About the book: 1956 / Sheridan was the largest satirist playwright of the 18th century in England. A democrat educator, a writer of remarkable realistic talent, he gave the most complete artistic embodiment to the problems that worried the minds of the progressive people of his time. Sheridan’s work completes the history of the development of English democratic comedy of the Enlightenment. Sheridan’s first comedy, “The Rivals,” was specifically dedicated to the fight against sentimental dramaturgy, which depicted the world not as it was, but as it wanted to appear. The young playwright extracted no less comedy from this contradiction than he later did from the direct exposure of bigots and hypocrites. However, Sheridan’s material was not literary polemics, but life itself.