A Trip to Scarborough was first performed on 24 February 1777 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. In 1776, at only twenty-five, Sheridan acquired a stake in the theatre when he and his father-in-law purchased David Garrick’s share of Drury Lane. Garrick was a famous actor, playwright, theatre owner and manager who made his professional stage debut in Aphra Behn’s, Oroonoko. In 1747, five years after joining the Drury Lane acting company, he bought a share in the theatre and became its manager. Sheridan was keen to have a successful first season and he began to look for works to produce for the start of 1777.
He decided to write a play based on John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse, a Restoration comedy first staged in 1696. Vanbrugh’s play was a sequel to Colley Cibber’s, Love’s Last Shift, which had been staged earlier the same year. Cibber’s work marked a shift away from the bawdy, licentious nature of Restoration comedies, to a mood of moral piety and conservatism. The Relapse was a riposte to Cibber’s Sentimental comedy, as it told the story of the ‘relapse’ of the reformed rakish husband featured in Love’s Last Shift. By the late eighteenth century, the sexual permissiveness that characterised Restoration comedies was deemed improper and immoral, so Sheridan’s reworking of The Relapse removed the more risqué and ribald aspects of the play.
A Trip to Scarborough is centred on Tom Fashion, who arrives in Scarborough hoping to be able to beg for money from his rich, older brother, Lord Foppington. He devises a plan to marry his brother’s wealthy fiancée and acquire her fortune. He is aided in his plan by his friend Colonel Townly and an acquaintance called Loveless, who is seeking revenge against Foppington for seducing his wife. After the initial run, there was little real interest in the play, until Alan Ayckbourn adapted and revised it for his 1982 work of the same name. Ayckbourn took great liberties with Sheridan’s play and crafted a unique and distinctive comedy for the twentieth century.