The mood of She Stoops to Conquer is light-hearted and comical. The play has a tidy plot which is resolved by a typical happy ending. The stakes of the play are ultimately low, with the climaxes surrounding romance and courtship. While the audience is still invested in the outcomes of the events, an awareness that the play is concerned with over-dramatizing the everyday grounds the play in realism.
The play contains no real villains and the trickery which creates the action is always good-humored and easily forgiven. None of the characters are particular paragons of virtue or vice, with them instead providing a realistic depiction of everyday life. Even Marlow, who is almost always at the butt of the joke as the main subject of Tony’s deception, is hardly painted as a victim. Indeed, Marlow’s poor behavior under the trickery—proving himself quite the rude guest—makes Tony’s trickery all the more easy to forgive, as it appears a fair tit-for-tat under these circumstances.
The play is also specifically designed to involve the audience. The breaking of the fourth wall in the prologue immediately includes the audience in the play, while the dramatic irony used throughout brings the audience in confidence with the characters, making the play feel more personal. Meanwhile, the domesticity and realism of the play ground the action in everyday life, which gives the events an easy, relatable appeal.
