ridiculous names to his larger-than-life creations.

Sheridan's characters are generally quite shallow, so it's entirely appropriate that they're given names that reveal their limited personalities. Once we know someone's name in this play, we're immediately left in no doubt as to what kind of person they are.

In the case of Sir Anthony Absolute, we can gather straight away that we're dealing with someone stern and unbending, a man who insists on living life his way. With Squire Bob Acres, we have someone whose whole life revolves around his land, a man who's presented by Sheridan as a bit of a country bumpkin. And in Sir Lucius O'Trigger, we're introduced to a man with a hair-trigger temper who's forever fighting duels in defense of his honor.

These are all comic characters who exist to make the audience laugh, and so there's really no need for Sheridan to explore them in any real depth. Once we've been introduced to them and we know what they're like, we can just sit back and enjoy them as they strive to deal—often unsuccessfully—with the comic situations into which they've been thrown.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s lasting fame is based in his comedy of manners that satirized the eighteenth-century English preoccupation with social status and the fashionable ways that obsession was expressed. Sheridan developed a memorable set of characters who embody specific attributes of that fashion-obsessed world. Overall, Sheridan’s characters do not veer far from stereotypes such as the ingénue or the fop; where the author excels is in identifying specific characters with specific attributes. This method apparently makes it easy for the audience to follow the sometimes convoluted plot, as the viewer can anticipate how each character will behave. Sheridan, however, frequently confounds those expectations by emphasizing a different characteristic, or by using a minor character to disrupt the proceedings. The minor characters play important roles as well in heightening the comic effects.

In The Rivals, Sheridan extends his social satire even further through Jack Absolute, a wealthy man who is not only aware of the widespread hypocrisy in the society he inhabits, but decides to use it for his own advantage. He assumes an alternate identity as a pauper, with the goal of winning the overly romantic Lydia. He correctly anticipates that she will find poverty “charming.” Sheridan also encourages the audience to laugh at their own expense through the character of Mrs. Malaprop, who constantly uses words inappropriately. Recognizing her errors generates humor as the audience reassures itself of their own correct knowledge, thereby admitting their complicity in social snobbery.

In The Rivals, Sheridan reflects ideas about characterization common in eighteenth century satire. Characters are not fully rounded but are types. This means that the characters exist primarily to accentuate and poke fun at one personality trait, usually a human weakness. In this way, characterization points back to the Medieval morality plays, in which characters, for example, might represent different vices, such as anger, sloth, or envy.

A prime example of this use of type is Lydia Languish. Her last name, Languish, represents the way she languishes over novels. Through her, Sheridan parodies the romantic and unrealistic notions of love young women in those times were learning from novels. Novels were a relatively new form and one widely disparaged as not being healthy for their primarily young women readers.

Lydia has such exaggerated notions about true love's purity that she refuses to marry Captain Jack Absolute, the man she is love with, because he is heir to a fortune. He has to pose as a penniless ensign so that she can be sure her love is untainted by any practical ideas of money.

Sheridan's humor comes out of the way he takes one weakness in human nature prevalent in the society of his time and accentuates it until it is so over-the-top his audience can't help laughing.

You can't comment on Sheridan's art of characterization without mentioning the aptly named characters.  (In fact, we even had a new word in the English language coined because of one of them!)  It is this naming technique that distinguishes Sheridan's characterization art above many others.

Let's take a look at some of the more interesting of Sheridan's names in this book:  Absolute, Languish, Malaprop, & O'Trigger.  First, whether it be Captain Jack or Sir Anthony, the characters with the name of "Absolute" are very strong-willed!  This fits their names well.  The father is strong-willed in NOT having his son woo Lydia.  The son is strong-willed enough to go against his father and WIN Lydia.  How about this for being strong-willed:

Had I a thousand daughters, by Heaven! I'd as soon have them taught the black art as their alphabet!

Lydia, of course, is Lydia Languish.  Perfect name for her in that she is forced to live in a less than ideal situation:  so involved in fantasy that everyone seems below her.  The characterization of Mrs. Malaprop actually helped us coin the term "malapropism" because of her ghastly use of the English language.  And finally, the quick-to-act O'Trigger who is a cocky and overbearing Irishman remains true to his name as well (even in suggesting a duel he isn't ready for).

As you can see, then, it is the names of the characters in Sheridan's Rivals that mark his art in characterization.