Four Great Restoration Comedies

William Wycherley

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780486445700
• eBook ISBN:
  9780486153605
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

When England's theaters reopened in 1660, 18 years after being closed by an act of Parliament, audiences embraced the witty and satirical dialogue spoken by "plain folks" characters—it was a new era in drama. The four comedy classics featured in this one convenient collection are typical of the works popularized during one of the most exciting and innovative periods in English theater.
Brimming with bawdy and satirical comedies and rampant with notorious womanizers, amorous adventure, and marital discord are works by William Wycherley (The Country Wife), Sir George Etherege (The Man of Mode), Aphra Behn (The Rover), and Sir John Vanbrugh (The Relapse).

The Country Wife

William Wycherley

Dramatis Personae

MR. HORNER
MR. HARCOURT
MR. DORILANT
MR. PINCHWIFE
MR. SPARKISH
SIR JASPER FIDGET
MRS. MARGERY PINCHWIFE
MRS. ALITHEA
LADY FIDGET
MRS. DAINTY FIDGET
MRS. SQUEAMISH
OLD LADY SQUEAMISH
LUCY, Alithea’s Maid
A Boy
A Quack
Waiters, Servants, and Attendants

SCENE—London

Indignior quicquam reprehendi, non quia crassè
Compositum illepideve putetur, sed quia nuper:
Nec veniam Antiquis, sed honorem & præmia posci.

HORAT.¹

PROLOGUE

Spoken by MR. HORNER

Poets, like cudgell’d bullies, never do
At first or second blow submit to you;
But will provoke you still, and ne’er have done,
Till you are weary first with laying on.
The late so baffled scribbler of this day,
Though he stands trembling, bids me boldly say,
What we before most plays are us’d to do,
For poets out of fear first draw on you;
In a fierce prologue the still pit defy,
And, ere you speak, like Castril give the lie.
But though our Bayes’s battles oft I’ve fought,
And with bruis’d knuckles their dear conquests bought;
Nay, never yet fear’d odds upon the stage,
In prologue dare not hector with the age,
But would take quarter from your saving hands,
Though Bayes within all yielding countermands,
Says you confed’rate wits no quarter give,
Therefore his play shan’t ask your leave to live.
Well, let the vain rash fop, by huffing so,
Think to obtain the better terms of you;
But we, the actors, humbly will submit,
Now, and at any time, to a full pit;
Nay, often we anticipate your rage,
And murder poets for you on our stage:
We set no guards upon our tiring-room,
But when with flying colours there you come,
We patiently, you see, give up to you
Our poets, virgins, nay, our matrons too.

ACT I

Enter HORNER, and QUACK following him at a distance

HORN. [aside] A quack is as fit for a pimp as a midwife for a bawd; they are still but in their way, both helpers of nature.——[aloud] Well, my dear Doctor, hast thou done what I desired?

QUACK. I have undone you for ever with the women, and reported you throughout the whole town as bad as an eunuch, with as much trouble as if I had made you one in earnest.

HORN. But have you told all the midwives you know, the orange wenches at the playhouses, the city husbands, and old fumbling keepers of this end of the town, for they’ll be the readiest to report it?

QUACK. I have told all the chambermaids, waiting-women, tire-women, and old women of my acquaintance; nay, and whispered it as a secret to ’em, and to the whisperers of Whitehall; so that you need not doubt ’twill spread, and you will be as odious to the handsome young women as——

HORN. As the small-pox. Well——

QUACK. And to the married women of this end of the town, as——

HORN. As the great ones; nay, as their own husbands.

QUACK. And to the city dames, as aniseed Robin, of filthy and contemptible memory; and they will frighten their children with your name, especially their females.

HORN. And cry, Horner’s coming to carry you away. I am only afraid ’twill not be believed. You told ’em ’twas by an English-French disaster, and an English-French chirurgeon, who has given me at once not only a cure, but an antidote for the future against that damned malady, and that worse distemper, love, and all other women’s evils?

QUACK. Your late journey into France has made it the more credible, and your being here a fortnight before you appeared in public looks as if you apprehended the shame, which I wonder you do not. Well, I have been hired by young gallants to belie ’em t’other way, but you are the first would be thought a man unfit for women.

HORN. Dear Mr. Doctor, let vain rogues be contented only to be thought abler men than they are; generally ’tis all the pleasure they have, but mine lies another way.

QUACK. You take, methinks, a very preposterous way to it, and as ridiculous as if we operators in physic should put forth bills to disparage our medicaments, with hopes to gain customers.

HORN. Doctor, there are quacks in love as well as physic, who get but the fewer and worse patients for their boasting; a good name is seldom got by giving it one’s self; and women no more than honour are compassed by bragging. Come, come, Doctor, the wisest lawyer never discovers the merits of his cause till the trial; the wealthiest man conceals his riches, and the cunning gamester his play. Shy husbands and keepers, like old rooks, are not to be cheated but by a new unpractised trick: false friendship will pass now no more than false dice upon ’em; no, not in the city.

Enter Boy

BOY. There are two ladies and a gentleman coming up.

[exit]

HORN. A pox! some unbelieving sisters of my former acquaintance, who, I am afraid, expect their sense should be satisfied of the falsity of the report. No—this formal fool and women!

Enter SIR JASPER FIDGET, LADY FIDGET, and MRS. DAINTY FIDGET

QUACK. His wife and sister.

SIR JASP. My coach breaking just now before your door, Sir, I look upon as an occasional reprimand to me, Sir, for not kissing your hands, Sir, since your coming out of France, Sir; and so my disaster, Sir, has been my good fortune, Sir; and this is my wife and sister, Sir.

HORN. What then, Sir?

SIR JASP. My lady, and sister, Sir.—Wife, this is Master Horner.

LADY FID. Master Horner, husband!

SIR JASP. My lady, my Lady Fidget, Sir.

HORN. So, Sir.

SIR JASP. Won’t you be acquainted with her, Sir?—[aside] So, the report is true, I find, by his coldness or aversion to the sex; but I’ll play the wag with him.—Pray salute my wife, my lady, Sir.

HORN. I will kiss no man’s wife, Sir, for him, Sir; I have taken my eternal leave, Sir, of the sex already, Sir.

SIR JASP. [aside] Ha! ha! ha! I’ll plague him yet.——Not know my wife, Sir?

HORN. I do not know your wife, Sir; she’s a woman, Sir, and consequently a monster, Sir, a greater monster than a husband, Sir.

SIR JASP. A husband! how, Sir?

HORN. So, Sir; but I make no more cuckolds, Sir. [makes horns]

SIR JASP. Ha! ha! ha! Mercury! Mercury!

LADY FID. Pray, Sir Jasper, let us be gone from this rude fellow.

MRS. DAIN. Who, by his breeding, would think he had ever been in France?

LADY FID. Foh! he’s but too much a French fellow, such as hate women of quality and virtue for their love to their husbands, Sir Jasper; a woman is hated by ’em as much for loving her husband as for loving their money. But pray, let’s be gone.

HORN. You do well, Madam, for I have nothing that you came for: I have brought over not so much as a bawdy picture, no new postures, nor the second part of the Escole des Filles; nor——

QUACK. [apart to HORNER] Hold, for shame, Sir! what d’ye mean? You will ruin yourself for ever with the sex——

SIR JASP. Ha! ha! ha! he hates women perfectly, I find.

MRS. DAIN. What pity ’tis he should!

LADY FID. Ay, he’s a base fellow for’t. But affectation makes not a woman more odious to them than virtue.

HORN. Because your virtue is your greatest affectation, Madam.

LADY FID. How, you saucy fellow! would you wrong my honour?

HORN. If I could.

LADY FID. How d’ye mean, Sir?

SIR JASP. Ha! ha! ha! no, he can’t wrong your Ladyship’s honour, upon my honour; he, poor man—hark you in your ear—a mere eunuch.

LADY FID. O filthy French beast! foh! foh! why do we stay? let’s be gone: I can’t endure the sight of him.

SIR JASP. Stay but till the chairs come; they’ll be here presently.

LADY FID. No, no.

SIR JASP. Nor can I stay longer. ’Tis—let me see, a quarter and a half quarter of a minute past eleven. The council will be sat; I must away. Business must be preferred always before love and ceremony with the wi...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Note
• Table of Contents
• The Country Wife
• The Man of Mode; or, Sir Fopling Flutter
• The Rover or The Banished Cavaliers
• The Relapse; or, Virtue in Danger
• DOVER · THRIFT · EDITIONS