She Stoops to Conquer (Nick Hern Books)

Rating:
Summary: Among the Most Read and Performed English Comedies
Review: Few English plays dating from the eighteenth century appeal to modern audiences. For much of that period comedies were characterized by sentimentality, humanitarianism, and moralizing. Independently, the playwrights Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan rejected this moralizing mode and returned to 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. It is great fun to read.

The basic theme 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 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 and I read She Stoops to Conquer in a single sitting.

The inexpensive Dover edition has only a few footnotes, but footnotes are not really required. I give this entertaining play five stars.

Rating:
Summary: Is this supposed to be funny?
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Forgotten Gem.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: A brief history lesson, brought to you by the NRA
Review: Written as a critique of the sentimental comedy, yet also aware of itself as existing in that very same milieu, Oliver Goldsmith's 'She Stoops To Conquer' is one of the better plays of the Eighteenth century. Around about the time it was written (the 1770s), playwrights like Richard Cumberland, Arthur Murphy and George Colman were all the rage. Who are they, you ask? Well, that's my point, they've long been forgotten, and here's why: Almost all of what was performed in the theatre had strong thematic currents of humanitarianism & sentimentalism, and was done in a variety show format which messed with the traditional dramatic structure in a bad way. If that weren't enough, plays were often interrupted by long-winded orations that had more to do with the society and politics of the time than the plays they appeared in. And even if these orations were to have had relevance to the plot, "talking" out a play is a poor substitute for action. Basically, the era's dramatic conventions had a lot going against them as far as being conducive to producing timeless works of art.

Sentimental comedies tended to be tear-jerkers which focussed on lovers railing against Fortune. Women in these plays were usually so virtuous as to be boring; the only interesting things that happened to them were as a result of being abused by men. Goldsmith was aware that plays of these types paled in comparison to those written in the earlier Restoration, but the audience wanted virtue and a world where goodness prevails, not the cynical, calculating world of playwrights such as Wycherley or Congreve. The ingeniuous Goldsmith came up with a way to give the public both in 'She Stoops To Conquer'. Playing with the conventions of the genre, he crafted a sentimental comedy that satisifies the kind-hearted and the wicked both. It has bite, but if you turn away for a second you might look back and think it's really quite harmless. This one's a shape-shifter, it depends on who's looking and what they want to see. Still enjoyable til this very day, while the lame-o hack pieces rot in obscurity.