"The Fate of Empires": The American War, Political Parody, and Sheridan's Comedies

Abstract

This essay examines three published but unperformed political parodies of the 1770s: The Duenna (1776) and The Critic; or a Tragedy Rehearsed (1780), both attributed to Israel Pottinger, and The School for Scandal (1779) by the Philadelphian John Leacock. These works, taking their titles from the comedies of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, are to all intents and purposes anti-government pamphlets in dramatic form, specific critiques of the British administration's handling of the American War. This piece explores the processes by which Pottinger and Leacock politicize Sheridanian comedy of manners in order to dramatize and interrogate the new cultural technologies, most especially the mass media, engendered or accelerated by the American war.