Drama · 1773
She Stoops to Conquer
Or, The Mistakes of a Night: A Comedy
Tony Lumpkin, bored and mischievous, sends two travelers looking for Mr. Hardcastle's house the wrong way, telling them it's an inn along the road. Charles Marlow — tongue-tied and awkward around any woman of his own class, bold and easy with servants and barmaids — arrives determined to treat his unwitting host as an innkeeper, and finds he can only court Kate Hardcastle, the woman his father has picked out for him, once she lets him believe she's the barmaid.
Goldsmith wrote the play against the contemporary fashion for "sentimental comedy": weeks earlier, in an essay comparing laughing and sentimental comedy, he had argued for laughter, not moral tears, as comedy's proper business. It premiered at Covent Garden on 15 March 1773, dedicated to his friend Samuel Johnson and prefaced with a prologue by the actor David Garrick; the printed text followed on 26 March, published by Francis Newbery. It was an immediate popular success.
This Bibliomancer edition presents the complete 1773 text in five acts, with Goldsmith's dedication, Garrick's prologue, and the play's own dramatis personae.
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
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About the author
1730–1774 · Enlightenment
Oliver Goldsmith (c. 1730–1774) was born in Ireland and educated at Trinity College Dublin; he later studied medicine, without taking a degree, at Edinburgh and Leiden, and wandered on foot through Europe before settling in London to write for hire. He became a close friend of Samuel Johnson and a founding member of Johnson’s “Club” in 1764. His novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) — sold by Johnson to save him from debtor’s prison — the poem The Deserted Village (1770), and the play She Stoops to Conquer (1773) are his best-remembered works. He died in London, heavily in debt.
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