The School for Scandal

Title

What is the siginificance of the title?

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Sheridan's title immediately addressed the "vice" he is addressing in his satirical play. Scandal and gossip spread like wildfire, and Sheridan is directly attacking the swiftness with which gossip travels, and the fact that there is no need to school humanity in the ways it might be spread..... his aim is to expose this vice and its effects in the hopes that it it might be put to an end.

A school for Scandal! tell me, I beseech you,
Needs there a school this modish art to teach you?
No need of lessons now, the knowing think;
We might as well be taught to eat and drink."

"Alas! the devil's sooner raised than laid.
So strong, so swift, the monster there's no gagging:
Cut Scandal's head off, still the tongue is wagging."

Source(s)

The School for Scandal