Abstract
Abstract Oliver Goldsmith’s representation of two English gentlemen visiting a country house allegorizes Irish expatriate experience in She Stoops to Conquer. The play mocks a distinctive urban masculinity, the macaroni, by showing how ridiculous such fashionable characters become when removed from London. Resembling expatriates in this new, uncomfortable setting, the self-exiled gentlemen prompt Tony Lumpkin’s waggery, which is enhanced by Kate Hardcastle’s mockery of Marlow, her prospective husband. Goldsmith adapted elements of his plot from The Beaux Stratagem, a comedy by his Irish expatriate precursor George Farquhar, and he also incorporates autobiographical aspects of his Irish youth and recent English past. The laughter evoked by his fine gentlemen includes self-mockery, the result of Goldsmith’s double perspective on balancing the roles of outsider and insider, comic Irishman and fashionable Londoner.
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