She Stoops to Conquer as a laughing comedy.

Comedy

Though it is only explicitly referred to in the prologue, an understanding of Goldsmith's play in context shows his desire to reintroduce his audience to the “laughing comedy” that derived from a long history of comedy that mocks human vice. This type of comedy stands in contrast to the then-popular “sentimental comedy” that praised virtues and reinforced bourgeois mentality. Understanding Goldsmith's love of the former helps to clarify several elements of the play: the low scene in the Three Pigeons; the mockery of baseness in even the most high-bred characters; and the celebration of absurdity as a fact of human life.

The prologue is attributed to David Garrick, Esq., a popular actor of his day. The basic premise of the prologue is that the comic arts are passing away, and that Dr. Goldsmith might prove the doctor, and She Stoops to Conquer the medicine, that will cease its death. At the play's opening, Mr. Woodward enters and speaks a prologue. Woodward, a celebrated actor of his day and one who had turned down the role of Tony Lumpkin in the play's initial production, is drying his eyes as though he has been crying.

Though it is only explicitly referred to in the prologue, an understanding of Goldsmith's play in context shows his desire to reintroduce his audience to the “laughing comedy” that derived from a long history of comedy that mocks human vice. This type of comedy stands in contrast to the then-popular “sentimental comedy” that praised virtues and reinforced bourgeois mentality. Understanding Goldsmith's love of the former helps to clarify several elements of the play: the low scene in the Three Pigeons; the mockery of baseness in even the most high-bred characters; and the celebration of absurdity as a fact of human life. When the play was first produced, it was discussed as an example of the revival of laughing comedy over the sentimental comedy seen as dominant on the English stage since the success of The Conscious Lovers, written by Sir Richard Steele in 1722.

In the same year, an essay in a London magazine, entitled "An Essay on the Theatre; Or, A Co Laughing And Sentimental Comedy", suggested that sentimental comedy, a false form of comedy, had taken over the boards from the older and more truly comic laughing comedy. Some theatre historians believe that the essay was written by Goldsmith as a puff piece for She Stoops to Conquer, as an exemplar of the laughing comedy which Goldsmith (perhaps) had touted. Goldsmith's name was linked with that of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, author of The Rivals and The School for Scandal, as standard-bearers for the resurgent laughing comedy.

In verse, Woodward laments to the audience that "the Comic muse, long sick, is now a-dying!" As an actor trained in comedy, he intuits that his own career will pass away along with comedy itself, since he "can as soon speak Greek as sentiments!" Unable to tell moralistic, sentimental stories, he fears for the fate of himself and his brethren.

He attempts to tell a moral poem beginning with "All is gold that glitters," but performs poorly and stops himself. He offers one final hope for his problem – "a doctor [has come] this night to show his skill," perhaps to make the audience laugh through his five "draughts" of medicine (paralleling the five acts of the play). He urges the audience to accept the doctor's comic medicine willingly, to laugh heartily, and stresses that should the doctor's goal not be achieved, and then they can hold it against him and deny him his fee.

By

SK Emamul Haque 

Green University of Bangladesh