The Rivals Critics Flashcards
Maybank.
The intrigues of love in high society, the…
…importance of status, inheritance and income are all referenced
O’Toole.
Elegant comedy…
…of manners
Lewcock.
Sheridan used the artifices of the stage to demonstrate…
…the masks men use to hide from reality and the consequences of taking the mask to the true face
Baldwin.
Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive…
…and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty
Baldwin.
The signal of secret and violent…
…inhumanity, the mark of cruelty
Fiskin.
Corruption of…
…reasonable attitudes
Fiskin.
Sheridan creates a confusion of…
….identities that attack sentimentality
Reade.
Sheridan pushes the manners and stereotypes of the plays…
…and society of the time to extremes…is is attacking attitudes to love and money
Dr Johnson.
Lydia is a young woman to be…
…reckoned with, her feistiness and recoursefullness is a taste of things to come
Tompkins.
Represents a monumental…
…effort to reorganise culture from a woman’s point of view
Maybank.
Her books illustrate what she is meant to be…
…moral and pious, and what she is, fashion conscience and sexual
Billington.
The self-torturing Faulkland, forever testing the fidelity…
…of his beloved Julia mixes the neurotic and the erotic
Billington.
Scenes melt into each other as we watch Sheridan’s…
…timeless satire on the caprices of passion
Fiskin.
The Rivals is the corruption…
…of reasonable attitudes
O’toole.
Cliches of traditional…
…melodrama turned on their heads
Stern.
Sheridan criticises ideas by promoting…
…them in a preposterous manner
Maybank.
Jack enjoys a double identity as it…
…increases his control over others
Maybank.
Only self-inflicted caprice in each…
…pair obstructs social harmony
Reade.
He is attacking attitudes to love and money…
…marriage and responsibilities, the battle of the sexes and the age
Maybank.
Acres’ literalism with language makes him a comic…
…counterpart to Mrs M, his referential oaths betraying his vain attempt to distinguish himself in a fashionable society
Maybank.
Lucy embodies the calculated fostering…
…of two traits-simplicity and guile- suggested by her outbursts of O Gemini
Maybank.
The play’s imagery takes money as…
…its metaphor, connecting it to intangibles such as love
Maybank.
Lydia mounts a vigorous defence of her…
…right to marry who she pleases
Maybank.
Faulkland’s obsessions grow in comic amplification throughout scenes. He is presented as….
…a self tormentor, his jealousy arising from insecurity
Lewcock.
Sir A represents the man of absolute integrity…
…but is the warning to the audience of being blind to the pretences of others
Lewcock.
Where the novels hidden under books of sermons and advice…
…on etiquette can be seen as a metaphor for hiding ones true feelings under masks of sentiment and decorum
Lewcock.
Reputations can be sold…
…as easily as painted appearances
Lewcock.
The rivals exaggerates the idea of…
…a society that exists by appearances
Lewcock.
Lydia’s preoccupation with romantic, even erotic literature…
…epitomises the depths of feeling which may be concealed under the mandatory surface of rationality
Lewcock.
Faulkland exemplifies the refining of…
…ones sentiments taken to the foolish yet logical extreme
Lewcock.
In this context the duel becomes the threat of…
…danger that is needed to bring Lydia to an acknowledgement of reality
Lewcock.
He appears concerned not only to show the differences…
…between appearances and reality but the consequences of false impressions
Lewcock.
He illustrated many of the ways people consciously and unconsciously…
…deceive themselves and others
Lewcock.
The Rivals portrays the shifts and stratagems…
…contemporary life might force people to adopt if they carried their ideals to extremes
Ericson.
It is Jack’s inventiveness that…
…establishes him at the heart of the play
A.N.Kaul.
Sheridan is concerned with nothing less than the problem of women’s…
…freedom in a society that looks upon women as property and upon marriage as a business transaction
Groag.
The rivals addresses that the conflict between the illusion of Romance and…
…the warning signs of common sense
Groag.
Lydia believes that…
…love conquers all adversity
Groag.
Mrs Malaprop hopes love…
…will restore lost youth
Groag.
Bob Acres expects it to…
…give him style and courage
Gross.
The rivals addresses the…
…conduct of life
Groag.
All believe that love conquers all, that love…
…can overcome even poverty and sadness and death
Groag.
Jack and Julia are the children of…
…the Age of Reason, who see everything from a perspective that propels the social world forward
Groag.
The world clearly could not…
…function if we all loved like Lydia and Faulkland
Groag.
There should be little regret…
…about the loss of the idealism who love not too wisely but too well
Conflicts
Elegance and absurdity, wit and farce, realism and modernity of the dialogue
Sheridan presents us with a society struggling with the rivalry…
…between the tyrannical old order and a softer new order.
Language: it’s power to entertain, subvert and to capture…
…social and cultural behaviour. Accuracy and truth
