She Stoops to Conquer is set almost entirely in the Hardcastles’ home in the English countryside, with an occasional scene in the local inn, The Three Pigeons. The setting proves an important part of the play, with the divide between the town and countryside a key theme that sets up much of the play’s satire. Indeed, the importance of the city vs. country dynamic is immediately established in the first act, which begins with Mr and Mrs Hardcastle bickering about their different opinions on London, in an exchange which mirrors typical contemporary attitudes:
MRS. HARDCASTLE. I vow, Mr. Hardcastle, you’re very particular. Is there a creature in the whole country but ourselves, that does not take a trip to town now and then, to rub off the rust a little? There’s the two Miss Hoggs, and our neighbour Mrs. Grigsby, go to take a month’s polishing every winter.
HARDCASTLE. Ay, and bring back vanity and affectation to last them the whole year. I wonder why London cannot keep its own fools at home! In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stage-coach. Its fopperies come down not only as inside passengers, but in the very basket.
Here, the play immediately establishes the tensions between the city and country. Hardcastle’s disparagement of the affectations bred in London highlights the associations between frivolity and superficiality and the city. The city, similarly, is tied up with youth and modernity, with Mr Hardcastle’s love for the old and unchanged making it so unappealing to him. While Marlow and Hastings, the play’s two London characters, in many ways confirm these biases, with them indeed satirized as somewhat vain and foppish, the countryside is also not immune from the play’s ridicule. Tony is shown to be somewhat simple in his rurality, overly dependent on his mother and with an emphasis placed on his lack of education, while Mr Hardcastle’s traditionalism also points to the sometimes backward-looking attitudes of the countryside.
The differences between the city and countryside also prove essential in engineering much of the play’s plot, with characters such as Tony and Kate taking advantage of the differences in the two setting's dress, fashions, and manners to construct their own tricks. It is the difference in dress, for example, that allows Kate to fool Marlow into thinking she is a common barmaid and not of a higher social ranking. Similarly, it is Marlow’s naivety and ignorance of the countryside that makes him so easy to fool into thinking the Hardcastles’ home is an inn.
