But in the former year he
had completed a new comedy, 'She Stoops to Conquer; or, The Mistakes of
a Night', which, after the usual vexatious negotiations, was brought out
by Colman at Covent Garden on Monday, the 15th of March, 1773. The
manager seems to have acted Goldsmith's own creation of 'Croaker' with
regard to this piece, and even to the last moment predicted its failure.
But it was a brilliant success. More skilful in construction than 'The
Good Natur'd Man', more various in its contrasts of character, richer
and stronger in humour and 'vis comica', 'She Stoops to Conquer' has
continued to provide an inexhaustible fund of laughter to more than
three generations of playgoers, and still bids fair to retain the
character generally given to it, of being one of the three most popular
comedies upon the English stage. When published, it was gratefully
inscribed, in one of those admirable dedications of which its author
above all men possessed the secret, to Johnson, who had befriended it
from the first.
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