The Audience in the Play

Is this the first time that the theater audience features so prominently within the play itself? The Country Wife shows how the audience is of increasing interest to itself as well as to the playwrights whose work is currently being produced. Wycherley illustrates how the viewing public and those who might come to the theater for purposes other than seeing the play, might influence a particular performance. Here, the theater public is being displayed when Horner asks Dorilant and Harcourt if his appearance was appropriate to the venue, “With a most theatrical impudence; nay, more than the orange-wenches show there, or a drunken vizard-mask, or a great bellied actress; nay, or the most impudence of creatures, an ill poet; or what is yet more impudent, a secondhand critic.” (I,i) A greater indictment is of those in the audience who insist on hearing themselves speak rather than listening to those on stage, “And the reason why we are so often louder than the players is because we think we speak more wit, and so become the poet’s rivals in his audience. For to tell you the truth, we hate the silly rogues; nay, so much that we find fault even with their bawdy upon the stage, whilst we talk nothing else in the pit as loud.”’ (III,ii) I wonder if the behavior of the audience in the play is changing the behavior of those watching the production.