<DIV>Both Sheridan and Goldsmith lamented the popularity of sentimental<br>comedy in the later eighteenth century and wrote their witty and<br>satirical plays (though never lascivious in the manner of Restoration<br>comedies) to counteract the sentimental mode. The Rivals (1775) was a<br>qualified success: the suave young officer who is 'forced' by his<br>father to marry the very girl to whom he is secretly engaged must<br>always please; but first audiences were as uncertain as later critics<br>about how to evaluate his neurotic friend Faulkland, who invents a<br>series of caveats for his marriage to the earnest Julia. A country<br>squire who becomes alarmingly foppish in town, an impetuous Irishman<br>and the linguistically challenged Mrs Malaprop complete the cast. This<br>edition includes the original preface and several prologues; in an<br>appendix it lists all the fashionable books and songs to which the<br>characters allude.</DIV>