In this letter Goldsmith betrays his anxieties about the fate of the comedy that would eventually be titled She Stoops to Conquer, a complete draft of which he had completed by September 1771 (see Letter 37). Evidently, Goldsmith was under some financial pressures at this time but the precise nature of his troubles is not known.

Prior states that Goldsmith was actively trying to secure the play's representation from the start of the 1772–3 season (i.e. September 1772), hence the somewhat frantic tone. Colman, manager of the Covent Garden Theatre, had many objections to the piece, even writing them out on the manuscript for Goldsmith’s consideration (possibly by way of response to this letter) although Goldsmith apparently ignored them (CW, V: 87). The precise nature of these objections is not known although Colman may have read the scenes with Tony Lumpkin in The Three Jolly Pigeons and remembered uneasily the audience reaction to the similarly ‘low’ bailiff scene in The Good Natur’d Man. In any case, Colman would regret his disapproval as it made him an object of public ridicule in the press after the success of the piece. One ditty began: