SOURCE: "The Plays of Oliver Goldsmith," in The Journal of Irish Literature, Vol. III, No. 3, September, 1974, pp. 39-48.

In this essay, Hassert views The Good Natured Man and She Stoops to Conquer as "laughing comedies" intended to ridicule sentimental comedies.

Oliver Goldsmith (1730?-1774) set forth his theory of comedy in his "Essay on the Theatre," subtitled "A Comparison Between Laughing and Sentimental Comedy," first published in the Westminster Magazine in January, 1773. In this, he decried comédie larmoyante, insisting instead that "Comedy should excite our Laughter by ridiculously exhibiting the Follies of the Lower Part of Mankind." He deplored the tendency of sentimental comedy to exalt virtues rather than expose vices, expressing the opinion that the object of true comedy was to laugh at human foibles, not to hold up good qualities for admiration, pity, or tears, and called for a return to the traditional concept of comic...