Reading Order
She Stoops to Conquer Reading Order
She Stoops to Conquer; or, The Mistakes of a Night (1773) by Oliver Goldsmith is one of the two great comedies of the eighteenth-century English stage (the other being Sheridan's The School for Scandal, 1777) — a five-act comedy of errors in which young Marlow and Hastings, traveling to the country to visit the family of Marlow's proposed bride Kate Hardcastle, are misdirected by the mischievous Tony Lumpkin to believe that the Hardcastle house is a public inn. The misunderstanding generates a series of comic complications: Marlow, who is paralyzingly shy with women of his own class, has no difficulty flirting with women he takes to be servants, and Kate exploits this by 'stooping to conquer' — pretending to be a barmaid to win his affection. The play is simultaneously a celebration of country common sense over urban affectation, a comedy of class and manners, and a theatrical argument (which Goldsmith made explicit in his essay 'A Comparison Between Laughing and Sentimental Comedy') for the tradition of genuinely funny comedy against the sentimental comedy that dominated the London stage in the 1760s. She Stoops to Conquer was an immediate sensation and has remained in continuous performance since its premiere; Tony Lumpkin is one of the great comic characters of the English theatrical tradition.
Where to start
She Stoops to Conquer (1773) — the New Mermaids edition edited by Tom Davis is the standard teaching text; the Oxford World's Classics edition of Goldsmith's Collected Works includes it with The Good-Natured Man and is the best edition for reading Goldsmith comprehensively. The play is short (five acts) and reads quickly; seeing a performance is preferable, as the physical comedy (the 'inn' scenes, Tony Lumpkin's energy) requires staging.
Complete She Stoops to Conquer Book List
- 1Buy
She Stoops to Conquer (New Mermaids)
Oliver Goldsmith (ed. Tom Davis)·1979·The standard teaching edition — Davis's introduction situates the play in the controversy between laughing and sentimental comedy and provides the theatrical history; the best text for classroom use or a first reading. - 2Buy
The Vicar of Wakefield
Oliver Goldsmith·1766·Goldsmith's only novel and his other great work — the sentimental comedy of the Primrose family's disasters and vindication; read alongside She Stoops to Conquer to see the full range of Goldsmith's comic vision. - 3Buy
The School for Scandal
Richard Brinsley Sheridan·1777·The companion comedy from the same theatrical moment — Sheridan's masterpiece of drawing-room wit and moral comedy is to She Stoops to Conquer as wit is to farce; the two plays together define the golden age of eighteenth-century English comedy. - 4Buy
The Good-Natured Man
Oliver Goldsmith·1768·Goldsmith's first stage comedy — less successful than She Stoops to Conquer but interesting as its precursor; shows Goldsmith working out his objections to sentimental comedy before he got the formula exactly right. - 5Buy
She Stoops to Conquer: A Study in Goldsmith's Comic Method
Ricardo Quintana·1966·Classic scholarly study of the play's comic method and its relationship to the eighteenth-century debate about comedy — for readers who want to understand exactly what Goldsmith was arguing in theatrical terms.
She Stoops to Conquer — Frequently Asked Questions
What is She Stoops to Conquer about?
She Stoops to Conquer (1773) by Oliver Goldsmith is a five-act comedy of errors. Young Marlow, traveling to the country to court Kate Hardcastle, is misdirected by the mischievous Tony Lumpkin to believe the Hardcastle house is a public inn. Marlow, pathologically shy with women of his own class, has no difficulty flirting with women he takes to be servants. Kate, discovering this, 'stoops to conquer' by pretending to be a barmaid — winning Marlow's genuine affection before revealing the deception. The play is a comedy of class, manners, and the difference between urban pretension and country common sense.
What is the difference between She Stoops to Conquer and sentimental comedy?
Oliver Goldsmith made his case for laughing comedy explicitly — in his 1773 essay 'A Comparison Between Laughing and Sentimental Comedy,' he attacked the dominant mode of 1760s English comedy, in which virtuous characters were persecuted and ultimately rewarded through tearful scenes designed to produce moral uplift rather than laughter. She Stoops to Conquer was Goldsmith's theatrical argument: a comedy designed to make audiences laugh at genuine comic situations (the inn mistake, Tony Lumpkin's practical jokes, Marlow's paralytic shyness with ladies) rather than cry at the sufferings of impeccably virtuous characters. The play's immediate and lasting success was seen as a vindication of Goldsmith's argument.
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