Ready Reference Treatise: The Country Wife

By Raja Sharma

“The Country Wife” by William Wycherley is a Restoration comedy. It was written in the year 1675.

Since the play was written during the early Restoration period, it presents and aristocratic and anti-puritan ideology.

The play was immediately declared as controversial because sexual explicitness was quite obvious in various scenes of the play.

Questions were raised even on the title of the play because it clearly contains a lewd pun. The play is basically based on many plays written by Moilere. Some features were added to the play in 1670s on the demand of it London audiences. Colloquial prose dialogue replaced the original Moliere’s verse. Complicated plot was eased and many sex jokes were removed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: Mar 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301064939

Raja Sharma

Raja Sharma is a retired college lecturer.He has taught English Literature to University students for more than two decades.His students are scattered all over the world, and it is noticeable that he is in contact with more than ninety thousand of his students.

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Ready Reference Treatise: The Country Wife

Raja Sharma

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Ready Reference Treatise: The Country Wife

Raja Sharma

Copyright@2013 Raja Sharma

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Chapter One: Introduction

The Country Wife by William Wycherley is a Restoration comedy. It was written in the year 1675.

Since the play was written during the early Restoration period, it presents and aristocratic and anti-puritan ideology.

The play was immediately declared as controversial because sexual explicitness was quite obvious in various scenes of the play.

Questions were raised even on the title of the play because it clearly contains a lewd pun. The play is basically based on many plays written by Moliere. Some features were added to the play in 1670s on the demand of it London audiences. Colloquial prose dialogue replaced the original Moliere’s verse. Complicated plot was eased and many sex jokes were removed.

Pretended trick of the male members is one of the two major plot devices of the play, and it enables the pretenders to have clandestine affairs with married women. The second major device of the plot is the arrival of an inexperienced young country wife in London. She finds new joys of town life. She is fascinated by London men.

Owing to the frank language and the scandalous trick of