GOLDSMITH AND “SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER”
Genial Goldsmith 1 delighted in the kind of humor that is characteristic of “the plain people” and that is spontaneously enjoyed by them. The accidental predicaments into which all of us stumble, to our embarrassment and the amusement of bystanders; the blunders of well-meaning but untrained servants; the practical jokes, without malice, that ever delight youth; the shy awkwardness of lovers; even the clownish tavern jest and joviality; these are in Goldsmith’s merry eyes sources of wholesome laughter. It troubles him not that Young Marlow continues to believe a country house an inn, and the host’s daughter a maidservant, nor that Mrs. Hardcastle mistakes her own garden for a distant heath; he ignores the improbability of such situations as arouse instinctive laughter. It is the unsophisticated human beings who blunder in and out of these straits that he wishes to depict; and he draws simple folk like Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle, Tony Lumpkin, and Diggory, with extraordinary zest, fidelity, and kindly yet shrewd humor.