Neo Classical Age Assignment

She Stoops To Conquer (The Mistakes Of A Night)

Abstract:

First published in 1771 and performed in 1773, Goldsmith’s She Stoops To Conquer is considered  till date as the reflection of the Restoration society and also as the playwright’s one of the best plays. The play is also remembered as one of the best examples of Anti-Sentimental Comedy. The shifting morality and its consequences, the various class intrigues, disguise and its necessity, etc are some of the elements, the world of Goldsmith’s play is made of. After reading the sub title of this play, the question which remains is, how far does it appear apt for the play and also how far can the play adhere to its sub title. Are the incidents really the mistakes of a night? Or are they mistakes resultant of the various social evils of the time? These are the questions I have tried to deal with in this paper.

Oliver Goldsmith (the Anti-Sentimental playwright):

Born in 1730, Oliver Goldsmith is remembered mainly for his outstanding novel The Vicar Of Wakefield and the play She Stoops To Conquer. His journey to fame as a literary personality was one of rags to riches. Beginning his career as a hack writer in London, Goldsmith soon befriended the literary luminaries such as Dr Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, James Boswell, Edmund Burke, etc. In fact, by the time The Vicar of Wakefield was published, he had already earned acclaim with his poem The Desserted Village.However, he was often considered as a man of inconsistent personality. “His contemporaries were as one in their high regard for Goldsmith the writer, but they were of different minds concerning the man himself. The graceful fluency with words that he commanded as a writer deserted him totally when he was in society—his conversational mishaps were memorable things. Instances were also cited of his incredible vanity, of his constant desire to be conspicuous in company, and of his envy of others’ achievements. It was Johnson who summed up the common sentiment. “No man,” he declared, “was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had.”” (Britannica) Nevertheless, his contribution to literature was never left unnoticed. Even after his early death in 1774, he was remembered as a prominent poet, essayist and dramatist.

 “Goldsmith’s success as a writer lay partly in the charm of personality emanated by his style—his affection for his characters, his mischievous irony, and his spontaneous interchange of gaiety and sadness. In his novel and plays Goldsmith helped to humanize his era’s literary imagination, without growing sickly or mawkish. ” (Britannica)  The reason for considering him an Anti-Sentimental playwright is this humanizing quality which he possessed. Rather than viewing the situations on the  binaries of moral or immoral, just as the prevalent writers of his time did, Goldsmith chose to view them from an individual’s perspective. Neither of his works ever popularized the moral sentiments, nor did they ever try to teach anything to the people. Rather they try to put forth the contradictions, with which the Restoration or the Georgian people were living. He tried to highlight the vices which resulted from a life full of appearances. “David Thomas in his work Four Georgian and Pre-Revolutionary Plays comments on the hypocritical nature of Georgian era – “Underneath the veneer of polite manners, gentility and sentimental attitudes in literature, there was a hard streak of selfishness and brutality just below the surface of Georgian Society” (Sho) The idea which the plays like She Stoops To Conquer tried to convey.

She Stoops To Conquer (A play of social importance):

 The plot:

“ The play opens with two gentlemen from London looking for the home of Mr. Hardcastle. They are tricked into thinking that the home is an inn and conduct themselves accordingly. One of the young men is there to woo young Kate Hardcastle. Kate pretends to be a barmaid until the hero declares his love for her. The Londoners behave boorishly to all concerned, and the nonstop frolic escalates rapidly. She Stoops to Conquer contains vital energy, many farcical elements, and amusing irony. Goldsmith’s major theme is exploring the follies of blindness that all humans commit. After poking fun at all the characters, the playwright ends the comedy on a note of discovery. The hero, for example, finds himself and discovers the meaning of true love, marrying the perfect woman for him.” (Kellman)

As mentioned earlier, this play by Oliver Goldsmith is the reflection of the Restoration society and its vices. Let’s have a look at the issues it tries to discuss:

1)      Marriage politics

2)      Appearances

3)      Gender play

4)      Class conflicts

5)      The nature and importance of love in relationships

6)      Comedy of Manners

The very prologue of the play declares the work as a “laughing comedy” instead of the moral one stating that the muse of comedy has been sick all this time and now appears dying. Hence, the idea of  the play as a medium to make it alive again and Goldsmith as a doctor to cure it from sentimental ideas. “Goldsmith’s views on comedy were different from prevailing taste. He had taken aim at the whole genre. In a piece published early in 1773 entitled “Essay on the Theatre: Or, A Comparison Between Sentimental and Laughing Comedy,” he had bemoaned the prevailing taste of audiences for “sentimental comedy,” which he called a bastard form of tragedy. In its place, Goldsmith proposed a new comic genre to be called “laughing comedy.” The new form of comedy, as his two plays aptly demonstrated, eliminated moralizing, false appeals to sentimentality, and extraneous song and dance and concentrated instead on mirth, the exposure of human follies, and using characters from the middle and lower classes and dialogue that was easy and natural. The general aim was laughter.” (Kellman) “If playwrights only allowed wholesome characters on stage, who uttered emotional platitudes, audiences would be weepy, unamused and none the wiser. Goldsmith used the Constance/Hastings subplot to expose all the cliches of sentimental comedy. At the same time he provoked thoughts about personal liberty, women’s agency and parental responsibility that revitalized a tired story line. There is laughter, but there are also bruised emotions, sad partings and anxiety for the audience to contend with.” (Maybank)

The Mistakes Of A Night:

When the play was first performed in 1773, at Covent Garden Theater, “the manager George Colman who had anticipated failure for the play was ‘conquered’ by the immediate success of the comedy. Thus Colman also made ‘mistakes of the night’.” (MWESTWOOD)

As it is stated in the above section, Goldsmith’s focus was on human follies and the humor which arose from it. The subtitle justifies this idea. It is the mistake of Tony, who deceives Marlowe and Hastings into believing that the Hardcastle house is an inn which consequently becomes the reason for so many confusions. It is the mistake of Marlowe and Hastings to easily trust Tony and present such a boorish behavior in front of the Hardcastle family. All this happens at night and therefore “The Mistakes Of A night”.

Kate’s mistake of stooping herself from a lady to a barmaid also results in so many conflicts. Her transformation also happens at night. However this cannot be considered a mistake if we consider her feelings towards Marlowe and considering that would lead us to understand the motives of her prank.

The mistake of the lovers,Hastings and Constance to elope at night in order to escape the responsibility for clarifications lead to the entangled relations and the constant conflicts.

Marlowe’s mistake was to never being able to recognize Kate. One of the major reasons can be the fact that their meeting was at night.

The biggest mistake committed was by Tony, who even after realizing the consequences of his prank, hides the reality from all the other characters. His motives are mot really clarified in the course of the play but one thing becomes evident that he finds pleasure while deceiving people.

After listing out the major mistakes, the question which remains is are these mistakes supposed to be expected from the respective characters or not? In my opinion, considering the nature of these characters one might expect them to commit them. If we look at the conditions and situations in  which they find themselves can be considered as the driving force for the happenings.

Interestingly, it is said that Goldsmith changed the title of the play from The Mistakes Of A Night to She Stoops To Conquer at the last minute before its first staging. The reason was just that it sounded more intriguing. Another was that Goldsmith didn’t want his play’s name to appear like Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Bibliography

Britannica, Editors of Encyclopedia. Oliver Goldsmith Anglo Irish author. 29 March 2018. web. 28 October 2018. <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oliver-Goldsmith-Anglo-Irish-author>.

Kellman, Steven G. She Stoops To Conquer-Summary. 2009. web. 29 October 2018. <https://www.enotes.com/topics/she-stoops-conquer>.

Maybank, Diane. An Introduction to She Stoops To Conquer. 21 June 2018. web. 29 October 2018. <https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/an-introduction-to-she-stoops-to-conquer>.

MWESTWOOD. How to justify the title "She Stoops To Conquer" and its subtitle "The Mistakes Of A Night"? 11 April 2014. web. 29 October 2018. <https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-justify-title-she-stoops-conquer-also-its-sub-468127>.

Sho. She Stoops To Conquer As A Restoration Comedy. n.d. web. 28 October 2018. <https://www.scribd.com/document/370103709/SHE-STOOPS-TO-CONQUER-AS-A-RESTORATION-COMEDY>.

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