The intrigues of such aptly named characters as Lady Sneerwell, Sir Joseph Surface, Lady Candour, and Sir Benjamin Backbite have amused theater audiences for more than two centuries. They are the invention of the Irish-born playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and they unfold, collide, and backfire hilariously in his masterpiece, The School for Scandal, a play still considered by many  the best comedy of manners in English.
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The Recruiting Officer is a 1706 play by the Irish writer George Farquhar, which follows the social and sexual exploits of two officers, the womanising Plume and the cowardly Brazen, in the town of Shrewsbury (the town where Farquhar himself was posted in this capacity) to recruit soldiers. The chaacters of the play are generally stock, in keeping with the genre of Restoration comedy.