In order to illustrate my
meaning, I propose to analyse a particular scene, not, certainly, among
the loftiest in dramatic literature, but particularly suited to my
purpose, inasmuch as it is familiar to every one, and at the same time
full of the essential qualities of drama. I mean the Screen Scene in
_The School for Scandal_.
In her "English Men of Letters" volume on Sheridan, Mrs. Oliphant
discusses this scene. Speaking in particular of the moment at which the
screen is overturned, revealing Lady Teazle behind it, she says--
"It would no doubt have been higher art could the dramatist have
deceived his audience as well as the personages of the play, and
made us also parties in the surprise of the discovery."
There could scarcely be a completer reversal of the truth than this
"hopeless comment," as Professor Brander Matthews has justly called it.
The whole effect of the long and highly-elaborated scene depends upon
our knowledge that Lady Teazle is behind the screen.
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