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Country Wife - William Wycherly
The Country Wife (1675) was written by William Wycherly in 1675. Meet Horner, Quack, Mr. and Mrs. Pinchwife, Alithea, Sparkish, and Harcourt--all characters in this bawdy Restoration Comedy play.
Between Men and The Country Wife
Eva Sedgwick writes, "Pinchwife and Sparkish represent two extremes of the male traffic in women: Pinchwife fears the exchange to an obsessive degree and tries to take himself out of it (which he canít do) while Sparkish seeks it out to an obsessive degree such that he becomes 'a pander to [his] own wife.'"
Horns of plenty
Dudlye Stone writes, "The diarist John Evelyn was right when he said, in 1688, 'So long as men are false and women vain/While gold continues to be virtue's bane/In pointed satire Wycherley shall reign.'"
The Movable Cuckold
"Horner, the rake in Wycherley’s Restoration comedy, The Country Wife, pursues chance 'inventions in love' by virtue of his feigned impotency." Read more from this paper abstract.