If Oliver Goldsmith were alive today, would he be writing for television?
She Stoops to Conquer might be seen as the pilot for a situation comedy.
In its naturalism and playfulness with matters of class and sex it was a risky alternative to the sentimental comedies that were the standard fare of English theatre. Goldsmith may have been inspired by an incident from his own youth, which is recounted in some biographies. Riding home from college, he stopped in a village, hoping to stay at an inn for the night. Some joker directed him to the local squire's house. Once there, presenting himself as a man of the world, he ordered his horse to be stabled, made himself comfortable in the parlour, and demanded the supper menu. The squire soon realized that Goldsmith was the victim of a practical joke, but, being a man of humour himself, and having discovered that this intruding guest was the son of an old acquaintance, decided to indulge it. Goldsmith was "fooled to the top of his bent", and the incident stuck in his mind; becoming the groundwork of his greatest comedy, appropriately subtitled The Mistakes of a Night.
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Reading about the realities of England in the 1770s is not for the faint-hearted: vice of all kinds, political scandals, bloodthirsty sports, small pox, foreign wars, and some scary inventions (all very different from our times, of course!). The American colonies were soon to be lost, Revolution lurked across the Channel, and a mixture of entrepreneurial optimism and social nervousness hung in the air.
The Boston Tea Party happened in 1773, the same year that this play was first performed, but news would not reach England for months. George III would remain sane a little longer, traveling anywhere was an ordeal, highwaymen lurked in the
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shadows, toilets were yet to be invented, and people went on starving to death, while others gorged themselves into early graves.
Is it not remarkable that, somehow, men and women still found time to dandify themselves sufficiently to go on enacting the complex game of "civilization" and love?
By Paulette Hallich
