The Confidence-Lacking Rake in She Stoops to Conquer

Published in 1773 and first performed on a live stage in the same year, the comical play, She Stoops to Conquer, was composed by Oliver Goldsmith, an Irish dramatist and playwright. This play satirizes love relationships, the division of societal classes, as well as city life opposed to country life. This late eighteenth century piece, while seemingly the simple story of two couples in love, at the same time encompasses the freedoms and rights of those in different levels of society while displaying the acceptability and vulnerability to advances from the opposite sex. 

The double plot of the comedy is based on Mr. Hardcastle's staunch desire to bequeath his beautiful daughter to his rich, high-society friend's son Marlow and his wife, who has high-hopes of marrying her first-marriage-son, Tony, to Miss Neville, her financially well-off niece. 

Although the play was written during the late eighteenth century, the classic restoration rake characteristics can still be found within the character of Marlow, son of Hardcastle's wealthy friend. After studying the character of Marlow, he can be easily considered to have a quite dual personality. At times he is unable to make eye contact with a woman and is constantly found to be staring at his feet, while stuttering and mumbling over his words, but in other moments, he is able to be in complete control of his sexual destiny "Suppose I should call for a taste, just by way of trial, of the nectar of your lips…(Goldsmith 34)." While he initially seems shy when in the company of his upper-class love interest, Miss Hardcastle, he displays a more aggressive behavior towards those in a lower station in life, proving his opinion that those from a higher class in society deserve more rights than those who are less fortunate.