'He's a fool that marries, but he's a greater fool that does not marry
a fool.'
This bawdy, hilarious, subversive and wickedly satirical drama pokes fun
at the humourless, the jealous, and the adulterous alike. It features a
country wife, Margery, whose husband believes she is too naïve to
cuckold him; and an anti-hero, Horner, who pretends to be impotent in
order to have unrestrained access to the women keen on 'the sport'. A
number of licentious and hypocritical women request Horner's services -
the country wife among them.
The Country Wife has provoked powerfully mixed reactions over the
years. The seventeenth century libertine king Charles II saw it twice,
and is said to have joined the 'dance of the cuckolds' at the end of one
performance; the eighteenth century actor-playwright David Garrick
declared it 'the most licentious play in the English language'; the
Victorian Macaulay compared it to a skunk, because it was 'too filthy to
handle and too noisome even to approach'. Twentieth century productions
heralded it a Restoration masterpiece. Sexually frank, and as ready to
criticise marriage as infidelity, the virtuosity, linguistic energy,
brilliant wit, naughtiness and complexity of this ribald play have made
it a staple of the modern stage.
This student edition contains a lengthy, entirely new introduction, by
leading scholar, Tiffany Stern, with a background on the author,
structure, characters, genre, themes, original staging and performance
history, as well as an updated bibliography and a fully annotated
version of the playtext.
