was actually the name of a character in Sheriden's mother Frances's novel The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph which was posthumously published in 1767.

Orlando Faulkland is Miss Bidulph's lover ,and they have a strained type of romance that is on , then it is off. Sound familar?

The novel is actually very amusing, and has made me laugh out loud while I was reading it.Its hard to find a copy but I reccommend you try to get hold of one if you can.

Sheriden also seems to have taken some incidents from teh plot of this novel and ued them in his other play" The School for Scandal", but thats probably off topic for here :-)

Interestingly, his mother's play A Journey to Bath has a character in it called MrsTryfort. She has a manner of expressing herself which is very similar to that of Mrs Malaprop.

These phrases will sound very familiar to us,I am sure :these quotes are taken from Sheridan and the Drama of Georgian England by John Loftis:

Mrs Tryfort is fondest of hard words, which without miscalling,she always takes care to missapply; she talks of a "progeny of learning" and contagious countries" and she insistes that " so much taciturnity doesn't become a young man

There is also in A Journey to Batha character called Sir Jonathon Bull who anticipates Sir Lucius in his declaration in scene iv:

if I had your ladyship at Bull Hall , I could show you a line of ancestry that would convince you we are not a people of yesterday...Why the land and mansion house has slipped thoguh our fingers,but, thank Heaven, the family pictures are stilll extant

Compare this with Sir Lucius's speech in Scene iv:

Sir Luc. Ah, my little friend, if I had Blunderbuss Hall here, I could show you a range of ancestry, in the old O’Trigger line, that would furnish the new room; every one of whom had killed his man!—For though the mansion-house and dirty acres have slipped through my fingers, I thank heaven our honour and the family-pictures are as fresh as ever.

Most of Sheriden's sources seem to have been very close to home ( he also relys on some of the standard works in the 18th century reportoire that are no not perfromed much if at all).