The scene is very funny, of course, and I, for one, wasn't averse to watching our manipulative Jack writhing like an eel on a frying pan - he got it coming, with the way he treated all people around him as ready dupes for his wits. I suppose I'm a little spiteful, but it did my soul good to see his chickens come to roost. Lydia is certainly right in her indignation. Well, she is romantically silly, and the audience never fails to have an innocent laugh over her notions, but when the very man who nourished these notions deliberately and systematically appears to laugh about them, this is another story. She feels betrayed because she is betrayed. And so is Mrs. Malaprop. Well, it just shows that The Rivals is not a slapstick comedy, but a real one, with its young author capable of subtlety, as well as wit.

To argue the matter further, perhaps the really consistent author would make his hero think of the impossibility to carry his mixed lies in this mixed company. Perhaps Jack hoped that his glib tongue would pull him out again. His overconfidence did him in - this is how I read it.