OLIVER GOLDSMITH: She Stoops to Conquer 7. Assess Marlow and Hastings' first encounter with Mr. Hardcastle. 8. Comment on Tony's attitude to Mr. and Mrs. Ha...

Answer Details

7. Marlow and Hastings' first encounter with Mr Hardcastle. In Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, the first meeting of young Marlow and his friend Hastings with Mr Hardcastle is the comic hinge of the play, built entirely on a misunderstanding engineered by Tony Lumpkin. Directed by Tony at the alehouse to Hardcastle's country house as though it were a common inn, the two travellers arrive believing they are guests at a tavern and treat their host, Mr Hardcastle, as though he were an ordinary innkeeper. The comedy springs from the clash of expectations. Marlow and Hastings behave with careless, condescending familiarity, ordering supper, criticising the accommodation and treating their dignified host as a servant to be commanded. Mr Hardcastle, who expects to welcome Marlow as the well-bred suitor for his daughter Kate, is bewildered and increasingly offended by the young men's rudeness and presumption, quite unable to understand why his guest is so insolent. Neither side grasps the truth, and their cross-purposes produce rich comic irony, for the audience knows what the characters do not. The encounter sets in motion the confusion that governs the plot, and it also exposes the paradox of Marlow's character, bold and overbearing with those he thinks his inferiors, yet painfully shy with ladies of his own class, which is central to the play's design.

8. Tony's attitude to Mr and Mrs Hardcastle. Tony Lumpkin, Mrs Hardcastle's spoilt son by her first marriage and Mr Hardcastle's stepson, shows very different attitudes to his mother and his stepfather, and his mischief drives the comedy. Toward his mother, Mrs Hardcastle, Tony is deceptive and manipulative beneath a show of dependence. She dotes on him, spoils him and pretends he is delicate and sickly to keep him at home and to control his inheritance, but Tony sees through her selfishness and delights in tricking her. His famous prank of driving her round and round in circles in the dark, convincing her they are lost and in danger of highwaymen, exposes both his cunning and his resentment of her smothering control. Toward his stepfather, Mr Hardcastle, Tony is disrespectful and rebellious, mocking the old man's love of order and refusing to be tamed by his authority; it is Tony's practical joke that turns Hardcastle's house into a supposed inn and humiliates him before his guests. Yet Tony is not merely malicious. His trickery ultimately serves the young lovers: by helping Hastings and Constance and by refusing to marry Constance himself, he furthers their happiness. His irreverent, playful attitude to both elders makes him the engine of the plot and one of English comedy's great comic rogues.