48 pages • 1 hour read
Richard Brinsley SheridanThe School for Scandal
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1777A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Act IVChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act IV, Scene 1 Summary
Charles gives Careless the Surface family genealogy to use as an auctioneer’s hammer, and Charles calls out the names of his dead relatives, asking for small sums of money for each portrait. Realizing how long this process will take, Charles offers the whole family for a lump sum. Oliver notices that Charles skipped one portrait, which Charles says is his Uncle Oliver’s. Charles refuses to sell Oliver’s portrait for any sum of money, so Oliver renounces his disgust for Charles.
Oliver, as Premium, offers Charles more than double the amount he asked for the remainder of the portraits, noting how similar Charles is to his father. Oliver, Moses, and Careless leave, and Rowley enters. Rowley chastises Charles for selling his family portraits, but Charles is excited. Charles gives Rowley 100 pounds to send to Stanley, and Rowley is impressed with Charles’s generosity. Charles leaves to gamble.
Act IV, Scene 2 Summary
Moses and Oliver discuss Charles’s behavior. Moses says Charles is too extravagant, gambles too much, and spends money on women, but Oliver is content that Charles refused to sell Oliver’s portrait. Rowley arrives with the 100 pounds for Stanley, and Moses considers generosity another of Charles’s faults.
Oliver plans to dress as Stanley to see Joseph, but Trip tells him to wait until Peter has visited Joseph. Trip continues to ask Moses for money, and Oliver comments on the depravity of servants.
Act IV, Scene 3 Summary
Lady Teazle arrives at Joseph’s home and complains about Peter’s suspicions, noting that Sneerwell is spreading baseless rumors about Lady Teazle. Joseph tells Lady Teazle that she needs to shed her feelings of innocence and confirm Peter’s suspicions. Joseph takes Lady Teazle’s hand, but a servant enters, announcing Peter’s arrival. Lady Teazle panics, thinking she is about to be caught in an affair, and she hides behind a screen.
Joseph pretends to read and welcomes Peter when he arrives. Peter tells Joseph he is distraught about Lady Teazle. He resolves to give her 800 pounds per year while he is alive, leaving her the rest of his money when he dies. Peter does not want to tell Lady Teazle about the latter part of his will, and Joseph jokes that he would keep the secret if he could. Peter suspects Charles and Lady Teazle are having an affair. Joseph says he does not think either of them would betray Peter that way. Peter reveals Joseph’s interest in Maria, ruining his plan with Lady Teazle.
Charles arrives, and Peter tries to hide behind the screen. Seeing the edge of a woman’s dress, Joseph lies and says a milliner is hiding there, moving Peter to a closet. Peter wants Joseph to ask Charles about Lady Teazle to see if Charles is innocent. Both Lady Teazle and Peter take turns talking to Joseph from their respective hiding places. Charles enters, and Joseph asks him about Lady Teazle. Charles denies any interest in Lady Teazle, reaffirming his interest in Maria, but Charles implies that Joseph might be having an affair with Lady Teazle.
To stop Charles, Joseph reveals Peter’s hiding place, and Charles jokes that he might have revealed Joseph’s secret to Peter by accident. Sneerwell arrives. Joseph excuses himself from seeing her, telling Peter not to mention the milliner. When Joseph leaves, Peter tells Charles about the milliner, and Peter fights Charles to stop him from revealing her. Joseph re-enters as Charles pulls down the screen. Charles laughs at Joseph, Peter, and Lady Teazle before leaving.
Joseph tries to lie to Peter about Lady Teazle’s presence, but Lady Teazle interrupts him. She reveals Joseph’s plan to seduce her and marry Maria. She says Peter’s address to Joseph revealed the love and tenderness she wants in her marriage. Lady Teazle and Peter leave while insulting Joseph.
Act IV Analysis
Act IV begins with the conclusion of Charles’s sale to Premium, revealing another element of The Moral Conflicts of Human Nature. After Charles refuses to sell Oliver’s portrait, Oliver forgives him entirely, telling Moses: “A dear extravagant rogue! —Good day! —Come, Moses,—Let me hear now who dares call him profligate!” (425). Oliver accepts the fact that Charles is extravagant, and the humor of this situation comes from the fact that Charles has only shown any respect to Oliver. Ultimately, Charles is still “profligate,” or reckless, wasteful, and excessive.
Oliver’s forgiveness shows his own weakness for flattery, in which Charles’s behavior becomes acceptable only because he still shows deference to Oliver specifically. Even though Charles is still a libertine, Oliver no longer sees Charles’s bad behavior as a problem, instead loving him more for being reckless without forgetting Oliver’s role in his life. This interaction reframes the issue of Charles’s extravagance in light of social acceptance and material needs, as Charles can disappoint everyone except Oliver and still maintain his luxurious lifestyle.
After Oliver leaves, Charles shows a hint of his true morals, reflecting The Discrepancy Between Public Virtue and Private Vice, by sending Stanley 100 pounds. Though Charles intends to gamble away the remainder of the money earned by selling his family portraits, he tells Rowley, “poor Stanley’s wants are pressing, and, if you don’t make haste, we shall have someone call that has a better right to the money” (425). Charles acknowledges, here, that he owes a lot of money to money-lenders, but he places his relative’s well-being above his own. However, he still intends to gamble his remaining money, showing that he does not intend to pay his debts at all.
A critical element of The Destructive Nature of Gossip and Scandal comes to light in Act IV Scene 3, as Lady Teazle tells Joseph: “But isn’t it provoking, to have the most ill-natured things said to one? And there’s my friend Lady Sneerwell has circulated I don’t know how many scandalous tales of me! And all without any foundation, too” (428). Lady Teazle, who thought she was part of Sneerwell’s group and immune to their gossip, finds out that she is another pawn in their schemes.
The rumors Sneerwell spreads are that Charles and Lady Teazle are having an affair, while others note how Joseph and Lady Teazle spend so much time together that she might be sleeping with either brother. Joseph, being an accomplice to Sneerwell, attempts to seduce Lady Teazle, taunting, “Ah, the ill effects of your country education, I see, still remain with you” (429), revealing how he and Sneerwell have used the premise of “fashion” to manipulate Lady Teazle into her current predicament. In this instance, the destruction caused by gossip lies in how close Lady Teazle comes to betraying her own values, since she thinks everyone believes in her immorality anyway.
The extended and convoluted Scene 3 involves Lady Teazle and Peter hiding in different parts of Joseph’s room, while Charles reveals Joseph’s plot, not realizing the audience they have. Charles is shocked to hear that Peter feared Lady Teazle was sleeping with Charles, and he insists that he thought Joseph was “her favorite” (434), recounting the instances in which Charles found Joseph and Lady Teazle together. Joseph tries to silence Charles, but Peter hears enough, and the revelation that Lady Teazle was the “French milliner” Joseph was hiding reveals Joseph’s intentions. This scene clearly illustrates how Charles’s vices, which are outwardly displayed, trump Joseph’s public virtue, as Charles does not think at all that he should hide what he knows. Joseph, on the other hand, is caught in a web of his own lies.
