School for scandal

After the popularity of Restoration comedy in England in eighteenth century, the sentimental comedy started to dominate the stage as a reaction against what was supposed as immorality of Restoration comedy, but still two major dramatists continued writing in Restoration comedies: Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer and his contemporary Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal. Among the two, Sheridan’s play satirizes not only the upper-class social structure but also the contents of sentimental drama itself.