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1700Congreve, The Way of the World
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1700John Dryden, Fables
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1702Queen's Royal Cookery
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1704East India Company sales catalogue
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1711The Spectator
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1712Jonathan Swift, A Proposal...
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1715Sugar in Britain
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1719Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
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1721Bartholomew Fair
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1724Trade and the English language
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1729Swift, A Modest Proposal
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1730East India Company: Bengal textiles
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1731English arrives in the West Indies
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1733Hogarth, Harlot's Progress
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1738Cities in chaos
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1738Polite conversation
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1738James Miller, Of Politeness
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1740Samuel Richardson, Pamela
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1742Advert for a giant
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1743Muffin seller
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1747The Art of Cookery
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1749Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
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1755Johnson's Dictionary
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1759Sterne, Tristram Shandy
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1762Lowth’s grammar
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1762Rousseau, The Social Contract
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1764Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
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1773Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer
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1775Captain Cook's journal
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1775Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
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1780Burns, Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
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1780Anglo-Indian newspaper
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1781Notices about runaway slaves
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1782First British advert for curry powder
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1789Storming of the Bastille
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1789Olaudah Equiano
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1790William Blake's Notebook
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1791Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
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1791Walker’s correct pronunciation
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1792Wollstonecraft's Rights of Woman
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1794Songs of Innocence and Experience
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Intro
She Stoops to Conquer is a play of mistaken identities, practical jokes, and plots-within-plots. The play was first performed at Covent Garden on 15 March 1773, and its fast-paced storyline centres on the spirited Kate Hardcastle's attempts to win over the rich but socially inept young aristocrat Charles Marlow by pretending to be a barmaid. It draws on many of the conventions and character-types of Shakespearean comedy: Kate's quick-witted play-acting places her firmly in the tradition of cross-dressing heroines such as Rosalind and Viola, while the joker Tony Lumpkin has been described by one critic as ‘a mischievous Puck in 18th-century riding clothes'. The emphasis on deception, disguise and farcical confusion draws attention to the play's theatricality, but it also contains some vivid moments of psychological realism.
Its author, Oliver Goldsmith, was born in rural Ireland and studied in Dublin, Edinburgh and Paris before settling in London. He was best known in his own lifetime as a novelist and poet, and She Stoops to Conquer is by far his most famous play.
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