Anti sentimental comedy by Goldsmith (she stoops to conquer)

Name: Trivedi Hezal K.

Roll No: 39

PG Reg. No. PG15101040

M.A. – English Regular, Semester-1

Year: 2015

Course No. 2: The Neo-Classical Literature:

Unit-4: The Anti-sentimental Comedy: Sheridan and Goldsmith

Assignments Topic- Anti sentimental comedy by Goldsmith (she stoops to conquer)

Submitted to: S.B. Gardi Department of English

                    Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

                    (Gujarat – India)

To evaluate my assignment click here

Oliver Goldsmith Brief Introduction..

Oliver Goldsmith was born on November 10, 1730 in Kilkenny West, Ireland. He was one of seven children, and his father was a county vicar. In his early days, he would endure poverty rather than practise economy. Goldsmith began to publish his first master works, including the novel The Vicar of Wakefield. This novel, along with his masterful comic play She Stoops to Conquer, found great success, and remain his best-loved works. . He is best known for a comic novel, The Vicar of Wakefield, a poem about urbanization, The Deserted Village, and a stage comedy, She Stoops to Conquer. No man of his age wrote with more sweetness or grace, few talked worse. It was characteristic of Goldsmith that he should desire to be a talker, to be thought a wit and to be esteemed for those power of debate which were so noticeably absent. Johnson who wrote for his epitaph after his death in 1774 that there was nothing he touched as a writer without adding lustre to it, and it is interesting to see how this came out.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“She Stoops to Conquer” AS an Anti – sentimental Comedy Introduction:

To know how ‘She stoops to Conquer’ is an anti – sentimental comedy, we must know what is sentimental and anti – sentimental comedy.

Sentimental comedy:

Sentimental comedy,  a dramatic genre of the 18th century, denoting plays in which middle-class protagonists triumphantly overcome a series of moral trials. Sentimental comedy is related to our emotions. Sentimental comedies reflected contemporary philosophical conceptions of humans as inherently good but capable of being led astray through bad example. Sentimental comedy had its roots in early 18th century tragedy, which had a vein of morality similar to that of sentimental comedy but had loftier characters and subject matter than sentimental comedy.   A sentimental comedy is comedy that simply address itself to the beholder‘s’ love of goodness rather than humor. It shows the morality of its situations and the virtue of character. The best-known sentimental comedy is Sir Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers (1722).  Sentimental comedies continued to coexist with such conventional comedies as Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer (1773) and Richard Brinkley Sheridan’s The Rivals (1775) until the sentimental genre waned in the early 19th century.

Anti – Sentimental Comedy:

Anti-Sentimental comedy is reaction against sentimental comedy. The pioneer of anti sentimental comedy is Oliver Goldsmith, who criticised the sentimental comedy in his essay (‘Essay on the theatre’ or ‘A comparison between laughing and sentimental comedy’).

Oliver Goldsmith writes that the true function of a comedy was to give a humorous exhibition of the follies and vices of men and women and to rectify them by exciting laughter. Goldsmith opposed sentimental comedy because in place of laughter and humour, it provided tears and distressing situations, pathetic lovers, serious heroines and honest servants.

He argued that sentimental comedy was more like tragedy than a comedy. If comedy was to trespass upon tragedy where humour will have right to express itself. On two occasions and with unequal success, Goldsmith tried to count more than true moral character. Its plot usually revolves around Intrigues of lust and greed the self interested cynicism of the character. Being masked by decorous pretence in these two dramatists’ comedies. 

As a result of the reaction of Goldsmith and Sheridan, the comedy of sentiment was driven out, gone were the pathos and morality, preaching and meddling sentimentality. Their place was taken by humour and mirth, pleasant dialogues and wit. The writers who brought about the revival of true comedy in 18^th Century were Henry Fielding, Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Sheridan.

Anti-sentimental comedy takes us from old form of comedy, Comedy of manners, which is also called, generally for anti-sentimental comedy.

Characteristics of anti sentimental comedy:

•  Amusing intrigues and situations        
•  Satirical comedy and Irony
•  Marriage for Love and Marriage for Money
•  Wit of Language and verbal dialogue
•  Farce and disguise
•  Emotions have boundaries

         Oliver Goldsmith’s ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ is one of the best examples of anti-sentimental comedy, and follows all the characteristics of anti-sentimental comedy.

 ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ - An Anti – Sentimental Comedy:

She Stoops to Conquer or The Mistakes of a Night was produced in 1773. The principal characters are Hardcastle, who loves ‘everything that’s old; old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine’; Mrs. Hardcastle, and Miss Hardcastle their  daughter; Mrs. Hardcastle’s son by a former marriage, Tony Lumpkin, a frequenter of the ‘Three Jolly Pigeons’, idle and ignorant, but cunning and mischievous, and doted on by his mother; and young Marlow, ‘one of the most bashful and reserved young fellows in the world’, except with barmaids and servant-girls. His father, Sir Charles Marlow, has proposed a match between young Marlow and Miss Hardcastle, and the young man and his friend, Hastings, accordingly travel down to pay the Hardcastle a visit. Losing their way they arrive at night at the ‘Three Jolly Pigeons’, where Tony Lumpkin directs them to a neighbouring inn, which is in reality the Hardcastle’s house. The fun of the play arises largely from the resulting misunderstanding, Marlow treating Hardcastle as the landlord of the supposed inn, and making violent love to Miss Hardcastle, whom he takes for one of the servants. This contrasts with his bashful attitude when presented to her in real character. The arrival of Sir Charles Marlow clears up the misconception and all ends well, including a subsidiary love-affair between Hastings and Miss Hardcastle’s cousin, Miss Neville, whom Mrs. Hardcastle destines for Tony Lumpkin.”

      The prologue of the play gives the conception of comedy of Goldsmith. It is also a direct satire on sentimental comedy. Moreover, he has explained his ideas about the comic art in the dedication to Samuel Johnson. In the play, he has ironically attacked sentimental comedy through the mouth of his character. As Miss Hardcastle observes in Act II: “Indeed, I have often been surprise how a man of sentiment could ever admire those light air pleasures, where nothing reaches the heart”. Again Tony says in the same Act: “I have often seen her and sister cry over a book for an hour together; and they said they liked the book the better the more it made them cry.”

 That way he attacked, criticized sentimental comedy.

Conclusion:

       ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ by Oliver Goldsmith has element of anti-sentimentalism. Goldsmith wanted to criticise sentimental comedy of Richard Steele in his contemporary era. So, he wrote ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ his second play better than the first, as an example of pure comedy, comedy of humours, comedy of manners, anti-sentimental comedy.

Thus, ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ is the best example of anti-sentimental comedy not only because it has characteristics and element of anti-sentimentalism but also it has spirit of “anti-sentimentalism” which we can easily find in Goldsmith. It is a very intellectual with emotional comedy where Goldsmith shows his spirit of anti sentimentalism. And make it the best anti sentimental comedy – a pure form of comedy.

Please click here to evaluate my assignment 

===========================================================