“Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, gives genius a better discerning...”

She Stoops to Conquer has delighted audiences for over two centuries.

There’s something extraordinarily modern about Oliver Goldsmith’s enduring 1773 comedy, as it explores the comic consequences of mistaken identity and the insecurities of the male psyche.

First performed in 1773, it concerns Kate Hardcastle, a young lady who poses as a serving girl to win the heart of a young gentleman too shy to court ladies of his own class.

Along the way, there is an abundance of racy dialogue and sly satire of the sentimental comedies of Goldsmith's day.

A number of hilarious turns of plot and merry mix-ups play out before the mating strategies of both Kate Hardcastle and her friend Constance Neville conclude happily.

The extraordinary humor and humanity with which Goldsmith invested this play have made it one of the most read, performed, and studied of all English comedies.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728 – 1774) was an Irish poet, novelist, and playwright best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), and She Stoops to Conquer, first performed in 1773). He is thought to have written the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765).