Dramatic irony is a key device used in She Stoops to Conquer, with much of the play’s comedy generated by the gap between what the characters know and what the audience knows. This is most clearly exemplified in Tony’s trickery of Marlow, in which Tony leads Marlow to believe that the Hardcastles’ house is an inn and that Mr Hardcastle is the innkeeper. While the audience knows this is not true, Marlow’s ignorance of the fact that he has been deliberately deceived creates heavy dramatic irony.
Subsequently, the exchanges that follow—in which Marlow is extremely dismissive to Mr Hardcastle, while Mr Hardcastle is also unaware that Marlow has been deceived—prove very comical for the audience, who know exactly what is going on. Mr Hardcastle’s and Marlow’s asides, in which both characters, unaware of the mistaken identities at play, accuse the other of impudence, highlight the central irony.
Goldsmith repeatedly uses satire in She Stoops to Conquer by poking fun at the characters in a way that mocks contemporary society and its follies. However, the intentional relatability of the characters, with the play taking domestic, everyday life for its subject matter, means this satire is double-edged, with Goldsmith simultaneously poking fun at his own audience. In this way, Goldsmith cleverly unveils society’s central hypocrisy, meaning that when the audience laughs at the characters, they're admitting their own follies, too.
Mrs Hardcastle in particular falls victim to Goldsmith’s satire. The play’s most unlikeable character, Mrs Hardcastle is vain, greedy, and manipulative, and she is the character left most unsatisfied by the ending, an outcome meant to be satisfying for the audience. She is also one of the easiest characters to play tricks on; when Tony moves the jewels, Mrs Hardcastle flies into a frenzy which, with its emphasis of her vanity, provides one of the play’s mocking episodes.
The satire is aided by the use of dramatic irony. The audience’s knowledge that it's Tony who has moved the jewels makes it all the more comical when Mrs Hardcastle bursts onto the scene shouting of being “cheated, plundered, broke open, undone” to Tony himself. That Tony then proceeds to not even fake concern shows just how easy he knows it is to play tricks on his mother, and he doesn't disguise his mirth. Frustrated with what she deems to be inappropriate laughter from Tony, she goes on to exclaim:
MRS. HARDCASTLE. Was there ever such a blockhead, that can’t tell the difference between jest and earnest!
Ironically, in rebuking Tony, Mrs Hardcastle only serves to prove her own "blockheaded"-ness and thus extends the play’s mockery even further. After all, it is she who is confusing jest for earnest, unable to see that she is merely the victim of one of Tony’s pranks and not a dangerous robbery.
However, it is perhaps not only Mrs Hardcastle who proves the butt of the joke here; the point of not being able to tell the difference between jest and earnest also speaks to Goldsmith’s frustration with contemporary audiences’ preference for sentimental comedies. Just as it's only a "blockhead" who can’t tell the difference between jest and earnest, so too it may be folly to demand earnestness from a comedy. In this way, Goldsmith’s satire of Mrs Hardcastle offers a wider satire of 18th century society, the play mirroring the audience's own follies and exposing their own hypocrisy.
Constance and Tony use hyperbole in their flirting in front of Mrs Hardcastle to mock sentimental romantic cliches and to emphasize the fact that their flirting is a pretense. In this way, Goldsmith uses hyperbole in conjunction with dramatic irony to create comedy, with the audience knowing Tony and Constance are not in love while Mrs Hardcastle believes they are. In Act 4, just as Tony and Constance are discussing their plans to ensure Constance can run away with Hastings, Mrs Hardcastle enters:
MISS NEVILLE. Agreeable cousin! Who can help admiring that natural humour, that pleasant, broad, red, thoughtless (patting his cheek)—ah! it’s a bold face.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. Pretty innocence!
TONY. I’m sure I always loved cousin Con.’s hazle eyes, and her pretty long fingers, that she twists this way and that over the haspicholls, like a parcel of bobbins.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. Ah! he would charm the bird from the tree.
Here, Tony and Constance’s intentionally exaggerated displays of devotion towards each other highlight how unnatural it is to say these things and that, in fact, their romance is faked. Meanwhile, the sheer ridiculousness of many of the sweet nothings they exchange mocks Mrs Hardcastle, whose belief in their romance appears even more ridiculous as a result.
The way in which Constance and Tony parody the usual exchanges made by lovers creates additional comedy in this scene. Constance, for example, takes the trope of flattering a lover’s appearance but turns it on its head. Where most traditional lovers might speak of the beauty of their loved one's eyes or their complexion, Constance instead describes her “admiration” for Tony’s “broad, red, thoughtless face.” Equally, Tony’s compliments for Constance’s “pretty long fingers that she twists this way and that over the haspicholls like a parcel of bobbins” borders on the nonsensical, with a "haspicholl" appearing to be an invented word. In these instances, Tony and Constance’s use of hyperbole works to satirize the often meaningless and ridiculous romantic cliches present in other plays at the time, specifically in the sentimental romantic comedies which Goldsmith intentionally mocks.
