著者

岩田 美喜

出版者

一般財団法人 日本英文学会

雑誌

英文学研究 支部統合号 (ISSN:18837115)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.3, pp.99-112, 2011

---

Oliver Goldsmith's The Good Natur'd Man (1768) has mainly been interpreted as an abortive piece of laughing comedy and often contrasted with False Delicacy (1768), a sentimental comedy by Hugh Kelly. Modern scholars point out that, though critics contemporary with Goldsmith upbraided the former as "low and vulgar" and praised the latter as "refined and sentimental," the two plays actually share the same ambivalent views about sentimentalism. Nevertheless, The Good Natur'd Man greatly differs from False Delicacy in that Goldsmith's play tries to highlight the commercialism latent in sentimental comedy rather than to conceal it. As Sir William Thornhill in The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) does, Honeywood in The Good Natur'd Man suffers from "a sickly sensibility" and his excessive benevolence makes his fortune decay. Thus, Honeywood's distress is always connected with his economic discomfort, especially in Act 3, where he is placed under house arrest for his debts and has to meet his beloved, Miss Richland, who comes to rescue him, in this humiliating situation. Though he tries to disguise a bailiff and his follower as respectable gentlemen, they misinterpret the couple's conversation about the London literary taste as the literal "taste," i.e., food prices in London, making Honeywood feel even more humiliated. In the final scene, Honeywood, remonstrated by his uncle and Miss Richland, vows that he would henceforth bestow charity only for those who deserve it and the play ends in expectation of the marriage between Honeywood and Miss Richland. Even in this conventional ending, the surname of the heroine, whose first name is unknown throughout the play, reminds the audience that his mental happiness is concurrent with his financial success. The Good Natur'd Man exposes the commercialist drive, which is existent but usually concealed in the virtue-in-distress strategy of sentimental comedy. However, at the same time, the fantasy ending of the comedy does admit the utilitarian exercise of sensibility, which seems the last thing the author of The Traveller (1764) and The Deserted Village (1770) would do. Richard Cumberland, in his memoirs, recollects with compassion that Goldsmith even in his final years laboured to write scribbles according to the demand of publishers, resignedly commenting that "Paternoster-Row is not Parnassus." The phrase may also be true of the divided attitude towards the economy of sensibility in The Good Natur'd Man.