Description:
William Wycherley's infamous Restoration-era comedy about a rake who pretends impotence in order to have affairs with married women.
Brief description:
Peggy Thompson is Ellen Douglass Leyburn Professor of English, Emerita, at Agnes Scott College.
Review Quotes:
"This stand-alone edition of William Wycherley's seminal Restoration comedy, The Country Wife, is long overdue. Underlining the extent to which Wycherley and his comedies were part of the fabric of Charles II's London, the edition's introduction to Wycherley's best-known play deftly pinpoints the key elements of its success in the Restoration and sketches its later fate. The supplementary materials that render these Broadview editions such valuable classroom resources augment this fine edition. Excerpts here help explicate the comedy of manners, the nature of Horner as hero, and the debates over the morality of the Restoration London stage that The Country Wife embodies." -- Tanya Caldwell, Georgia State University
"This wonderful classroom edition of The Country Wife features strong introductory materials, user-friendly footnotes, a lucid layout, and a range of contextual resources that will help students enjoy Wycherley's bawdy satire for generations to come." -- Misty Anderson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville