discrepancies between life as it is represented on the stage and life as we know it are brought into focus, the relative truths and realities of each may be measured and evaluated. Although I would not wish to argue that philosophical relativism is a major or even an intentional concern of Sheridan's The Critic, I am convinced that it is an inescapable ingredient, at least for a modern audience.
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- Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1974
References
Notes
1 A useful summary of The Critic in the context of its immediate targets is found in Macey's, Samuel L. “Sheridan: The Last of the Great Theatrical Satirists,” Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research, 9 (November, 1970), 40–44Google Scholar.
2 Modern Drama, alternate edition (Boston, 1966), p. 405Google Scholar.
3 See Bateson, F. W., “Notes on the Text of Two Sheridan Plays,” Review of English Studies 16 (July, 1940), 314–316. The evidence consists of just such differences in early editions and promptbooks, as well as Dibdin's comment in preface to 1814 edition that topical allusions have varied to suit the timesGoogle Scholar.
4 The Idea of Theatre (Princeton, 1949), p. 188Google Scholar.