Rivals, The

Rivals, The, a comedy by R. B. Sheridan, produced 1775.

This was Sheridan's first play; it is generally agreed to be one of the most engaging and accomplished of English comedies. It is set in Bath. Captain Absolute, son of Sir Anthony Absolute, is in love with Lydia Languish, the niece of Mrs Malaprop. Lydia prefers a poor half-pay lieutenant to the heir of a baronet, so he assumes, for the purposes of courtship, the character of Ensign Beverley, and in this guise he is favourably received. But Lydia will lose half her fortune if she marries without her aunt's consent, and Mrs Malaprop will not approve of an indigent ensign. Sir Anthony arrives in Bath to propose a match between his son and Lydia Languish, a proposal welcomed by Mrs Malaprop. Captain Absolute is afraid of revealing his deception to Lydia in case he loses her; while Bob Acres, who is also Lydia's suitor and has heard of Beverley's courtship, is provoked by the fiery Irishman Sir Lucius O'Trigger to ask Captain Absolute to carry a challenge to Beverley. Sir Lucius himself, who has been deluded into thinking that some love-letters received by him from Mrs Malaprop are really from Lydia, likewise finds Captain Absolute in his path, and challenges him. But when Acres finds that Beverley is in fact his friend Absolute, he declines his duel with relief and resigns all claim to Lydia. Sir Lucius's misapprehension is removed by the arrival of Mrs Malaprop, and Lydia, after a pretty quarrel with her lover for shattering her hopes of a romantic elopement, finally forgives him. Another plot, neatly interwoven with the rest, concerns the love-affair of the perverse and jealous Faulkland with Lydia's friend Julia Melville.