She stoops to conquer oliver goldsmith biography book

Most everyone has been the target of practical jokes, and most have been out on blind dates. Oliver Goldsmith bases his comedy She Stoops to Conquer on two such incidents, creating a complicated, convoluted plot based on miscommunication and mistaken identities. At the same time, Goldsmith explores a series of ethical and aesthetic issues. Significantly, from its debut, it earned popular approval and remains today one of the few 18th century plays to be regularly performed for modern audiences.

While the play proves funny and entertaining, it also marks an important step in the development of comic theory. He had been told that the house of a Mr. Featherstone was an inn and directed there for entertainment. Out of this situation grew his characters and their games of cross-purposes. Finally, Goldsmith, like his character Marlow, was at ease with serving women, but stiff in the company of proper ladies, in part because of insecurities about his physical appearance.

The family had expected that Goldsmith would attend university, but the marriage of an older sister required his tuition money as part of her sizable dowry. In , Goldsmith entered Trinity College in Dublin under the sizar system, which allowed poor students to study in exchange for work. Perhaps because of his tenuous economic circumstances, Goldsmith did not distinguish himself academically.

He failed to take his studies entirely seriously, violated college rules, and even took part in a riot in which several people died.

By: Oliver Goldsmith: She

Completing his B. From , he wandered across the British continent before arriving in London. Goldsmith, masquerading under the identity of an Asian visitor, satirized the faults and foibles of fashionable London society. The work also brought Goldsmith literary opportunities, but poor money management drove him to hack writing for survival, a pattern that unfortunately continued throughout his life.