The Rivals (New Mermaids)

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