Title
The title refers to Kate's ruse of pretending to be a barmaid to reach her goal. It originates in the poetry of Dryden, which Goldsmith may have seen misquoted by Lord Chesterfield. In Chesterfield's version, the lines in question read: "The prostrate lover, when he lowest lies, But stoops to conquer, and but kneels to rise."
Read more about this topic: She Stoops To Conquer
Famous quotes containing the word title:
“Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, “a handy Negro,” slave of Squire Cummings once.... Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord,—where he is styled “Sippio Brister,”MScipio Africanus he had some title to be called,—”a man of color,” as if he were discolored.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if I do not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“That title of respect
Which the proud soul ne’er pays but to the proud.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)