Review
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. --From Boswell's Life of Johnson on Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer.
Fresh, spirited and often blissfully funny...The play is a marvel, a comedy almost entirely bereft of malice, but one that never seems twee, sentimental or bland. --Evening Standard on the 2012 National Theatre production.
She Stoops to Conquer is almost 240 years old, but Oliver Goldsmith's tightly plotted play seems wonderfully youthful in this fizzy production. --Daily Mail on the 2012 National Theatre production.
Fresh, spirited and often blissfully funny...The play is a marvel, a comedy almost entirely bereft of malice, but one that never seems twee, sentimental or bland. --Evening Standard on the 2012 National Theatre production.
She Stoops to Conquer is almost 240 years old, but Oliver Goldsmith's tightly plotted play seems wonderfully youthful in this fizzy production. --Daily Mail on the 2012 National Theatre production.
Product Description
Number 44 in Nick Hern Book's Drama Classics series, providing great drama at a great price. Includes the full text, plus a short introduction that takes in the life of the playwright, explores what happens in the play, its place in English comedy and the themes of marriage, education, social standing, deception and disguise.
The best-loved English comedy of the 18th-century is a masterpiece of misunderstandings and a sharp satire on social standing. It brilliantly mocks the snobbery of London through the manipulations of the country, embodied in Goldsmith's great creation Tony Lumpkin. She Stoops to Conquer also celebrates the virtues of "laughing comedy," which Goldsmith advocated over the prevalent sentimental forms of his contemporaries.
The best-loved English comedy of the 18th-century is a masterpiece of misunderstandings and a sharp satire on social standing. It brilliantly mocks the snobbery of London through the manipulations of the country, embodied in Goldsmith's great creation Tony Lumpkin. She Stoops to Conquer also celebrates the virtues of "laughing comedy," which Goldsmith advocated over the prevalent sentimental forms of his contemporaries.
From the Back Cover
When the mischievous Tony Lumpkin directs two young gentlemen in need of accommodation to his parent's house, telling them that it is an inn, his practical joke leads to a night of misunderstanding, embarrassment and confusion for all concerned. First staged in 1773, 'She Stoops to Conquer'; or, 'The Mistakes of a Night' quickly established itself as one of the most popular English comedies.
Alistair Sim and Claire Bloom head the cast in a lively performance directed by Howard Sackler.
"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."
SAMUEL JOHNSON
About the Author
Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) was an Irish essayist, novelist poet and playwright. His work includes the essay collection The Citizen of the World (1762), the novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), the plays The Good Natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1773), and the poetry collections Traveller, or, a Prospect of Society (1764), An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog (1766), and The Deserted Village: A Poem (1770).
