ABSTRACT
Kierkegaard’s use of the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan represents an unexplored field in Kierkegaard studies. In order to examine this relation and fill out the necessary background, I will need to address a number of questions. The first one is what was the reason for the success of Sheridan’s The School for Scandal in Britain? This classic work was performed for the first time on May 8, 1777 in Drury Lane and clearly constitutes the main, if not sole, point of contact with Kierkegaard’s thought. Next, we will have a look at the staging of The School for Scandal in Denmark in 1846. Kierkegaard owned the Danish translation of the play,1 and it is clear that he attended the performance. The question here is what captivated the philosopher’s attention in the text in the work’s character development and plot. Moreover, why did he deliberately make a mistake in the review of The School for Scandal, which appeared in the “Writing Sampler,” where he names William Shakespeare as the author of the play?
