Dedication

To Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

Dear Sir,

By inscribing this slight performance to you, I do not mean so much to compliment you as myself. It may do me some honour to inform the public, that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may serve the interests of mankind also to inform them, that the greatest wit may be found in a character, without impairing the most unaffected piety.

I have, particularly, reason to thank you for your partiality to this performance. The undertaking a comedy not merely sentimental was very dangerous; and Mr. Colman, who saw this piece in its various stages, always thought it so. However, I ventured to trust it to the public; and, though it was necessarily delayed till late in the season, I have every reason to be grateful.

I am, dear sir,
Your most sincere friend
And admirer,

Oliver Goldsmith

Dramatis Personae

She Stoops to Conquer

Prologue

By David Garrick, Esq.

Excuse me, sirs, I pray—I can’t yet speak—
Excuse me, sirs, I pray—I can’t yet speak—
I’m crying now—and have been all the week!
“ ’Tis not alone this mourning suit,” good masters;
“I’ve that within”—for which there are no plasters!
Pray, would you know the reason why I’m crying?
The Comic Muse, long sick, is now a-dying!
And if she goes, my tears will never stop;
For as a player, I can’t squeeze out one drop;
I am undone, that’s all—shall lose my bread—
I’d rather, but that’s nothing—lose my head.
When the sweet maid is laid upon the bier,
Shuter and I shall be chief mourners here.
To her a mawkish drab of spurious breed,
Who deals in sentimentals, will succeed.
Poor Ned and I are dead to all intents;
We can as soon speak Greek as sentiments!
Both nervous grown, to keep our spirits up,
We now and then take down a hearty cup.
What shall we do? If Comedy forsake us,
They’ll turn us out, and no one else will take us.
But why can’t I be moral?—Let me try:
My heart thus pressing—fixed my face and eye—
With a sententious look, that nothing means,
(Faces are blocks in sentimental scenes),
Thus I begin—“All is not gold that glitters,
Pleasure seems sweet, but proves a glass of bitters.
When Ignorance enters, Folly is at hand;
Learning is better far than house and land.
Let not your virtue trip; who trips may stumble,
And virtue is not virtue, if she tumble.”

I give it up—morals won’t do for me;
To make you laugh, I must play tragedy.
One hope remains—hearing the maid was ill,
A Doctor comes this night to show his skill.
To cheer her heart, and give your muscles motion,
He, in Five Draughts prepared, presents a potion:
A kind of magic charm—for be assured,
If you will swallow it, the maid is cured:
But desperate the Doctor, and her case is,
If you reject the dose, and make wry faces.
This truth he boasts, will boast it while he lives,
No poisonous drugs are mixed in what he gives.
Should he succeed, you’ll give him his degree;
If not, within he will receive no fee!
The college you, must his pretensions back,
Pronounce him Regular, or dub him Quack.

Act I

Scene I. A Chamber in an old-fashioned house.

Scene II. An alehouse room. Several shabby Fellows with punch and tobacco. Tony at the head of the table, a little higher than the rest, a mallet in his hand.

Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain
With grammar, and nonsense, and learning,
Good liquor, I stoutly maintain,
Gives genus a better discerning.
Let them brag of their heathenish gods,
Their Lethes, their Styxes, and Stygians,
Their quis, and their quaes, and their quods,
They’re all but a parcel of pigeons.
Toroddle, toroddle, toroll!

When Methodist preachers come down,
A-preaching that drinking is sinful,
I’ll wager the rascals a crown,
They always preach best with a skinful.
But when you come down with your pence,
For a slice of their scurvy religion,
I’ll leave it to all men of sense,
But you, my good friend, are the pigeon.
Toroddle, toroddle, toroll!

Then come, put the jorum about,
And let us be merry and clever,
Our hearts and our liquors are stout,
Here’s the Three Jolly Pigeons forever.
Let some cry up woodcock or hare,
Your bustards, your ducks, and your widgeons;
But of all the gay birds in the air,
Here’s a health to the Three Jolly Pigeons.
Toroddle, toroddle, toroll!

Act II

Scene. An old-fashioned house.

We are the boys
That fears no noise
Where the thundering cannons roar.

Act III

Scene. The house.

Act IV

Scene. The house.

Act V

Scene I. The house.

Scene II. The back of the garden.

Scene III The house.