SOURCE: "Heart and Mask and Genre in Sentimental Comedy," in Eighteenth Century Life: British Literature & Culture, Vol. X, No. 3, October, 1986, pp. 122-44.

In the excerpt below, Traugott examines how Goldsmith exploits the conventions of sentimental comedy in She Stoops to Conquer.

It was not by theory that Goldsmith brought off his sentimental comedy, She Stoops to Conquer (1773). His well-known Essay on the Theatre; or a Comparison between Sentimental and Laughing Comedy is a neo-classical view, with borrowings from Aristotle: comedy is supposed to remind us of the frailties and vices of the lower part of mankind by making them ridiculous, but that sorry modern stuff, comédie larmoyante (comedy with tears), paints the distresses and virtues of private life, and where there are faults, they are forgiven, even applauded, in consideration of the goodness of the actors' hearts. Folly instead of being ridiculed is commended and the aim...