Word: goldsmiths
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Comic drama in Goldsmith's time resembled in some respects the American theatre today: it was awful, it was in the hands of the panderers and the dutchers. The reason for this, Goldsmith thought, was that its practitioners failed to distinguish tragedy from comedy, and produced mainly works which fell awkwardly between the two. "Notwithstanding the universal practice of former ages," he wrote in an Essay on the Theatre, "a new species of dramatic composition has been introduced, under the name of sentimental comedy, in which the virtues of private life are exhibited, rather than the vices exposed...
...Goldsmith, though he was undoubtedly right in his opinions, was one of those whose love of good theatre outstrips their creative talent; and in his one successful comedy. She Stoops To Conquer, he was scarcely able to reverse the dismal, tear-stained course of eighteenth century comedy. Though he looked back discerningly to the broad humor of the "the last age" (he meant the Elizabethans), his work fails to recapture the extravagant buffoonery of their plays...
...fact, She Stoops To Conquer is clearly the work of a critic: for it is an elaborate construction designed to poke fun at middle-class "uplifting" comedy and celebrate the comic virtues of members of the "humbler stations." Goldsmith turns a worthy squire's home into an inn, and makes the "inn-keeper's" daughter impersonate a bar maid in order to win a shy suitor. (This gentleman, you see, is comfortable not with "women or reputation and virtue," but only in the company of "creatures of another stamp.") Goldsmith's point is that in order to conquer--or rather...
...Kirkland House players, under the direction of Thomas Lee Hinkle, have interpreted Goldsmith's comedy to the old man's demanding fancy, broadly as you please. The result is a performance both faithful and hilarious. It is a little too long--though to the author's credit, I don't know what you could cut--and wants polish at quite a few places; but for the most part the pace is lively and the acting first-rate...
...Wagner's only attempt at comedy, deals entirely with real people and with none of the composer's familiar Teutonic gods and goddesses, it demands more realistic stagecraft than most of the Wagnerian operas. Last week, the story of the knight Walther's love for the goldsmith's daughter Eva, and of how he won both her and the mastersingers' song contest with the aid of Sachs, was unfolded with a dramatic skill not always observed on the Met's stage...