She Stoops to Conquer :Moment of Truth

Introduction

Since She Stoops to Conquer was first staged at the theater in Covent Garden in March 1773, Goldsmith's cheerful satire of eighteenth-century sentimental comedies has charmed audiences with its warm-hearted good humor. Subtitled The Mistakes of a Night, the play's action concerns the misunderstandings and mix-ups that ensue one night when Kate Hardcastle poses as a barmaid to win the heart of Charles Marlow, a young gentleman too shy to court women of his own social status. Hardcastle's stepbrother, Tony Lumpkin, one of English comedy's most memorable characters, provides much of the work's humor and carries the subplot in which he helps Constance Neville and her lover, George Hastings, to elope with a casket of jewels. While the play is clearly meant to be an amusing entertainment, it also marks an important step in the development of comic theater. It reflects Goldsmith's idea that comedy should excite laughter by ridiculously exhibiting human follies, which is something that the popular sentimental comedies of his day did not do.

Thus She Stoops to Conquer inaugurated a new style of "laughing comedy" that emphasized intricacy of plot, comic characters, and amusing situations while rejecting simplistic moralizing and gentility. Most critics dismissed the play when it first appeared; finding fault most particularly with its inconsistencies and lack of moral focus, but audiences loved it. She Stoops toConquer still proves popular, and remains one of the few eighteenth-century plays to be regularly performed for modern audiences. The work has garnered considerable critical attention as well, with scholars discussing, among other things, its deviations from the norms of sentimental comedy, its significance in the history of theater, its construction, and its exploration of such topics as relationships, parenting, the social order, and liberty (Goldsmith, 1999).

Discussion

Miss Hardcastle is a lively and ...