of Maria.  So, too, with the following scene between Joseph and Charles; in itself it would be flat enough; the fact that Sir Peter is listening lends it a certain piquancy; but this is ten times multiplied by the fact that Lady Teazle, too, hears all that passes.  When Joseph is called from the room by the arrival of the pretended Old Stanley, there would be no interest in his embarrassment if we believed the person behind the screen to be the French milliner.  And when Sir Peter yields to the temptation to let Charles into the secret of his brother’s frailty, and we feel every moment more certain that the screen will be overthrown, where would be the excitement, the tension, if we did not know who was behind it?  The real drama, in fact, passes behind the screen.  It lies in the terror, humiliation, and disillusionment which we know to be coursing each other through Lady Teazle’s soul.  And all this Mrs. Oliphant would have sacrificed for a single moment of crude surprise!

Now let us hear Professor Matthews’s analysis of the effect of the scene.  He says: 

“The playgoer’s interest is really not so much as to what is to happen as the way in which this event is going to affect the characters involved.  He thinks it likely enough that Sir Peter will discover that Lady Teazle is paying a visit to Joseph Surface; but what he is really anxious to learn is the way the husband will take it.  What will Lady Teazle have to say when she is discovered where she has no business to be?  How will Sir Peter receive her excuses?  What will the effect be on the future conduct of both husband and wife?  These are the questions which the spectators are eager to have answered.”

This is an admirable exposition of the frame of mind of the Drury Lane audience of May 8, 1777. who first saw the screen overturned.  But in the thousands of audiences who have since witnessed the play, how many individuals, on an average, had any doubt as to what Lady Teazle would have to say, and how Sir Peter would receive her excuses?  It would probably be safe to guess that, for a century past, two-thirds of every audience have clearly foreknown the outcome of the situation.  Professor Matthews himself has edited Sheridan’s plays, and probably knows The School for Scandal almost by heart; yet we may be pretty sure that any reasonably good performance of the Screen Scene will to-day give him pleasure not so very much inferior to that which he felt the first time he saw it.  In this pleasure, it is manifest that mere curiosity as to the immediate and subsequent conduct of Sir Peter and Lady Teazle can have no part.  There is absolutely no question which Professor Matthews, or any playgoer who shares his point of view, is “eager to have answered.”