ABSTRACT
In an age when connoisseurship and collecting were commonplaces of public speech and thought, it is no surprise that Sheridan's The Schoolfor Scandal, played 261 times between 1776 and 1800, appears to be a collection of fables about collecting and connoisseurship. Auctions and auctioneers haunt the play's mise-en-scene as well as its production history. Cecil Price has noted the absence of any early manuscript of the auction scene. First and incidentally, according to Choudhury, the play was produced in Kolkata (then Calcutta), India in 1782, in a theater called the New Playhouse or Calcutta Theatre established in 1775 by George Williamson, an auctioneer. Auctions also provided, most crucially, a matrix for genealogical reflections and assessments by this prolific correspondent and connoisseur. Charles Smith lucidly details the object-cathexes, personifications and reifications of commodities involved in auctions. The indeterminacy of value, of things and people, that connoisseurs find an opportunity, collectors find a delight, Sir George finds a headache.
