The Country Wife by Wycherley William

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The Country Wife by Wycherley, William (1640-1716)
One of the key themes of Country Wife which come out quite clearly from the script is the failure of the restoration arrangement of the marriages in the society. William Wycherley worked the script and brought out some two marriages that are seen as the perfect examples in the play where the marriage restoration arrangements have proven untenable (Lowe). One of the characters in the script called Jack Pinchwife is seen to take advantage of the wife’s ignorance as a means of making sure that she was submissive to him. This way the wife is taken not to understand what is at stake, and most of what is important to her is her husband and how happy he was in the relationship. The other character drawn from the play is called Sir Jasper Fidget, who is seen to neglect his wife and all her needs while at the same time he is trying to make sure that he brings out an image that indicates that he is into the idea of pleasing the wife. In his futile attempts, he concentrates on the trivial aspects of the relationship in a bid to make sure that the wife does not go out with the other men.
For Jasper, keeping the wife busy with simple pleasures is the ultimate strategy to make sure that she does not go out and cheat (Cudd). These two marriages illustrate the fact that William Wycherley, for one to maintain a good relationship with their lives, all they have to do is to make sure that they keep their wives in ignorance and neglect them once in a while pretending to care about their feelings. This assumption is beaten by the fact that, even the women need to feel that they are appreciated and depriving them of their sexual gratification will only be a recipe for seeing other people outside marriage. Later in the play, a character called Horner is seen to influence the breakup of the marriages around him, as they are based on untenable foundation. Horner goes on to say that the jealous husbands are the catalyst for their downfall, as they make their wives hate them.
For more than 170 years, the play had been banned from being screen played. One of the aspects of the play that lead it to be pulled under the mat was due to the strong indications of the anti-puritan ideologies. The play is also rich with sexual language that is quite suggestive and spreads to the theme of marriage in the society. At the center of the play is the notorious womanizer that is seducing the married women in the city of London. Pinchwife and Jasper find themselves in a tight spot as they try to make sure their wives do not fall prey to the tricks of the notorious Horner. In the 17th century such openness about the sexual affairs of the people in the society was unheard of as they mostly kept under laps. When William came up with the play in the year 1675, it was clearly evident that this was a piece that was well ahead of its time, which led to its banning from the screens, due to its directness on the matters sexuality in the society and a satirical element, which comes out quite clearly from the script (Cudd). In the first plot, Horner is brought out as an impotent person and therefore the husbands allow him access to their wives, while the wives on the other hand engage him due to the fact they just wanted a sexual affair without getting pregnant. In the second plot, Pinchwife is seen to marry a village girl since he thought she would not know how to cheat on him but in the end due to his jealousy he ends up opening up on information regarding cheating to her. The production brings out the scenes quite vividly and much of the previous content and context is not lost, most notably the sexual jokes and the theme of Horner and his power to woo the married women.
William Wycherley is one of the significant figures in the light of the history of theater, which was due to the fact that he was very open to the societal satire. At the time when he wrote the script, there government was very keen on the materials that were supplied...