(1728? 1730? - 1774)
By Frank McGilly (with much thanks to Boswell's Life of Johnson)
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Samuel Johnson on She Stoops To Conquer: "I know of no comedy for many years that has so much exhilarated an audience, that has answered so much the great end of comedy - making an audience merry."
Born in Ireland, probably in 1728, Oliver Goldsmith is one of that galaxy of Irishmen who brighten the English literary sky: Swift, Steele, Sterne, Sheridan, Burke, Wilde, Shaw, Joyce, Beckett (omitting many others identified as primarily Irish writers).
Goldsmith's academic career was undistinguished: he studied, and failed at, divinity and law; he
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turned to medicine, and whatever his real qualifications, he was later known to his friends as "Dr. Goldsmith". After these scattered studies, he toured Europe, supporting himself by playing the flute!
Once settled in London, around 1756, Goldsmith gave up the practice of medicine when he failed the tests of Surgeon's Hall, whose examiners unwittingly bestowed a priceless gift upon posterity. There followed sundry desultory employments. Astonishingly, only about the age of thirty did he begin his literary career. He was a truly professional writer -- he wrote for money, fulfilling contracts with publishers: several biographies, histories of England, of Greece, of Rome, a History of the Earth and Animated Nature, etc. He earned plenty of money, but his improvident lifestyle, which apparently included much recourse to the bottle, left him repeatedly in debt.
Besides the hack work, Goldsmith contributed essays and poems to literary journals. This brought him into the circle of Samuel Johnson, the uncontested literary lion of the day. Goldsmith's versatility was unique. His novel, "The Vicar of Wakefield" (1766), made him famous, and remains a favorite. "The Deserted Village" (1770) is among the most beloved of English poems. His first play, "The Good-Natured Man" (1768), enjoyed modest success; his second, "She Stoops to Conquer" (1773), was instantly recognized as a masterpiece. Over two centuries later, it is continuously on stage. All this within fifteen years! Acknowledging the flimsy scholarship of Goldsmith's histories, Johnson still said, "Goldsmith was a man, who, whatever he wrote, did it better than any other man could do."
Theatre had had an up-and-down history in England. During the Puritan regime (1649-1660) the theatres, considered hotbeds of immorality, were virtually shut down. With the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the pendulum swung wildly the other way: along with some plays recognized as great, much Restoration comedy would be considered indecent even in our tolerant times - in Macaulay's words, "Filthy to handle, noisome to approach". To this there was in the early 18th century another reaction, a flood of plays expressing soggy moral sentiments in sugary language. Goldsmith railed against the falseness to life of these so-called "genteel comedies". Not content just to criticize, he wrote his own plays, and altered the direction of English theatre.
Sadly, Goldsmith died in his mid-forties. His place of burial is uncertain, but he is memorialized by a monument in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey*. His epitaph was composed by Johnson, to whom we leave the last word: "Oliver Goldsmith: A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, and touched nothing that he did not adorn. . . In genius, vivid, versatile, sublime. In style, clear, elevated, elegant."
*Also by a street in Victoria, in Oak Bay.
