AQA B Lang/Lit Anthology – Travel, Transport and Locomotion
Text 28: She Stoops to Conquer tasks
Contexts of production and reception
Complete the blanks by using the words in the table.
She Stoops to Conquer was performed in ____________ , some of the characters being _____________ ,
a sophisticated young man, __________________ , a country-born character and _______________ ,
the young lady with whom Hastings is in love.
It is a ________________ of misunderstandings which deals with various themes. Although it is a
____________ , it is also known as a comedy of ________________ which is a type of comedy where
the audience laughs at the gap between the characters’ attempts to preserve standards of politeness and
their actual behaviour. It also covers more serious topics such as social class, love and marriage and the
contrast in values between ________________ and _______________.
This extract is from near the end of the play when Tony’s mother, (line 33) referred to by Hastings in
the passage as ‘the old _____________’, (line 46) has discovered that her niece, Miss Neville, called
‘the young one’ (line 47) plans to elope with Hastings. She has demanded to leave immediately and her
son, Tony, appears to have obeyed her.
manners
farce
country
Tony Lumpkin
comedy
1773
Hastings
town
Miss Neville
Lady
Understanding
1. Why, at the start of this extract, does Tony Lumpkin enter ‘booted and spattered’?
2. Why does Hastings proclaim that he now finds Tony ‘a man of your word’?
3. What tone would suit Tony’s meaning when he says (line 3) ‘the best friend you have in the world,
if you knew all’?
4. Explain the ‘riddle’ delivered in lines 17 and 18.
5. How is there word play with ‘astray’ lines 19 and 20?
6. Explain lines 20 and 21 – ‘there’s not a pond or slough within five miles of the place but they can
tell the taste of’.
7. Where did Tony leave the ladies? (line 31)
8. Why can Tony guarantee that ‘no soul here can budge a foot to follow’ Hastings? (line 36)
9. What does Tony mean in his ‘rebuke’ in lines 39 to 44?
10. Who is about to enter and what will be the appearance of this character?
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AQA B Lang/Lit Anthology – Travel, Transport and Locomotion
Text 28: She Stoops to Conquer tasks
Eighteenth century travel
A contemporary audience would appreciate various aspects of this text which a modern one would not.
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Find two pieces of evidence to show that this is the time of horse-drawn carriages.
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Find two pieces of evidence to prove that such travel was extremely uncomfortable and difficult.
•
What speed per hour does Tony Lumpkin consider to be ‘no such bad driving’? (In fact, this is an
example of litotes, a rhetorical device used for effect: it is deliberate understatement to mean the
opposite. Tony considers this pace to be impressive.)
Glossary for some of the lexis - examples of diachronic variation, showing how language
changes over time
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•
•
•
•
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Basket – line 5 – the outside back seat on a coach.
Smoked – line 10 – galloped at great speed (until they steamed?) Tony is using an idiom (a
commonly-used figurative phrase) of the times. He uses vivid, animated language to convey the
picture. It will have a lively, comic effect.
Rabbit me – line 14 – a mild oath (a minced oath, or pseudo-profanity, probably from ‘God rot
me’).
By jingo – line 20 – a minced oath or pseudo-profanity (probably for ‘By Jesus’, in existence since
the late seventeenth century. Very dated and little used now!) These two idioms or oaths add
vitality and colour to Tony’s account. Goldsmith has included these to contribute to the comedy.
Slough – muddy bog or depression.
Draggled – line 49 – wet and dirty (retained in ‘bedraggled’).
Interaction between Tony and Hastings
1. Tony is the one with the details whilst Hastings is keen to find out. Quote five interrogative
utterances from Hastings, all near the start of the extract, to show this.
2. A play consists of scripted or represented talk, written by the playwright. When the features of
talk are examined, one thing to notice is the distribution, which means considering who has more
to say. Who has the major distribution here and why?
3. Consider the agenda-setter, which means the person who is in charge of the conversation. Who is
setting the agenda here and why?
4. Another aspect to examine when there is interaction is how the listener encourages the speaker to
continue to talk. This is known as back-channel behaviour. One way of doing this is to ask
questions. Pick out some of the questions that Hastings asks and show how they work as
feedback to urge Tony to carry on talking. How do they capture Hastings’ impatience or
perplexity?
5. Can you find two examples of back channel behaviour which are not questions?
6. The mode of address is how one person addresses or speaks to another.
7. E.g. ‘My honest squire’ – is the mode of address used by Hastings to Tony in the opening line.
8. In line 20, there is another mode of address, used by Tony to speak to Hastings. It is a phonetic
representation of Tony’s rural accent. Which little word is it?
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AQA B Lang/Lit Anthology – Travel, Transport and Locomotion
Text 28: She Stoops to Conquer tasks
9. In line 38, how does Hastings address Tony?
10. In lines 39 and 40, how does Tony ‘rebuke’ Hastings, his irritation caused by these modes of
address?
11. In real talk, there are always interruptions, overlappings and many examples of ellipsis and
incoherence. In literary, scripted talk, especially one that is over two hundred years old, this is not
the case. Find any one perfectly-constructed complex sentence in this extract which, in your
opinion, is unlikely to be delivered so syntactically correctly in real life.
12. As further proof that this is a scripted, literary text, there are very few elliptical utterances. One is
‘But how?’ (line 7). Can you find another one?
Synchronic variation – differences in language in existence at the same time – could be
regional or social class
1. As part of Tony’s rural accent, Goldsmith has given to him two verbs which are in the subjunctive
mood and, in addition, an archaic form of it. (The subjunctive mood used to be used more than it
is now but it still remains in conditional constructions such as ‘If I were you…’ or ‘I wish I
were…’) This construction was retained in remote areas long after it died out in the rest of the
country.
•
One is in line 35 ‘…if your own horses be ready…’
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Can you find the other one, to be found after this one in line 35?
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There is no sign of Hastings speaking in this way, showing that he comes from a less
remote, less rural area: Goldsmith has given him standard English and grammar.
2. Again as part of this local dialect which Goldsmith is capturing, which piece of non-standard
grammar has he given to Tony in line 5? Can you explain why it is non-standard? What is
standard in this context?
3. The word ‘vermin’ still exists today. Which dialectal variation does Tony use to refer, abusively,
to his mother and cousin? (line 12)
4. In line 5, again as part of his unsophisticated rural way of speaking, Tony uses another piece of
non-standard grammar when he uses the wrong past participle. Where is this?
More diachronic variation
•
In line 5, Tony describes the travel as ‘cursedly tiresome.’ The effect is dated as ‘tiresome’ still
exists but would not be used, as here, in an informal situation and ‘cursedly’ has almost
disappeared. Which word is the adjective and which is the pre-modifying adverb? (It works like
‘annoyingly hard’ or ‘really difficult’.)
•
In line 13, Hastings uses a form of the present simple tense (e.g. I go, she walks, he swims) which
would today be changed to the present continuous (e.g. I am going, she is walking, he is swimming.)
Can you find this present simple tense which sounds quaint to modern ears?
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In line 26, there is a modal verb used with the sense of a promise that something will happen. It
sounds dated as modern usage would contract it or, probably, use ‘will’. What is this modal verb?
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In line 30, which word is mock-Latin? This word was in use at the time: it had been invented as a
humorous word in the previous century, became fashionable but then disappeared. What is the
effect of Tony’s use of this word?
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