Recommendations
Books Like The School for Scandal
Best books to read after The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Readers who love The School for Scandal — Sheridan's comedy of manners about gossip, hypocrisy, and the vindication of innate virtue in fashionable London society — will enjoy these works of English comic theatre, Restoration wit, and the great tradition of the comedy of manners.
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She Stoops to Conquer
by Oliver Goldsmith
The companion comedy from four years earlier — Goldsmith's farce is to The School for Scandal as country comedy is to drawing-room wit; the two plays together are the essential texts of late eighteenth-century English stage comedy.
- 2Buy
The Rivals
by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Sheridan's first great comedy — Mrs. Malaprop (the origin of 'malapropism'), Lydia Languish's romantic sentimentalism, and the comic duel between Acres and Jack Absolute; read before or after The School for Scandal to see Sheridan's development.
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The Way of the World
by William Congreve
The Restoration comedy masterpiece that The School for Scandal descends from — Congreve's brilliant dialogue, financial scheming, and moral comedy among fashionable society are the direct ancestor of Sheridan's drawing-room world; the greatest English comedy before The School for Scandal.
- 4Buy
The Country Wife
by William Wycherley
The Restoration comedy about sexual hypocrisy and social pretension — Wycherley's more cynical vision of society is the earlier version of Sheridan's world; reading it alongside The School for Scandal shows how eighteenth-century comedy softened Restoration cynicism without losing its satirical bite.
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The Importance of Being Earnest
by Oscar Wilde
Wilde's masterpiece of wit and social comedy is the Victorian heir to Sheridan — the brilliant dialogue, the exposure of social hypocrisy, and the comedy of pretension and disguise are all Sheridan's methods raised to their highest pitch; the two plays are natural companions.
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Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
Austen's comedic vision of social pretension and the vindication of genuine virtue is the prose equivalent of Sheridan's dramatic vision — Lady Catherine de Bourgh is Mrs. Sneerwell's counterpart, and Darcy's true character vindicated against false reputation echoes the Joseph/Charles contrast.
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Vanity Fair
by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Victorian novel that most fully inherits Sheridan's social satire — Becky Sharp's brilliant social scheming in a world of gossip and pretension is the School for Scandal writ large; Thackeray borrowed his title from The Pilgrim's Progress but his subject from Sheridan.
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The Critic
by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Sheridan's comic masterpiece for readers who want more — a savage satire on theatrical pretension and bad drama, with the incomparable Sir Fretful Plagiary and the burlesque-within-a-play The Spanish Armada; shorter than The School for Scandal but equally brilliant.
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