ACCORDING to Byron in his subsequently destroyed Journals, quoted by Tom Moore: Whatever Richard Brindsley Sheridan has done or chosen to do has been, Par Excellence, always the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy (The School for Scandal), the best drama (The Duenna) the best farce (The Critic), and the best Address (Monologue on Garrick) and, to crown it all, delivered the very best oration (the famous Begum speech,), ever conceived or heard in this country.
High praise, indeed - but the irony of it was that its subject held little regard for these achievements, apart from the speech, for the theatre came a poor second to politics for him. By the time he was 28 he had given up writing plays, apart from his bombastic tragedy Pissaro which, though a huge success in its time, is now hardly ever performed.
Yet Richard Brindsley Sheridan was born and bred to be a playwright. His grandfather was a clergyman, school master and bosom friend of Jonathan Swift. His father, Thomas Sheridan, a prickly, difficult man, was manager of the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin, a star actor and also a playwright. (His largely forgotten farce The Brave Irishman, though crudely fashioned, has a vigour about it that might commend it to one of our young companies today).
Richard's sweet nature, though, probably came from his mother, Frances, who was yet another writer of plays as well as novels. (Her The Discovery was performed at Drury Lane and said by Garrick to be one of the best plays he had ever read).
Thomas Sheridan left Dublin after Smock Alley was wrecked by an unruly mob and Richard, aged six, followed to London soon afterwards. He was briefly sent to school at Harrow, but never attended university, since his debt ridden father could not afford it. He studied law in a desultory way, but fame beckoned when still in his early twenties he met Elizabeth Linley, the daughter of a music master. Blessed with a beautiful voice and looks to match, in our own day she would probably have been a pop star.
What followed was to thrust Sheridan into the public eye, where he was to stay for the rest of his life. Elizabeth was being plagued by a raffish suitor, a Captain Matthews. Sheridan fought two duels with him and, between them, eloped with the beautiful singer to France, their form of marriage being subsequently regularised despite the disapproval of both families.
Elizabeth's celebrity and their romantic story gave the young couple an entree into society, and Sheridan became famous in his own right when his first masterpiece, The Rivals, was staged. He followed it with a number of other works. The School for Scandal became the most popular play of the 18th century and was translated, into French and German. Its admirers included Catherine the Great of Russia, who commissioned a special translation and George Washington, who considered it his favourite play.
Finally there was The Critic, a gloriously funny skit on heroic tragedy, surely long overdue a revival here (Patrick Mason and Michael Colgan, are you listening?). Then, to all intents and purposes, his career as a playwright was over.
Sheridan had turned to politics, becoming one of the circle of Whigs who gathered round Charles James Fox, supporting the ghastly Prince of Wales against his father, George III. It was an age of giants; Fox, Burke, Pitt the Younger and many others, not least Sheridan himself. A brilliant orator, he was forever on the side of the angels, supporting an end to the slave trade, Catholic emancipation, reform of the Commons, the early French revolution (while condemning its later excesses) and opposing coercion in Ireland and, later, the Act of Union.
BUT he was never to achieve significant office, never to see his major designs crowned with success. He had, it is true, great triumphs such as his Begums of Oud speech. A five hour oration that was part of a conceited Whig attack on the East India Company and its proconsul Warren Hastings, it moved the nation to tears and even his enemies to applause. In reality, though, it was a dubious business, for Hastings was by the standards of his time a just administrator.
Part of the reason far Sheridan's lack of success lay in his birth. No matter how gifted, no matter how charming he was, he was always still the son of a mere player, and thus not to be admitted to the innermost circles of aristocratic English power. Part at it came, too, from his high minded refusal to take bribes a office when he felt he should not, and part undoubtedly came from the chaotic nature of his personal life.
Early in his career he had taken over the running of Drury Lane Theatre and it was to involve him in a life long web of debt, quarrels and intrigue. His enlargement of the intimate playhouse of Garrick to a vast 3,000 seater was a disaster, with the place half empty much of the time and reduced to gimmicks like performing dogs and child stars. ("Oh, for the days of King Herod!" said the actress Mrs Jordan, after hearing a four year old trumpet player).
When he did get his hands on money, Sheridan would instantly blow it and, even in that age of drunkenness, he was a taper on a Homeric scale. His marriage to Elizabeth fell apart in mutual infidelties and she died shortly after giving birth to a daughter by Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the future 1798 Rebellion leader, causing Sheridan enormous guilt and grief. His second marriage, though it lasted, was hardly more successful.
His end was sad. Drury Lane burned down and, when he lost the seat he had held in Parliament for most of his life, his creditors came flocking. He spent a time in a debtors prison and there was a pitiful scene when, dying, he lay in bed in a house stripped by the bailiffs of all other furniture. He was rescued from this by a donation from the Prince Regent, as the Prince of Wales had then become, and other friends followed. On his death there was a vast funeral to Westminster Abbey, with the coffin carried by six lords, and two royal dukes following behind with many other peers. As his friend, Peter Moore, wrote:
Oh it sickens the heart to see bosoms so hollow
And friendships so false in the great and high born,
To think that a long line of titles may follow,
The relics of him who lay friendless and lorn!
Sheridan's speeches, on which he would labour for long hours, are now forgotten. His great comedies, most of which he would still be writing within days or sometimes hours of their opening, are as vital and, enjoyable as they were 200 years ago. Linda Kelly has written a splendid account of a brilliant and lovable, if sometimes impossible, Irishman.