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The Country Wife - Background | A Wisdom Archive on The Country Wife - Background | | The Country Wife - Background A selection of articles related to The Country Wife - Background | |
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The Country Wife, The Country Wife - Background, The Country Wife - Critical history, The Country Wife - First performance, The Country Wife - Key scenes, The Country Wife - Modern criticism, The Country Wife - Notes, The Country Wife - Plots, The Country Wife - Stage history
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ARTICLES RELATED TO The Country Wife - Background | | | |  The Country Wife - Background: Encyclopedia II - The Country Wife - BackgroundAfter the 18-year Puritan 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, George Etherege, Aphra Behn, and William Wycherley wrote comedies that triumphantly reassert aristocratic dominance and prestige after the years of middle class power during Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth. Reflecting the atmosphere of the Court, these plays celebrate a lifestyle of sexual intrigue and con ...
See also:The Country Wife, The Country Wife - Background, The Country Wife - Plots, The Country Wife - Key scenes, The Country Wife - First performance, The Country Wife - Stage history, The Country Wife - Critical history, The Country Wife - Modern criticism, The Country Wife - Notes Read more here: » The Country Wife: Encyclopedia II - The Country Wife - Background |
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| | | | The Country Wife - Background: Encyclopedia II - The Country Wife - 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 schematized 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 organizing principle and the turning-points of the action. The trick, to pretend impotence in order t ...
See also:The Country Wife, The Country Wife - Background, The Country Wife - Plots, The Country Wife - Key scenes, The Country Wife - First performance, The Country Wife - Stage history, The Country Wife - Critical history, The Country Wife - Modern criticism, The Country Wife - Notes Read more here: » The Country Wife: Encyclopedia II - The Country Wife - Plots |
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| | | | The Country Wife - Background: Encyclopedia II - The Country Wife - Critical history 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 swept aside questions o ...
See also:The Country Wife, The Country Wife - Background, The Country Wife - Plots, The Country Wife - Key scenes, The Country Wife - First performance, The Country Wife - Stage history, The Country Wife - Critical history, The Country Wife - Modern criticism, The Country Wife - Notes Read more here: » The Country Wife: Encyclopedia II - The Country Wife - Critical history |
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| | | | The Country Wife - Background: Encyclopedia II - The Country Wife - 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 ge ...
See also:The Country Wife, The Country Wife - Background, The Country Wife - Plots, The Country Wife - Key scenes, The Country Wife - First performance, The Country Wife - Stage history, The Country Wife - Critical history, The Country Wife - Modern criticism, The Country Wife - Notes Read more here: » The Country Wife: Encyclopedia II - The Country Wife - Modern criticism |
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| | | | The Country Wife - Background: Encyclopedia II - The Country Wife - First performance The Country Wife was first performed in January 1675, by the King's Company, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. This luxurious playhouse, designed by Christopher Wren and with room for 2000 spectators, had opened only the year before. It was of compact design, retaining in spite of its large seating capacity much of the intimate actor/audience contact of the Elizabethan theater, still with an almost Elizabethan-size forestage or apron stage, on which a ...
See also:The Country Wife, The Country Wife - Background, The Country Wife - Plots, The Country Wife - Key scenes, The Country Wife - First performance, The Country Wife - Stage history, The Country Wife - Critical history, The Country Wife - Modern criticism, The Country Wife - Notes Read more here: » The Country Wife: Encyclopedia II - The Country Wife - First performance |
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| | | | The Country Wife - Background: Encyclopedia II - The Country Wife - Key scenes Notorious scenes in the play include "the china scene", a sustained double entendre dialogue 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 s ...
See also:The Country Wife, The Country Wife - Background, The Country Wife - Plots, The Country Wife - Key scenes, The Country Wife - First performance, The Country Wife - Stage history, The Country Wife - Critical history, The Country Wife - Modern criticism, The Country Wife - Notes Read more here: » The Country Wife: Encyclopedia II - The Country Wife - Key scenes |
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| | | | The Country Wife - Background: Encyclopedia II - The Country Wife - Stage history The play had a good initial run, although Horner's trick and the notorious china scene immediately raised offense. 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 ...
See also:The Country Wife, The Country Wife - Background, The Country Wife - Plots, The Country Wife - Key scenes, The Country Wife - First performance, The Country Wife - Stage history, The Country Wife - Critical history, The Country Wife - Modern criticism, The Country Wife - Notes Read more here: » The Country Wife: Encyclopedia II - The Country Wife - Stage history |
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