The Rivals: A Comedy

In the fashionable spa town of Bath, the romantic young heiress Lydia Languish, who has read too many novels, wants to marry a poor soldier rather than a rich gentleman. So Captain Jack Absolute, who loves her, courts her disguised as the penniless Ensign Beverley, and finds himself his own rival when his father arranges for him to marry the same girl. Around them gather Lydia's aunt, Mrs Malaprop, who constantly confuses long words, a jealous lover, a cowardly country squire and a fire-eating Irish duellist.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan wrote the comedy at twenty-three, and it was first performed in 1775. Mrs Malaprop's blunders, such as 'as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile', gave English the word 'malapropism'. Read Sheridan's The School for Scandal.