As a dramatist, he began by presenting A Trip to Scarborough, which was altered from Vanbrugh’s Relapse; but his fame was at once assured by his production, in 1775, of The Duenna and The Rivals.  The former is called an opera, but is really a comedy containing many songs:  the plot is varied and entertaining; but it is far inferior to The Rivals, which is based upon his own adventures, and is brimming with wit and humor.  Mrs. Malaprop, Bob Acres, Sir Lucius O’Trigger, and the Absolutes, father and son, have been prime favorites upon the stage ever since.

In 1777 he produced The School for Scandal, a caustic satire on London society, which has no superior in genteel comedy.  It has been said that the characters of Charles and Joseph Surface were suggested by the Tom Jones and Blifil of Fielding; but, if this be true, the handling is so original and natural, that they are in no sense a plagiarism.  Without the rippling brilliancy of The Rivals, The School for Scandal is better sustained in scene and colloquy; and in spite of some indelicacy, which is due to the age, the moral lesson is far more valuable.  The satire is strong and instructive, and marks the great advance in social decorum over the former age.

In 1779 appeared The Critic, a literary satire, in which the chief character is that of Sir Fretful Plagiary.

Sheridan sat in parliament as member for Stafford.  His first effort in oratory was a failure; but by study he became one of the most effective popular orators of his day.  His speeches lose by reading:  he abounded in gaudy figures, and is not without bombast; but his wonderful flow of words and his impassioned action dazzled his audience and kept it spellbound.  His oratory, whatever its faults, gained also the unstinted praise of his colleagues and rivals in the art.  Of his great speech in the trial of Warren Hastings, in 1788, Fox declared that “all he had ever heard, all he had ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapor before the sun.”  Burke called it “the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there was any record or tradition;” and Pitt said “that it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient or modern times.”

Sheridan was for some time the friend and comrade of the Prince Regent, in wild courses which were to the taste of both; but this friendship was dissolved, and the famous dramatist and orator sank gradually in the social scale, until he had sounded the depths of human misery.  He was deeply in debt; he obtained money under mean and false pretences; he was drunken and debauched; and even death did not bring rest.  He died in July, 1816.  His corpse was arrested for debt, and could not be buried until the debt was paid.  In his varied brilliancy and in his fatal debauchery, his character stands forth as the completest type of the period of the Regency.  Many memoirs have been written, among which those of his friend Moore, and his granddaughter the Hon. Mrs. Norton, although they unduly palliate his faults, are the best.