The Critical Reception

Abstract

Until the day before the first performance it had been assumed that his play was to be known by Goldsmith’s original title, ‘The Mistakes of a Night’. The playwright was unhappy with this and his friends, according to Dr Johnson, had been ‘in labour’ to find a more suitable title, but without success. Some trial had been made with The Novel, a reference to Tony Lumpkin’s fiction about Hardcastle’s house but this title did not offer a pithy summary of the plot of the complete play. In one of her speeches Kate declares that she will retain her disguise in which she has ‘Stoop’d to conquer’ Marlow, and the phrase was seized on in Goldsmith’s hurriedly penned epilogue:

Well, having stoop’d to conquer with success …

It was this which led to the new title for the play. The playbills had been published and at once the order was sent by the stage manager for The Mistakes of a Night to be superseded by She Stoops to Conquer.