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Country Wife, The

The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature | 2003 | | © The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature 2003, originally published by Oxford University Press 2003. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Country Wife, The, a comedy by Wycherley, published and probably first performed 1675. It is now considered by many to be his finest play, a sharp satiric attack on social and sexual hypocrisy and greed and on the corruption of town manners, but even in the author's time was attacked for its alleged obscenity. Garrick's version, The Country Girl (1766), aimed to remove the original's ‘immorality’ and ‘obscenity’.

The main plot concerns Mr Pinchwife, who comes to London for the marriage of his sister Alithea, bringing with him his artless young wife Margery; his excessive warnings against wrongdoing put ideas into her head, and she is eventually seduced by Horner, innocently protesting the while that she is merely behaving as town ladies do. Alithea's suitor Sparkish loses her to a new lover, Harcourt, through the opposite fault of excessive credulity. Pinchwife's conclusion, as he apparently accepts the excuse of Horner's impotence, is ‘Cuckolds like Lovers shou'd themselves deceive.’

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MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Country Wife, The." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 23 Dec. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Country Wife, The." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (December 23, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-CountryWifeThe.html

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Country Wife, The." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved December 23, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-CountryWifeThe.html

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