Customer Reviews

She Stoops to Conquer

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Oliver Goldsmith may not have had the linguistic virtuosity or satiric audacity of his great contemporary, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, but 'She Stoops to Conquer' is one of the few highpoints in English drama between the Restoration and Oscar Wilde. Ironically, in view of its satirising the slavish devotion to French fashions, the play is influenced by early 18th century French comedy: the plot is very similar to Marivaux's 'The Game of love and chance': two fathers arrange a marriage for their children; this paternal decree is severely shaken by disguises, misrecognitions and counter-plots. The difference being, English comedy is always the funniest, and we get lots of marvellous words like 'obstropalous'.

In effect, this drama consists of characters staging dramas to get their way, which are spoiled by other dramas, e.g. Mr. Hardcastle decides his daughter will marry a man she never met, and arranges their meeting; Tony tells this prospective husband, Marlow, and his friend Hastings, that the gentleman's house they seek is a tavern; Kate disguises herself as a barmaid to woo the diffident Marlow. The effect of all these conflicting dramas is to take a supposedly solid, class-based system, based on paternal and aristocratic power, and reveal it as a fragile one based on illusion, a series of masks and attitudes adopted to suit the required social context, where wrong directions can as easily derail as resolve the social order. The best comedy here comes from characters mistaking the social context, as when Marlow treats his host and future father-in-law as a pesky inn-keeper. Significantly, in this over-cultured milieu, most of the spanners in the works are thrown by the illiterate Tony.

In Goldsmith's world, there is no such thing as a 'natural', whole identity - character is divided by public and private roles, fragmented by clothing and ornaments, with passions dictated by fashions. Goldsmith's benevolently cynical view of his century encompasses all its familiar tropes - the carousing squire rake; the social mobility; the marketplace of marriage; the refined bawdiness; the hints at the incipient decline of the aristocracy (where an old estate has degenerated into a plausible inn); the wars turned into legend from a safe distance. Its teeming culture is catalogued too - sentimental novels, the love of theatre, the rise of Gothic fiction (marvellously parodied to the point where the mistress of the house is terrified of her own garden), Hogarth, caricature prints etc.

Few English plays dating from the eighteenth century appeal to modern audiences. For much of that period comedies were characterized by an exaggerated sentimentality and intense moralizing. Independently, the playwrights Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan rejected this moralizing mode, returning to the English stage a humorous, mildly satirical form of comedy.

In a short period they created three plays that are still enjoyed today: She Stoops to Conquer (Goldsmith, 1773), The School for Scandal (Sheridan, 1775) and The Rivals (Sheridan, 1777).

In recent months I have read all three play. All are quite good, but I especially liked She Stoops to Conquer and The School for Scandal. While The School for Scandal is widely admired for its witty dialogue, She Stoops to Conquer offers the most hilarious situations.

The basic theme in She Stoops to Conquer is familiar. The guardians, her father Mr. Hardcastle and her aunt Mrs. Hardcastle, have arranged a suitable marriage for young Miss Hardcastle. She, of course, has other plans. Oliver Goldsmith adroitly transformed this overly used situation into delightful comedy. The plot is complicated by a shy suitor, friends with their own plans of elopement, and an unruly prankster, all leading to utter confusion in the rustic Hardcastle household. I quickly became engaged with the ridiculous happenings; I read She Stoops to Conquer in a single sitting. Five stars.

Possible Interest - Another Comedy and Two Moralizing Plays:

John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, first staged in 1728 in London, was another exception to the moralizing trend in the eighteenth century. This delightful, satirical comedy is considered the first modern musical. Five stars.

In the prologue to The Conscious Lovers (1722) Sir Richard Steele states his objective: "To chasten wit, and moralize the stage" and to "Redeem from long contempt the comic name". Steele's objective was to instruct and to ennoble rather than to amuse. Humor is clearly subordinate. Two stars (plus perhaps 1 star for historical interest).

George Lillo's moralizing melodrama, The London Merchant (1731), was a resounding success in the summer of 1731 and was apparently performed 179 times by 1776. Its repetitious moral lessons seemingly resonated with eighteenth century audiences. Three stars.

This play is a rollicking satire on the British caste system of that era, seen through the mischief, mayhem, and mistaken identities of this work. Almost a must-read!

This Kindle edition of Goldsmith's famous play is excellent. It is properly laid out on the page, there is a working interactive table of contents (to get there you have to go to the cover and click forward, but that is a very minor niggle), and it includes Goldsmith's dedication to Dr Johnson. The only thing missing is scholarly notes on the text - but hoping for those in a free edition would be greedy.

This play is a delightful satire about mischief, mishaps, and mistaken identities that throws a quirky but revealing light upon the British caste system of that era. This is a great work, and almost a must-read.

The play is a lighthearted comedy complete with embarrassing misunderstandings, meddlesome mothers and a pair of struggling lovers. A fun read!

One of the particularly interesting things about this play is that it can be seen as a kind of proto-feminist work of art. There is a lot of flirtateous game-playing going on here, but it is entered into by strong, intelligent women who are using the resources they have at hand in their culture to get what they want. Reading this play, or seeing it performed, it is hard to believe that it was written in the 18th Century. Goldsmith has created a humorous story with intriguing plot twists that manages to show women as thinking individuals who take control of their own destinies....even if getting the right man is the way to do that!

This play is a wonderful little comedic satire that is as funny now as when it was written in 1773. Mr. Goldsmith's characters are wonderful, and the storyline is funny without being "sappy". His characters are so very human! He does not shy away from exposing human frailities, and he does it in such a way that no one would take offence to it. His characters make common human mistakes based on misunderstandings and practical jokes, but his characters are not tragically changed from these occurences. They, as well as the audience, understand human frailties, and look upon these as things that help us grow. This is a jovial, friendly play that is well worth the time it takes to read it. I find that reading plays is a nice alternate to reading long novels. A little different from short stories. I like the economies of a play. So much is written and so much is implied all in five scenes.

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER is one of the best plays to be written during the Restoration era. It's full of wit and great one liners, not to mention that it's a comic satire on the dramatic conventions of the day. The play is quite funny and when performed is one of the few "classical" (meaning anything pre-20th century) plays that all audiences seem to enjoy. Unfortunately, Goldsmith's masterpiece is seldom performed nowadays. Most American's have never heard of Oliver Goldsmith (is that the guy who directed PLATOON? is a typical response), let alone SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER instead tends to be one of those plays that everyone in theatre knows about, but that most people outside of the theatre universe don't even know exists. It's a shame because the play is a masterpiece of wit and comic timing and has so much to offer to modern day audiences.

She Stoops to Conquer
It was said of Oliver Goldsmith that he only wrote one play, one poem and one novel but that each one of them was perfect. The poem was "The Deserted Village", the novel "The Vicar of Wakefield" and of
course "She Stoops to Conquer" is the play. I rather agree with the assessment.
This play owes much to the Restoration comedy of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. There is the emphasis on wit, and the rather stock plot of townie meets rustic and the consequences of the encounter.
The characters also owe their roots to Restoration Comedy - Tony is of course the boisterous yokel, Marlowe and his friend the townies, Hardcastle the suspicious country gentleman, etc.
But there is a twist. The yokel is actually the one with the brains and sets in motion the plot to solve the lovers' problems. The women take action to reveal Marlowe's actual nature. (Incidentally Marlowe is surprisingly modern). And the townies rather meet their match instead of the other way around. The whole is permeated with good nature which does exist in Restoration Comedy although not in William Congreve its most renowned and best writer, see the play "The Beaux Strategem", one of my personal favorites. Missing from "She Stoops to Conquer" is the stage Irishman so prevalent in Sheriden as well as Restoration Comedy.
This is a romp and works very well onstage - but it's a bit like a number of such plays - the cast has to be superb there are no throwaway roles. And it can make for casting difficulty. And while it is never out of date it doesn't adapt itself very well to trendy different time settings, modern dress, flapper that sort of thing. That period was very much unto its own, at least for its comedy.
The Dover edition is well printed, although the paper is not so glossy. The price is right, particularly for a single play, and it would make a great performance edition as there is ample margin room for comments and moves.