The Country Wife
“The Country Wife” was written by William Wycherley in 1675 and is said to be one of the most popular plays of Restoration comedy. Furthermore, it is supposed to be based on a play by the French writer Molière called “L’École des femmes” (“The School for Wives”, 1662) as Wycherly used some of Molière’s techniques of French drama. On the other hand Molière’s play can hardly be recognized, since Wycherley transformed it.
In January 1675 “The Country Wife” was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The play itself had a good start, although some scenes and Horner’s trick about his false impotence caused offence by some of the audience. After its good start the play run till its last performance in 1753 – then it was banished from stage for about 171 years until its reproduction in 1924.
During the years of banishment there was a play existing which was based on Wycherley’s “The Country Wife”. It was David Garrick’s “The Country Girl” in which Margery is represented as a virgin and Horner as a romantic lover – this production thus represented a harmless version of the original.
Nowadays the original version of “The Country Wife” is one of the stage favourites again, while Garrick’s version of the play is almost completely forgotten.
Plot
The plot of Wycherley’s “The Country Wife” consists of three intertwining story lines:
1. The first plot is also the one that interlinks all three plots. It is the one in which Horner pretends to be impotent. His Quack helps him to spread this rumour – he therefore successfully manages to convince the society of his false impotence. The goal of this rumour is that Horner is able to meet other men’s wives, since he is now known as being harmless (not able to seduce and have sex anymore). But in reality this is just a trick to seduce all those married women. Horner’s dishonesty is already represented in his telling name which means that he “puts horns on” the women’s husbands. In the end Horner manages to have sex with a lot of respectable women in town.
2. The second story line narrates about the life of Mr. Pinchwife and his wife Margery, who just moved from the country into town. Mr. Pinchwife married her with the hope that she will not cheat on him as he expects a woman from town to do. But as said before, the story lines are intertwined and Horner himself functions as the link between the plots. He is actually the one who teaches Margery about the facts of upper-class life, seduction and illegitimate sex. This story line is also a good example for a humorous feature often used in Restoration comedies since it pictures the contrast between country and town.
3. The last plot is about Sparkish and how he loses his fiancée Alithea, who is Mr. Pinchwife’s sister. Sparkish actually allows one of his friends – Harcourt – to court his fiancée, because he is more interested in his appearance as a wit than in being a faithful lover. In the beginning Alithea does not want to meet Harcourt who is seriously in love with her, even though she discovers that Sparkish is rather in love with her money than with her – this fact is still not reason enough for her to break the engagement. But then Sparkish is led on the wrong track and believes that his fiancée is one of Horner’s lovers and therefore breaks the engagement himself. Alithea and Harcourt are thus free to marry each other, while Sparkish ends up all by himself and by his richness.
Source:
Three Restoration Comedies. London: Penguin Classics, 1986.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature http://oxford-britishliterature.com/entry?entry=t198.e0503#head1