Playgoing and Fidelity in The Country Wife

Playing and Playgoing in The Country Wife

I was struck by how many references to playgoing there were in The Country Wife. Sparkish mentions seeing a new play and sitting in what he calls “the wit’s row” (1.1, p. 12). In 3.2, he explains this as the place where the “wits” sit and “are so often louder than the players because we think we speak more wit, and so become the poet’s rivals” (p. 33). Pinchwife takes his new bride to the theater, but sits in the “eighteen-penny place” rather than the choice seats so as to hide her beauty from his friends (2.1, p. 14). While there, Mrs. Pinchwife is obviously enamored of the actors, who are “the goodliest, properest men” (2.1, p. 16), causing a lengthy conversation about the dangers of the playhouses (she may lust after the players, and she may be lusted after by men in the audience). Mrs. Squeamish mentions men who keep “little playhouse creatures” (2.1, p. 23). Pinchwife says a mask is “as ridiculous a disguise as a stage-beard” (3.1, p. 31), and Mrs. Pinchwife tries to buy two plays (3.2, p. 35).

Although metatheatrical elements abound in 17^th century drama, we haven’t seen such direct interaction with the processes of playgoing in anything we’ve read so far. In a play so concerned with seeing and being seen, how might we understand the social aspects of the playhouse in the Restoration? Is Wycherley making jokes at the expense of his audience by having Sparkish in particular believe himself a wit that might talk back to the actors? Pinchwife sees the theater as decidedly corrupting for a number of reasons, yet risks exposing his wife to the eyes of libertine men to see a play. How do these references function in the play? Is it just another fashionable thing to do (like going to restaurants, walking around parks, etc.), or might it be a self-referential joke?

Fidelity Testing and the Dangers of Display

The triangle of Sparkish, Alithea, and Harcourt was interesting to me because it reminded me of the fidelity tests we have seen in the past. I am particularly thinking of Shirley’s Hyde Park, where Trier insists Lord Bonville spend time with his fiancé Julietta to test her love, only to loose her to his rival. The main difference in The Country Wife is that Sparkish is so concerned with showing off his fiancé that has no idea he is testing Ailthea’s fidelity, and Ailthea continually insists that Harcourt is seducing her and is loyal to a fault. Indeed, Ailthea is the only woman who does not lie and plot in the entire play.

Why this inversion? At the simplest level it is quite amusing, as it sets up Sparkish against Pinchwife, and aligns him with Sir Jasper Fidget. Sparkish explains it thus: “That [Harcourt] makes love to you is a sign you are handsome; and that I am not jealous is a sign you are virtuous” (3.2, p. 36). Things become even more complicated with the letter business to Horner, causing Ailthea to see Sparkish as a jealous man (all through the machinations of the maid Lucy). Is this a warning for men to keep their wives under a watchful eye, and be aware of the dangers of displaying a wife? A suggestion that women assert themselves in their choice of husband? What do we make of the maid Lucy’s role in all this?