She Stoops to Conquer

by Oliver Goldsmith

Overview

This charming comedy has delighted audiences for over two centuries. First performed in 1773, it concerns Kate Hardcastle, a young lady who poses as a serving girl to win the heart of a young gentleman too shy to court ladies of his own class. A number of delightful deceits and hilarious turns of plot must be played out before the mating strategies of both Kate Hardcastle and her friend Constance Neville conclude happily. Along the way, there is an abundance of merry mix-ups, racy dialogue and sly satire of the sentimental comedies of Goldsmith's day.
The extraordinary humor and humanity with which Goldsmith invested this play have made it one of the most read, performed, and studied of all English comedies. It is now available in this inexpensive Dover edition, based on the text of the fourth edition, published in the year of the play's first staging.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780486112763
Publisher:	Dover Publications
Publication date:	03/13/2012
Series:	Dover Thrift Editions: Plays
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	80
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright and poet, who is best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield, his pastoral poem The Deserted Village, and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer. He also wrote An History of the Earth and Animated Nature. He is thought to have written the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, the source of the phrase "goody two-shoes".

Editorial Reviews

L.A. Theatre Works' dramatization of this late-eighteenth-century play remains strikingly relevant today with its satirical digs at sexism, class consciousness, and upper-crust wealth. James Marsters and Joanne Whalley lead the cast in an uproarious comedy of manners that is reminiscent of Shakespearean follies of mistaken identity, all the while championing womanly guile and intelligence. The energetic performers retain a peak level of hilarity throughout, with clear emphasis and enunciation. Divergent personas, played by a single character, can be easily identified, while comical asides to the audience are apparent by their ironic and lightly modulated delivery. Strange doings in an English country mansion are instigated by the arrival of misguided suitors whose passions are laced with bawdy schemes, deflated pretensions, and nonstop mischief. A.W. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2012 - AudioFile