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lvaro Vicente Rubio Carpena

Professor Pilar Cuder Domnguez
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 authors 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 plays 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)
Goldsmiths 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. Hardcastles 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 characters 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 Tonys 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 youre bastards, youre 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 havent the same amount of money, and that can spend most of
the time drinking and having fun in clubs.
Mr. Hardcastles 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 ones 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
hearts promptings. Indeed, ones sentiments are appealed to rather than ones

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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
generousIf 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 Goldsmiths She Stoops to
Conquer, Gaussen recollected Goldsmiths 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, San ,ed. Goldsmith, the Gentle Master. Cork: Cork University Press, 1984.
Print
- Mikhail, E.H., ed. Goldsmith: Interviews and Recollections. New York City: St. Martins
Press, 1993. Print.
- Wood, Nigel. Goldsmiths English Malady. Georgia State University, 2011. Print.