The play is best known for creating the comic character of Dr. Peter Pangloss, a greedy and pompous teacher hired at a salary of 300 pounds a year to tutor merchant Daniel Dowlas, who has been recently elevated to the title of Lord Duberly after the death of a distant cousin. Pangloss refers to himself as an "LL.D. and A.S.S.", and the character is fond of spouting off literary quotes which he then attributes in the fashion of "Lend me your ears. Shakespeare. Hem!" or "Verbum sat. Horace. Hem!" The surname "Pangloss" is derived from the character of that name in the 1759 novel
Candide by
Voltaire, the personal tutor of the main character Candide. ==July 1797 cast==