She Stoops to Conquer- Oliver Goldsmith

Last week I went to see a production of the 1773 classic She Stoops to Conquer written by Oliver Goldsmith, performed at the National Theatre. Goldsmith’s play was written at a time when much of London theatre was censored because it was seen as a method of distributing anti-establishment ideas. Following an act of 1737 every play had to be approved by the government. Despite this censored approach to 18^th century theatre, Goldsmith’s play was first performed in 1773, with a few adaptions from the original, and was immediately a huge success.

Goldsmith’s play can be seen as a response to the sentimental comedy which had become popular during the 18^th century. Sentimental comedy was based on mankind being good and virtuous and Goldsmith believed this made for bad comedy because peoples mistakes should be laughed rather than pardoned or excused. Goldsmith wrote in an essay comparing sentimental comedy and laughter that “comedy is defined by Aristotle to be a picture of the frailties of the lower part of mankind” and therefore, according to Goldsmith, “comedy should excite our laughter by ridiculously exhibiting the follies of the lower part of mankind.” Goldsmith’s main intention was to make people laugh, and this was certainly achieved in the production I went to see.

The crux of the plot comes when two fashionable young gentleman from London are tricked by country joker Tony Lumpkin into believing that the house they are visiting is an inn, when it is in fact the home of a respectable man named Mr Hardcastle. Mr Hardcastle’s daughter has been selected as a potential wife for one of the young gentlemen from town called Marlow, son of Mr Hardcastle’s old friend Charles Marlow. Marlow is awkward and shy around upper class women, but transforms into a strutting, confident young man around women of a lower class. Therefore, on perceiving this feature of Marlow’s character, Miss Hardcastle cleverly adopts the role of a barmaid to attract Marlow, demonstrating how she stoops to conquer.

One point of interest in the play is that Marlow and Miss Hardcastle have been pared together as potential lovers by their elders. Goldsmith’s decision to in cooperate this feature of 18^th century society in his play demonstrates how he mocks social conventions. Arranged marriages were common in the 18^th century, and often had the intention of some kind of financial, social or political reward. Perhaps by putting a comic slant on the idea of arranged marriages, Goldsmith is mocking their value.

The plays uses stock characters, such as the fashionable young gentlemen about town, beautiful young women, old hags, loyal and disloyal servants and gullible people, which is typical of restoration and 18^th century comedy. Also a review of this rendition in the Evening Standard talks about the plays power of “delayed gratification”, and this goes hand in hand with Goldsmith’s use of dramatic irony, because the audience is aware of the deception that has taken place but has to wait until the end of the play for all to be revealed.

Goldsmith himself was said to be shy around women of a higher class, but confident around women of lesser rank. Furthermore, the story is said to be partly autobiographical, because Goldsmith was apparently once led to believe he was staying in an inn when in fact he wasn’t, only realising when the landlord refused his cheque in the morning. The importance of the play in the context of the 18^th century and in particular in the theatre of this century make it valuable to my course.