The Country Wife
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''The Country Wife'' is a Restoration comedy written by William Wycherley and first performed in 1675. A product of the tolerant early Restoration period, the play reflects an aristocratic and anti-
Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...
ideology, and was controversial for its sexual explicitness even in its own time. The title contains a lewd pun with regard to the first syllable of "
country A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, whi ...
". It is based on several plays by
Molière Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (, ; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, , ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and world ...
, with added features that 1670s London audiences demanded:
colloquial Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conve ...
prose Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the fo ...
dialogue Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American and British English spelling differences, American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literature, literary and theatrical form that depicts suc ...
in place of Molière's verse, a complicated, fast-paced plot tangle, and many sex jokes. It turns on two indelicate plot devices: a
rake Rake may refer to: * Rake (stock character), a man habituated to immoral conduct * Rake (theatre), the artificial slope of a theatre stage Science and technology * Rake receiver, a radio receiver * Rake (geology), the angle between a feature on a ...
's trick of pretending impotence to safely have clandestine affairs with married women, and the arrival in London of an inexperienced young "country wife", with her discovery of the joys of town life, especially the fascinating London men. The implied condition the Rake, Horner, claimed to suffer from was, he said, contracted in France whilst "dealing with common women". The only cure was to have a surgeon drastically reduce the extent of his manly stature; therefore, he could be no threat to any man's wife. The scandalous trick and the frank language have for much of the play's history kept it off the stage and out of print. Between 1753 and 1924, ''The Country Wife'' was considered too outrageous to be performed at all and was replaced on the stage by
David Garrick David Garrick (19 February 1717 – 20 January 1779) was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of European theatrical practice throughout the 18th century, and was a pupil and friend of Sa ...
's cleaned-up and bland version '' The Country Girl'', now a forgotten curiosity.Ogden, xxxiii. The original play is again a stage favourite today, and is also acclaimed by
academic An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...
critics, who praise its linguistic energy, sharp social satire, and openness to different interpretations.


Background

After the 18-year
Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...
stage ban was lifted at the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the theatrical life of London recreated itself quickly and abundantly. During the reign of Charles II (1660–1685), playwrights such as
John Dryden '' John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the p ...
,
George Etherege Sir George Etherege (c. 1636, Maidenhead, Berkshire – c. 10 May 1692, Paris) was an English dramatist. He wrote the plays '' The Comical Revenge or, Love in a Tub'' in 1664, ''She Would If She Could'' in 1668, and '' The Man of Mode o ...
,
Aphra Behn Aphra Behn (; bapt. 14 December 1640 – 16 April 1689) was an English playwright, poet, prose writer and translator from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barrie ...
, and William Wycherley wrote comedies that triumphantly reassert aristocratic dominance and prestige after the years of middle class power during
Oliver Cromwell Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English politician and military officer who is widely regarded as one of the most important statesmen in English history. He came to prominence during the 1639 to 1651 Wars of the Three ...
's
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. Reflecting the atmosphere of the
Court A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in acco ...
, these plays celebrate a lifestyle of sensual intrigue and conquest, especially conquest that served to humiliate the husbands of the London middle classes and to avenge, in the sensual arena, the marginalisation and exile suffered by royalists under Cromwell. Charles' personal interest in the stage nourished Restoration drama, and his most favoured courtiers were poets, playwrights, and men of wit, such as
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1 April 1647 – 26 July 1680) was an English poet and courtier of King Charles II's Restoration court. The Restoration reacted against the "spiritual authoritarianism" of the Puritan era. Rochester embodie ...
, Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset, and William Wycherley. Wycherley had no title or wealth, but had by 1675 already recommended himself by two well-received comedies and had been admitted to the inner circle, sharing the conversation and sometimes the mistresses of Charles, who "was extremely fond of him upon account of his wit". In 1675, at age 35, he created a sensation with ''The Country Wife'', greeted as the bawdiest and wittiest play yet seen on the English stage. Like Charles II, Wycherley had spent some Commonwealth years in France and become interested in French drama, and throughout his short playwriting career (1671–1676) he would borrow plotlines and techniques from French plays, particularly
Molière Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (, ; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, , ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and world ...
. However, in contrast to the French, English audiences of the 1670s had no enthusiasm for structurally simple comedies or for the neoclassical unities of time, place, and action, but demanded fast pace, many complications, and above all "variety". To achieve the much denser texture and more complex plotting that pleased in London, Wycherley would combine several source plays to produce bustling action and clashing moods, ranging from
farce Farce is a comedy that seeks to entertain an audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd, and improbable. Farce is also characterized by heavy use of physical humor; the use of deliberate absurdity o ...
through paradox to satire. A Restoration novelty of which Wycherley took advantage was the readiness of public opinion to accept women on stage, for the first time in British history. Audiences were fascinated to see real women reverse the
cross-dressing Cross-dressing is the act of wearing clothes usually worn by a different gender. From as early as pre-modern history, cross-dressing has been practiced in order to disguise, comfort, entertain, and self-express oneself. Cross-dressing has play ...
of the Elizabethan boy actors and appear in tight-fitting male outfits in the popular
breeches role A breeches role (also pants role or trouser role, or Hosenrolle) is one in which an actress appears in male clothing. Breeches, tight-fitting knee-length pants, were the standard male garment at the time these roles were introduced. The theatric ...
s, and to hear them match or even outdo the
rake Rake may refer to: * Rake (stock character), a man habituated to immoral conduct * Rake (theatre), the artificial slope of a theatre stage Science and technology * Rake receiver, a radio receiver * Rake (geology), the angle between a feature on a ...
heroes in repartee and
double entendre A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially ...
. Charles' choice of actresses as mistresses, notably
Nell Gwyn Eleanor Gwyn (2 February 1650 – 14 November 1687; also spelled ''Gwynn'', ''Gwynne'') was a celebrity figure of the Restoration period. Praised by Samuel Pepys for her comic performances as one of the first actresses on the English stag ...
, helped keep the interest fresh, and Wycherley plays on this interest in ''The Country Wife'' by having Mr. Pinchwife disguise his wife (the eponymous 'country wife') in a boy's outfit. It has also been suggested that he uses the allure of women on display to emphasise in an almost
voyeuristic Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of watching other people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions of a private nature. The term comes from the French ''voir'' which means "to see". A ...
way Margery's provocative innocence, as well as the immodest knowingness of "town" wives like Lady Fidget.


Plots

''The Country Wife'' is more neatly constructed than most Restoration comedies, but is typical of its time and place in having three sources and three plots. The separate plots are interlinked but distinct, each projecting a sharply different mood. They may be schematised as Horner's impotence trick, the married life of Pinchwife and Margery, and the courtship of Harcourt and Alithea. 1. Horner's impotence trick provides the play's organising principle and the turning-points of the action. The trick, to pretend impotence to be allowed where no complete man may go, is distantly based on the classic
Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...
comedy '' Eunuchus'' by
Terence Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a Roman African playwright during the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 166–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought ...
. The upper-class town rake Harry Horner begins a campaign to seduce as many respectable ladies as possible, thus
cuckold A cuckold is the husband of an adulterous wife; the wife of an adulterous husband is a cuckquean. In biology, a cuckold is a male who unwittingly invests parental effort in juveniles who are not genetically his offspring. A husband who is a ...
ing or "putting horns on" their husbands: Horner's name serves to alert the audience to what is going on. He spreads a false rumour of his own impotence, to convince married men that he can safely be allowed to socialise with their wives. The rumour is also meant to assist his mass seduction campaign by helping him identify women who are secretly eager for extramarital sex, because those women will react to a supposedly impotent man with tell-tale horror and disgust. This diagnostic trick, which invariably works perfectly, is one of ''The Country Wifes many running jokes at the expense of hypocritical upper-class women who are rakes at heart. Horner's ruse of impotence is a success: he has sex with many ladies of virtuous reputation, mostly the wives and daughters of citizens or "cits", i.e. upwardly mobile businessmen and entrepreneurs of the City of London, as opposed to the Town, the aristocratic quarters where Horner and his friends live. Three such ladies appear on stage, usually together: Lady Fidget, her sister-in-law Mrs Dainty Fidget, and her tag-along friend Mrs Squeamish names that convey both a delicate sensitivity about the jewel of reputation, and a certain fidgety physical unease or tickle and the dialogue gives an indefinite impression of many more. The play is structured as a farce, driven by Horner's secret and by a succession of near-discoveries of the truth, from which he extricates himself by aplomb and good luck. A final threat of exposure comes in the last scene, through the well-meaning frankness of the young country wife Margery Pinchwife. Margery is indignant at the accusations of impotence directed at "poor dear Mr. Horner", which she knows from personal experience to be untrue, and is intent on saying so at the traditional end-of-the-play public gathering of the entire cast. In a final
trickster In mythology and the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a character in a story ( god, goddess, spirit, human or anthropomorphisation) who exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherwi ...
masterpiece, Horner averts the danger, joining forces with his more sophisticated lovers to persuade the jealous Pinchwife to at least pretend to believe Horner impotent and his own wife still innocent. Horner never becomes a reformed character but is assumed to go on reaping the fruits of his planted misinformation, past the last act and beyond. 2. The married life of Pinchwife and Margery is based on
Molière Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (, ; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, , ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and world ...
's '' The School for Husbands'' (1661) and '' The School for Wives'' (1662). Pinchwife is a middle-aged man who has married a naive country girl in the hope that she will not know to cuckold him. However, Horner teaches her, and Margery cuts a swath through the complexities of London upper-class marriage and seduction without even noticing them. Restoration comedies often contrast town and country for humorous effect, and this is one example of it. Both Molière in the ''School For Wives'' and Wycherley in ''The Country Wife'' get much comic business out of the meeting between, on the one hand, innocent but inquisitive young girls and, on the other hand, the sophisticated 17th-century culture of sexual relations which they encounter. The difference, which would later make Molière acceptable and Wycherley atrocious to 19th-century critics and theatre producers, is that Molière's Agnes is naturally pure and virtuous, while Margery is just the opposite: enthusiastic about the virile handsomeness of town gallants, rakes, and especially theatre actors, she keeps Pinchwife in a state of continual horror with her plain-spokenness and her interest in sex. A running joke is the way Pinchwife's
pathological jealousy Pathological jealousy, also known as morbid jealousy, Othello syndrome or delusional jealousy, is a psychological disorder in which a person is preoccupied with the thought that their spouse or sexual partner is being unfaithful without having an ...
always leads him into supplying Margery with the very type of information he wishes her not to have. 3. The courtship of Harcourt and Alithea is a conventional love story without any direct source. By means of persistence and true love, the witty Harcourt, Horner's friend, wins the hand of Pinchwife's sister Alithea, who is, when the play opens, engaged to the shallow fop Sparkish. The delay mechanism of this story is that the upright Alithea holds fast virtuously to her engagement to Sparkish, even while his stupid and cynical character unfolds to her. It is only after Alithea has been caught in a misleadingly compromising situation with Horner, and Sparkish has doubted her virtue while Harcourt has not, that she finally admits her love for Harcourt.


Key scenes

Notorious scenes in the play include "the china scene", a sustained
double entendre A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially ...
dialogue Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American and British English spelling differences, American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literature, literary and theatrical form that depicts suc ...
mostly heard from off stage, where Horner is purportedly discussing his china collection with two of his lady friends. The husband of Lady Fidget and the grandmother of Mrs. Squeamish are listening front stage and nodding in approval, failing to pick up the double meaning which is obvious to the audience. Lady Fidget has already explained to her husband that Horner "knows china very well, and has himself very good, but will not let me see it lest I should beg some. But I will find it out, and have what I came for yet" (IV.iii.110). Dialogue such as this made "china" a dirty word in common conversation, Wycherley later claimed. In another famous scene Lady Fidget's self-styled "virtuous gang" meet up at Horner's lodging to carouse, throw off their public virtue, and behave exactly like male rakes, singing riotous songs and drinking defiant toasts. Finally each of the ladies triumphantly declares that Horner himself is the very lover they have been toasting, and a mayhem of jealousy breaks out as they realise that their friends have also been receiving Horner's favours. But they quickly realise they have no choice but to keep the scandalous secret: "Well then, there's no remedy, sister sharers, let us not fall out, but have a care of our honour" (V.iv.169). A scene of the Pinchwife plot that combines farce and nightmare is Pinchwife's attempt to force Mrs Pinchwife to write a haughty farewell letter to Horner, using the Freudian threat to "write whore with this penknife in your face" (IV.ii.95). Like all Pinchwife's efforts it misfires, giving Mrs Pinchwife instead an opportunity to send Horner a fan letter.


Themes and analysis


The dynamics of marriage

People marry for the sake of outward appearances, for example Alithea feels that she has no choice but to marry Sparkish because her status in society expects her to. Wives are treated as property as made evident by Pinchwife who locks Margery in her room and forbids her from speaking to men. Sir Jasper's marriage to Lady Fidget is beneficial to his business; therefore he treats her as his asset. He constantly asks Horner to “watch” her so that she will have no opportunity to make a cuckold out of him. Furthermore, there is a struggle for dominance between men and women. As Pinchwife says, ‘”If we do not cheat women, they’ll cheat us” is the very basis for the chief plot of the play, “which centers upon the exchange of positions of dominance within his own family.” Pinchwife decides to marry a country woman in the hopes that she will not be clever enough to know how to cheat, but his extremes in preventing her exposure to men leads to his downfall. Only the women are expected to remain faithful to their husbands. As a result, Lady Fidget “uses sex as a means of revenge against their husbands and achieve a kind of moral victory over them by making them what they most fear to be cuckolds.”Cohen, Derrick. “The Revengers’ Comedy: A Reading of The Country Wife.” Durham University Journal. 76 (1983): 33.


Horner’s position of power

Initially, Horner is confident that he can seek out the married women who are willing to have affairs because they are the ones who do not care about their honour. Horner seems to believe he is in a position of power over the women because their extramarital affair is with him, but his power wanes during the duration of the play. In Act 5, Scene 4, Lady Fidget, Dainty Fidget, and Mistress Squeamish barge into Horner's lodgings despite his protest, conveying “his lower position that alludes to his disguise: a lowly eunuch.” They talk about him as if he was not present, referring to him as a ‘beast,’ ‘toad,’ and eunuch. Cohen says, “As the ladies grow in aggressive self-confidence, Lady Fidget also ‘claps him on the back’ thereby revealing the altered socio-sexual roles that are now presented.” While Horner thinks he is manipulating the women, he has “exhausted his sexual resources and has, in reality, become that impotent and useless object with the world publicly recognises him to be.” Horner's true power is not in relationship to the women, but to the men. He shows his dominance over the men he cuckolds.


Horner's true intentions towards women

Andrew Kaufman claims that although Horner may seem to pretend to despise women because of his pretended state as a eunuch, his hatred towards women is real. When asked whether he enjoys the company of women, "Horner's language in a constant barrage of hostile wit, discharging hostility which cannot, at the moment, be directly expressed. His characteristic action, verbally, is to 'unmask' women."


First performance

''The Country Wife'' was first performed in January 1675, by the King's Company, at the
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End theatre and Grade I listed building in Covent Garden, London, England. The building faces Catherine Street (earlier named Bridges or Brydges Street) and backs onto Dr ...
. This luxurious playhouse, designed by
Christopher Wren Sir Christopher Wren PRS FRS (; – ) was one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, as well as an anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 church ...
, had opened less than a year before and provided a more modern stage to accommodate innovations in
scenic design Scenic design (also known as scenography, stage design, or set design) is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but in recent years, are mostly train ...
, while still allowing a close connection between actors and the audience. The original cast was listed in the first edition of ''The Country Wife'', as was standard practice, and modern scholars have suggested that this information throws light on Wycherley's intentions. Wycherley wrote with the original actors in mind, tailoring the roles to their strengths. Also, since the audience consisted mostly of habitual playgoers, authors and directors could use the associations of an actor's previous repertoire to enrich or undercut a character, effects familiar on television and in the cinema today. Several of the actors were specialised comedians, notably
Joseph Haines Joseph Haines (died 4 April 1701), also known as Jo Haines, was a 17th-century actor, singer, dancer, guitar player, fortune teller, and author. ''The Life of the Late Famous Comedian, Jo. Hayns'', possibly written by fellow player Tobias Tho ...
who played the false-wit character Sparkish, Alithea's original fiancé. At the outset of his high-profile career as comedian and song-and-dance man, young Haines already had a reputation for eccentricity and dominant stage presence, suggesting that Sparkish is not merely a comic butt for the truewits Horner, Harcourt, and Dorilant to mock, but also a real threat to the romance of Harcourt and Alithea. Pinchwife was played by the elderly Michael Mohun, who was best known for playing menacing villains, such as Volpone and Iago. Mrs. Pinchwife was
Elizabeth Boutell Elizabeth Boutell (early 1650s?—1715), was a British actress. Life She joined, soon after its formation, the company at the Theatre Royal, subsequently known as Drury Lane, and was accordingly one of the first women to appear on the English s ...
or Bowtel, a young actress who had "a childish look. Her voice was weak, tho' very mellow; she generally acted the ''young innocent lady'' whom all the heroes are mad in love with". Boutell's previous recorded roles had in fact all been unmarried as well as innocent girls, and Margery was her first married role. Matching Boutell and Mohun as a couple would emphasise "her youth and innocence against Mohun's age and violence".Ogden, xxx. The other husband to be
cuckold A cuckold is the husband of an adulterous wife; the wife of an adulterous husband is a cuckquean. In biology, a cuckold is a male who unwittingly invests parental effort in juveniles who are not genetically his offspring. A husband who is a ...
ed by Horner, Sir Jaspar Fidget, was played by another elderly actor, William Cartwright, best known for comic parts such as Falstaff. This casting suggests that Sir Jaspar was played as a straightforwardly comic part, while Pinchwife would be "alarming as well as funny". The male leads Horner and Harcourt were played by the contrasted actors Charles Hart and Edward Kynaston (or Kenaston). The forcefully masculine 45-year-old Hart "was celebrated for superman roles, notably the arrogant, bloodthirsty Almanzor in
John Dryden '' John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the p ...
's ''
Conquest of Granada The Granada War ( es, Guerra de Granada) was a series of military campaigns between 1482 and 1491 during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, against the Nasrid dynasty's Emirate of Granada. It ...
''", and also for playing rakish comedy heroes with nonchalance and charisma. Many critics credit the personalities and skills of Hart and
Nell Gwyn Eleanor Gwyn (2 February 1650 – 14 November 1687; also spelled ''Gwynn'', ''Gwynne'') was a celebrity figure of the Restoration period. Praised by Samuel Pepys for her comic performances as one of the first actresses on the English stag ...
with creating, as much as any playwright did, the famous flirting/bantering Restoration comedy couple. The beautiful
androgynous Androgyny is the possession of both masculine and feminine characteristics. Androgyny may be expressed with regard to biological sex, gender identity, or gender expression. When ''androgyny'' refers to mixed biological sex characteristics in ...
Kynaston, probably in his early thirties, was a different kind of hero. He had started his career in 1660 as the outstanding Restoration female impersonator "the prettiest woman in the whole house" before real women entered the profession in the fall of 1660. (The 2004 movie '' Stage Beauty'' is loosely based on Kynaston's career.) John Harold Wilson argues that the famously virile stage presence of Hart as Horner must be taken into account when interpreting the play. As personified by Hart, Horner will have won women not so much through clever trickery as "the old-fashioned way", by being "dangerously attractive", and it is only fools like Sir Jaspar Fidget who really believe him harmless. Harcourt/Kynaston, although by 1675 a well-regarded and skilful actor of male roles, would clearly have been overshadowed by Horner/Hart. The actresses associated with each hero must also have tended to make the Horner plot more striking on the stage than the true-love plot. Horner's primary mistress Lady Fidget, spokeswoman for "the virtuous gang" of secretly sex-hungry town wives, was played by the dynamic Elizabeth Knepp, who
Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys (; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade. Pepys had no mariti ...
declared "the most excellent, mad-humoured thing, and sings the noblest I've ever heard", talents that the famous drinking scene in Horner's lodging seems designed to do justice to. By contrast, the choice of the bit-part actress Elizabeth James as Alithea would have de-emphasised the Harcourt-Alithea plot. Such historical considerations have made modern critics sceptical of Norman Holland's classic 1959 "right way/wrong way" interpretation of the play, which positions the true-love plot as the most important one.


Stage history

The play had a good initial run, although Horner's trick and the notorious china scene immediately raised offence. Wycherley laughed off such criticisms in his next play, ''The Plain Dealer'' (1676), where he has the hypocritical Olivia exclaim that the china scene in ''The Country Wife'' "has quite taken away the reputation of poor china itself, and sullied the most innocent and pretty furniture of a lady's chamber". Olivia's sensible cousin Eliza insists that she'll go see ''The Country Wife'' anyway: "All this will not put me out of conceit with china, nor the play, which is acted today, or another of the same beastly author's, as you call him, which I'll go see." Writing himself into ''The Plain Dealer'' as the "beastly author" of the china scene, Wycherley seems more amused than repentant. ''The Country Wife'' did in fact survive the complaints to become a dependable repertory play from 1675 till the mid-1740s, but by then public taste had changed too much to put up with the sex jokes any longer. Its last eighteenth century performance was on 7 November 1753, followed by a hiatus of 171 years, until the successful Phoenix Society production in 1924 at the Regent Theatre in London. The first-ever American performance of Wycherley's original ''Country Wife'' took place in 1931. Wycherley's play is now again a stage classic, with countless professional and amateur performances, an actors' favourite because of the high number of good parts it offers.


Adaptations


Expurgated versions

The bawdy elements of ''The Country Wife'' inspired multiple adaptations to bowdlerise it. The first was by John Lee, whose 1765 revision eliminated the Horner character and cut the play from five acts to two in an attempt to make it "inoffensively humorous". A more successful adaptation was made the following year by
David Garrick David Garrick (19 February 1717 – 20 January 1779) was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of European theatrical practice throughout the 18th century, and was a pupil and friend of Sa ...
. He retained the five-act structure, but renamed the characters and called it ''The Country Girl''. Peggy (the renamed Margery) is a virginal country girl who wants to marry against the wishes of her guardian, Jack Moody (the reimagining of Pinchwife). In this cleaned-up form, ''The Country Wife'' continued a shadowy existence into the twentieth century, as Garrick's version was very popular, going through at least twenty editions and reaching the New York stage in 1794. The few modern critics who have read Garrick's version typically dismiss it as "sentimental and boring, where ''The Country Wife'' is astringent and provocative".


Other adaptations

''She Shall Have Music'', a 1959 musical comedy, mixed ''The Country Wife'' with other Restoration comedies such as ''
The School for Scandal ''The School for Scandal'' is a comedy of manners written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It was first performed in London at Drury Lane Theatre on 8 May 1777. Plot Act I Scene I: Lady Sneerwell, a wealthy young widow, and her hireling S ...
'' and ''
Love for Love ''Love for Love'' is a Restoration comedy written by British playwright William Congreve. It premiered on 30 April 1695 at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre. Staged by Thomas Betterton's company the original cast included Betterton as Valentin ...
''. It debuted
Off-Broadway An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer th ...
on 22 January 1959. In 1977, the BBC's '' Play of the Month'' broadcast a production of ''The Country Wife'' with
Anthony Andrews Anthony Colin Gerald Andrews (born 12 January 1948) is an English actor. He played Lord Sebastian Flyte in the ITV miniseries ''Brideshead Revisited'' (1981), for which he won Golden Globe and BAFTA television awards, and was nominated for ...
as Horner,
Helen Mirren Dame Helen Mirren (born Helen Lydia Mironoff; born 26 July 1945) is an English actor. The recipient of numerous accolades, she is the only performer to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting in both the United States and the United Kingdom ...
as Margery and Bernard Cribbins as Pinchwife; it was later released on DVD. The 1975 movie ''
Shampoo Shampoo () is a hair care product, typically in the form of a viscous liquid, that is used for cleaning hair. Less commonly, shampoo is available in solid bar format. Shampoo is used by applying it to wet hair, massaging the product into the ...
'', with
Warren Beatty Henry Warren Beatty (né Beaty; born March 30, 1937) is an American actor and filmmaker, whose career spans over six decades. He was nominated for 15 Academy Awards, including four for Best Actor, four for Best Picture, two for Best Director, ...
as the Horner character, is a somewhat distant version of ''The Country Wife'' after exactly 300 years, reportedly inspired by the
Chichester Festival Chichester Festival Theatre is a theatre and Grade II* listed building situated in Oaklands Park in the city of Chichester, West Sussex, England. Designed by Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, it was opened by its founder Leslie Evershed-Marti ...
production of 1969. In 1992, ''The Country Wife'' was adapted into a musical called ''Lust''. Written by the Heather Brothers, it was first performed at the Queens Theatre in Hornchurch in the London Borough of Havering in 1992. It later transferred to the
Theatre Royal Haymarket The Theatre Royal Haymarket (also known as Haymarket Theatre or the Little Theatre) is a West End theatre on Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use. Samuel Foot ...
in London's West End, starring
Denis Lawson Denis Stamper Lawson (born 27 September 1947) is a Scottish actor and director. He is known for his roles as John Jarndyce in the BBC's adaptation of '' Bleak House'', as Gordon Urquhart in the film '' Local Hero'', as Retired DI Steve McAndr ...
as Horner. Lawson travelled with the production to New York for an
Off-Broadway An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer th ...
run at the John Houseman Theatre in 1995. On 13 April 2008, an adaptation was broadcast on
BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also featuring. The sta ...
, directed by David Blount and featuring Ben Miller as Horner, Geoffrey Whitehead as Pinchwife, Clare Corbett as Mrs. Margery Pinchwife, Nigel Anthony as Sir Jasper Fidget, Celia Imrie as Lady Fidget and
Jonathan Keeble Jonathan may refer to: *Jonathan (name), a masculine given name Media * ''Jonathan'' (1970 film), a German film directed by Hans W. Geißendörfer * ''Jonathan'' (2016 film), a German film directed by Piotr J. Lewandowski * ''Jonathan'' (2018 ...
as Harcourt.


Critical reception

From its creation until the mid-20th century, ''The Country Wife'' was subject to both aesthetic praise and moral outrage. Many critics through the centuries have acknowledged its linguistic energy and wit, including even Victorians such as Leigh Hunt, who praised its literary quality in a selection of Restoration plays that he published in 1840 (itself a daring undertaking, for reputedly "obscene" plays that had been long out of print). However, in an influential review of Hunt's edition,
Thomas Babington Macaulay Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, (; 25 October 1800 – 28 December 1859) was a British historian and Whig politician, who served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and as the Paymaster-General between 1846 and 1 ...
swept aside questions of literary merit, claiming with indignation that "Wycherley's indecency is protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters. It is safe, because it is too filthy to handle and too noisome even to approach." Margery Pinchwife, regarded in Wycherley's own time as a purely comic character, was denounced by Macaulay as a scarlet woman who threw herself into "a licentious intrigue of the lowest and least sentimental kind". It was Macaulay, not Hunt, who set the keynote for the 19th century. The play was impossible equally to stage and to discuss, forgotten and obscure. Academic critics of the first half of the 20th century continued to approach ''The Country Wife'' gingerly, with frequent warnings about its "heartlessness", even as they praised its keen social observation. During the Restoration era nobody found it amusing, and as such, positive criticism attempted to rescue it as satire and social criticism rather than as comedy. Macaulay's "licentious" Mrs. Pinchwife becomes in the 20th century a focus for moral concern: to critics such as Bonamy Dobrée, she is a tragic character, destined to have her naiveté cruelly taken advantage of by the "grim, nightmare figure" of Horner.


Modern criticism

The past fifty years have seen a major change, and academic critics have acknowledged the play as a powerful and original work. Norman Holland's widely influential proposal in 1959 of a "right way/wrong way" reading took Wycherley's morality with innovative seriousness and interpreted the play as presenting two bad kinds of masculinity Horner's libertinism and Pinchwife's possessiveness and recommending the golden mean of Harcourt, the true lover, the representative of mutual trust in marriage. A competing milestone approach of the same generation is that of Rose Zimbardo (1965), who discusses the play in generic and historical terms as a fierce social satire. Both these types of reading have now fallen out of favour; there is little consensus about the meaning of ''The Country Wife'', but its "notorious resistance to interpretation" is having an invigorating rather than damping effect on academic interest. The play's ideological dimension has been emphasised recently. It was written by a courtier for a courtly and aristocratic audience, and Douglas Canfield has pointed to an unusual complication for a courtly play. Horner's acts of
cuckold A cuckold is the husband of an adulterous wife; the wife of an adulterous husband is a cuckquean. In biology, a cuckold is a male who unwittingly invests parental effort in juveniles who are not genetically his offspring. A husband who is a ...
ing aggression are directed not only at disrupting middle-class families of "the City", in the usual way of the aristocratic Restoration rake, but also at his own, upper, class, the inhabitants of "the Town" the new and fashionable quarters (the future West End) that had sprung up west of the medieval City walls after the
Great Fire of London The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past th ...
in 1666. The courtier code proposed by Wycherley is of a sexual game.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (; May 2, 1950 – April 12, 2009) was an American academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory ( queer studies), and critical theory. Sedgwick published several books considered groundbreaking in the fie ...
argued in ''Between Men'' that the game is played not between men and women, but between men by means of women, who are merely the "conduits" of homosocial desire between men. The hierarchy of wits meant that the wittiest and most virile man would win at the game. Thus Horner, as Canfield puts it, "represents not just class superiority, but that subset of class represented by the Town wits, a privileged minority that ... is the jet set identified with the Town and the Court as the loci of real power in the kingdom." The aggressive attack mounted in the china scene against the class and the generation by which Wycherley was patronised with the expectation that he would defend it (against Sir Jaspar Fidget and Lady Fidget), suggests Canfield, would only let an audience of that class laugh comfortably if Horner were punished by actual impotence in the end, which he is not. "When the play concludes with no poetical justice that makes Horner really impotent", writes Canfield, "leaving him instead potent and still on the make, the audience laughs at its own expense: the women of quality nervously because they have been misogynistically slandered; the men of quality nervously because at some level they recognize that class solidarity is just a pleasing fiction."Canfield, 129.


Notes


References


Bibliography

* Burke, Helen M. (1988). "Wycherley's 'Tendentious Joke': The Discourse of Alterity in The Country Wife," ''Eighteenth-Century Studies, 29, 3 (Fall 1988): 227–41. * Canfield, Douglas (1997). ''Tricksters and Estates: On the Ideology of Restoration Comedy''. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. * * Dixon, Peter (1996). ''William Wycherley: ''The Country Wife'' and Other Plays.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press. * Dobrée, Bonamy (1924). ''Restoration Comedy 1660–1720.'' Oxford: Clarendon Press. * * Holland, Norman N. (1959). ''The First Modern Comedies: The Significance of Etherege, Wycherley and Congreve''. Cambridge, Massachusetts. * Howe, Elizabeth (1992). ''The First English Actresses: Women and Drama 1660–1700''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * * * Macaulay, Thomas Babington (1841)
Review of Leigh Hunt, ed. ''The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar''
in ''Critical and Historical Essays'', Vol. 2. Retrieved 6 February 2005. * Ogden, James (ed., 2003.) ''William Wycherley: The Country Wife.'' London: A&C Black. * Pepys, Samuel (ed. Henry Benjamin Wheatley, 1880).
''The Diary of Samuel Pepys''
Retrieved 14 March 2005. * * Wilson, John Harold (1969). ''Six Restoration Plays.'' Boston: Houghton Mifflin. *


Further reading

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External links

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Photos from Garrick's ''The Country Girl''
* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Country Wife, The Adultery in plays Restoration comedy 1675 plays Plays by William Wycherley Plays set in the 17th century Plays based on works by Molière