Discuss She Stoops to Conquer as Anti-Sentimental Comedy

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Discuss She Stoops to Conquer as Anti-Sentimental Comedy

Ans: Sentimental comedy arose in the 18th century as a reaction to the Restoration comedy of manners which was a cynical and witty portraiture of the aristocratic society of the Restoration age. It reflected the gay and immoral life of the court . Etherege and Congreve presented love intrigues, false loves, conspiracies and hypocrisies of the age with lively wit and well-drawn characters. They exposed the follies and foibles of the age with wit and satire and produced hilarious laughter. They showed the zest of life; Congreve in his The Way of the World suggested the rational basis of love and marriage .

An sentimental comedy is neither pure comedy nor pure tragedy so represents and unnatural mixture of the two.Goldsmith in his The Good-Natured Man and She Stoops to Conquer, and Sheridan in his The Rivals and The School for Scandal tried to revive the true spirit of comedy by replacing sentimentality and false morality by wit and fun. 

She Stoops to Conquer was a great success. The plot of the play, though recklessly improbable is adequate to maintain the humour of the situation and the clear delineation of the characters. It centres round the tricks of Miss Hardcastle to play the barmaid to win her lover. The house of the Hardcastles is mistaken as an inn. All the tricks are contrived by Tony Lumpkin. Hardcastle, young Marlow and Tony Lumpkin are all individuals new to the drama of the day. Goldsmith exposes their follies and angularities and draws fun out of them. He moves to the Jonsonian Comedy of Humours in the delineation of characters, and he approaches closely to Shakespeare's romantic comedy in the skillful portraiture of Miss Hardcastle adopting stratagem to win her lover. There is a peculiar blend of intellect and emotion which colours the figures and words of Hardcastle and of Tony Lumpkin. Goldsmith criticised sentimentality through the characterisation of Miss Neville and Hastings, and revived the comedy of manners by introducing wit and mirth in the dialogues.

She Stoops To Conquer represents reaction from contemporary sentimentality along with the expression of the "return to nature" as an anti sentimental comedy Goldsmith masterpiece, its characters are all true and real Tony, Marlow, Hastings and the Hardcastle's are all true to nature and they are not marry melodramatic characters not personified abstractions, but men and women of pure flesh and blood.

Another dramatist who protested against the prevailing sentimentalism was Sheridan. In the preface to The Rivals, he declared his mission. Amusement was the avowed purpose of a comedian. He revived the comedy of manners of Etherege and Congreve without their indecency of language and cynicism. He presents characters in their respective eccentricities and draws from their interaction materials for fun and mirth. Lydia Languish, the heroine is a satire portraiture of sentimental heroine. The intrigue of The Rivals is not original, but the humours of Mrs Malaprop, Sir Anthony and Bob Acres are triumphs of theatrical genius. The novel-reading girl, the coward forced into a duel, the rebellious son bent on marrying to please himself, and not his father, and yet making love unwittingly to the very girl his father wants him to marry - all these are treated vividly and wittily. He creates uproarious fun through Mrs Malaprop's 'nice derangement of epitaphs. The Faulkland-Julia episode is sentimental, and is meant for satirising the sentimental comedy. Sheridan's The School for Scandal has a dazzling glitter of wit. The characters are familiar, but the manipulation of the intrigue leading to the thrilling resolution in the famous screen scene is full of life and wit. He presents a scandal loving society. He keeps to the comic aspects of the foibles of the day, and enlivens the whole with incessant sparkling wit.