Ready Reference Treatise: The Country Wife

“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.