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Álvaro Vicente Rubio Carpena

Professor Pilar Cuder Domínguez

English Literature II

30 February 2015

On She Stoops to Conquer: What Does it Make a Comedy?

This essay is intended to focus on the topics within the play, the language and

action as a whole, which make the play be a comedy. Besides here we will try to

present the author’s intention when writing the play.

Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) was an Anglo-Irish essayist, novelist, poet,

dramatist, and eccentric. Goldsmith was born in Kilkenny West, County Westmeath,

Ireland, although some experts consider him to have been born at Elphin, in the county

of Roscommon (very close, nevertheless). He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin,

and studied medicine in Edinburgh but never received a medical degree. He traveled to

Europe in 1756 and eventually settled in London. He worked as a writer and was

friends with the artistic and literary luminaries of the time, including Samuel Johnson,

James Boswell, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Edmund Burke. His first works were The

Bee, a weekly pamphlet, and An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in

Europe (“Oliver Goldsmith”; “Oliver Goldsmith”; Mikhail, 1-2).

One of his best works was She Stoops to Conquer (produced and published in

1773), a great comedy of manners, that is to say, a witty, cerebral form of dramatic

comedy that depicts and often satirizes the manners and affectations of a

contemporary society. A comedy of manners is concerned with social usage and the

question of whether or not characters meet certain social standards. Often the

governing social standard is morally trivial but exacting. The plot of such a comedy,

usually concerned with an illicit love affair or similarly scandalous matter, is subordinate

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to the play’s brittle atmosphere, witty dialogue, and pungent commentary on human

foibles (“Comedy of manners”).

The play begins with Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle discussing about this struggle

between country pleasures and the lure of city life. Mr. Hardcastle arguments that

people from the city are foolish and now London allowed “its fopperies come down”

(She stoops to Conquer, 1.1.10). This will be the main intention of the author, that is to

say, to criticize the eccentricities of the rich, for instance, going to Bath and London to

spend part of their time. The play is located at first in an old rumbling mansion, apart

from the city. This scene is first described by both the stage directions and the

characters. Then the action goes to the alehouse, where Tony spends most of his time.

Goldsmith set the action in the country because of the contrast between city life and

country life. Kilroy explains the importance of rural life in comedy:

“Usually the countryman had been a figure of fun, awkward in the city, easily

duped, with a comic accent and costume. […] By setting the plot in rural life,

Goldsmith found the material most congenial to his imagination. […] Not

altogether incidentally, here in this play he also effected his strongest ridicule

of the sentimentalist.” (Lucy, 75)

Goldsmith’s aim was “to repair the break in comic tradition effected, as he

understood it, by sentimentalism” (Lucy, 67).

Having read Act I, we can infer that the main plot will be the love between Kate

Hardcastle and Marlow. But as a comedy, Goldsmith introduces a comic element,

made explicit by the title “The Mistakes of a Night”, that will be developed later: Tony

tells Marlow that Mr. Hardcastle’s house is an inn. Moreover this mistake is anticipated

from the very beginning: “Here we live in an old rumbling mansion, that looks for all the

world like an inn” (She Stoops to Conquer, 1.1.14-15).

The play, as a witty comedy, and therefore intended to be humorous, will need

a set of techniques essential to its nature. One of these features is the language.

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Throughout the novel, loads of playwords, speeches with double intentions, and

comical character’s names, will be within view. Cripplegate, Oddfish, Dick Muggins,

Jack Slang. These names, besides the fact that they describe the characters (being flat

characters), evoke some sympathy on the readers and spectators, and consequently,

they increase the comical effect.

Regarding the language, it is worth mentioning that characters’ speeches are very

ironical and very well prepared. For instance, in Tony’s song at the alehouse, we can

see how he scorns his fellows (since he is totally aware of being superior to them) in a

very sagacious mode: “Your bustards, your ducks” (She Stoops to Conquer, 1.2. 30). If

we pay attention to the spelling and the pronunciation, we can reconfigure the speech

into “you’re bastards, you’re dicks”. All in all, Tony portrays the figure of the typical

Englishman who has money and incomes in inheritance and therefore he can look

down on those who haven’t the same amount of money, and that can spend most of

the time drinking and having fun in clubs.

Mr. Hardcastle’s answers when arguing with his wife depict the perfect language for a

comedy, provoking laughter on the audience, for example, when he makes fun of his

stepson.

In addition, language, and specially speeches, was used throughout the novel to

ridicule sentimental comic behavior. Goldsmith, therefore, with the novel, intended to

criticise sentimental comedy, apart from society itself. Wood elaborates this aspect:

“The sentimental is here portrayed as part of what we would now term a bipolar

disorder, namely an inability to find some coherence in one’s personality, where

social context determines a compulsive human response” (65)

Regarding to characters, we need to specify their importance in this sentimental

comedy Goldsmith is criticizing and how they made an impact on the spectator.

“The audience seems to have been primed to expect broad parody of the

heart’s promptings. Indeed, one’s sentiments are appealed to rather than one’s

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sense of the more corrective, even polemical, potential in the absurd or ironic:

“In these Plays almost all the Characters are good, and exceedingly

generous…If they happen to have Faults or Foibles, the Spectator is taught not

only to pardon, but to applaud them in consideration of the goodness of their

hearts”” (Wood, 66)

Besides, according to what were the audience reactions on Goldsmith’s “She Stoops to

Conquer”, Gaussen recollected Goldsmith’s words:

“As Goldsmith explained ‘The undertaking of a comedy, not merely sentimental,

was very dangerous… However, I ventured to trust it to the public, and I have

every reason to be grateful’.” (Mikhail, 85-6).

As a conclusion, we should state that Goldsmith accomplished his key

principles, by creating a delightful play full of satirical elements, but not shocking

neither to his contemporaries nor modern readers, mixed with tasteful language and

singular characters. He created sympathy on the audience and pleased them, which

was in short the most important matter in literature..

Works Cited

- Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Comedy of manners”, The Encyclopaedia

Britannica, Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Web. 10 February 2015

- Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica “Oliver Goldsmith”, The Encyclopaedia

Britannica, Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Web. 10 February 2015

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- Goldsmith, Oliver. She Stoops to Conquer. London: printed for F. Newbery, 1773.

Print

- “Oliver Goldsmith”, Poetry Foundation. Chicago: Poetry Foundation. Web. 10

February 2015

- Lucy, Sèan ,ed. Goldsmith, the Gentle Master. Cork: Cork University Press, 1984.

Print

- Mikhail, E.H., ed. Goldsmith: Interviews and Recollections. New York City: St. Martin’s

Press, 1993. Print.

- Wood, Nigel. Goldsmith’s English Malady. Georgia State University, 2011. Print.