Excluding Julia, every character in The Rivals employs deception or lies to achieve their desires from others. The play opens with David's wig, a vain attempt to fit into a higher social class that has already abandoned wigs as a fashion statement. It concludes with Faulkland's final effort to trick Julia into confessing unworthy reasons for loving him. None of the characters willingly present the truth. Many characters blatantly lie. For instance, Fag deceives Sir Anthony about Jack's reasons for being in Bath, and Lucy misleads Sir Lucius about the author of his love letters. Some characters simply misrepresent themselves. Jack pretends to be Ensign Beverley to win Lydia's affection, while Mrs. Malaprop tries to sound more refined by using fancy words she neither understands nor pronounces correctly.

Among the characters, Lucy benefits most from her deceit because she acts as a mediator for the others' schemes. She reveals to the audience in a soliloquy, "commend me to a mask of silliness and a pair of sharp eyes for my own interest under it." Her remark essentially defines artifice: appearing innocent to deceive others while pursuing one's own selfish goals through their trust.

The Rivals contrasts two typical paths to courtship: arranged marriages and romantic love. For wealthy families, marriages served as a key strategy to preserve or enhance their dynastic power. Ambitious middle-class families saw a daughter's "advantageous" marriage as a way to climb the social ladder. Consequently, girls were treated as investments and were not permitted to select their own partners. Their public outings were meticulously planned and monitored. Locations like Bath, certain public spaces in London, and social gatherings provided opportunities for young people to interact with the opposite sex without any obligation. Parents, usually the father, or a legal guardian in the case of orphans, typically arranged the marriages. Naturally, young men and women often clashed with their parents, whose interests differed from their children's desires. The plethora of novels, poems, and plays addressing these conflicts highlights the significance of courtship issues in eighteenth-century culture.

During the eighteenth century, sentiment, or the capacity to "feel," was highly esteemed. The novel emerged as the literary genre that addressed the widespread fascination with emotions—what sparked them and how they could be managed. The European novel was "invented" in Spain in the seventeenth century, and as a new addition to literary genres, it was often met with skepticism, if not outright disapproval. In an era that favored strict formality—evident in poetry's rhyming couplets—the novel's more freeform style was viewed as aimless and potentially corrupting, particularly for its predominantly female audience. Novels evolved from a rich background of conduct manuals and travel literature, eventually becoming narratives of a protagonist's psychological "coming of age."

Sentimental novels were the most popular genre among women. These stories detailed romantic entanglements featuring daring suitors and charming, virtuous heroines who embodied emotional depth. When Lydia Languish lists the novels she wants Lucy to fetch for her, these titles represent real books available at that time. Rather than purchasing these books, Lydia sends Lucy to borrow them from the lending library, where patrons could subscribe for a modest annual fee. This lending library was a new trend that made books accessible to every young woman eager to shape her life based on these fictional examples. While the reading of novels by young, impressionable girls was criticized by the male-dominated society, it was also praised as a suitable alternative to formal education.

Education is a key path to social progress, and spoken language serves as its social indicator. In The Rivals , the focus...