Our poets, virgins– hell, take everybody.
January 19, 2007
I’ll join the chorus of bloggers who’ve already admitted their lack of experience in this (I guess undertaught?) genre of literature. I’ve never studied Restoration Drama before, not even in high school when the teachers were dragging out their bloodiest and bawdiest (hullo, Oedipus and Mercutio) to keep us interested.
So this suprised me. I found “The Country Wife” hilarious– heavy on the eunuch jokes, of course. But in an age where nuance onstage could go unheard or overhead (and sexuality of any sort was damn exciting), the repitition probably had them rolling in the aisles. The dialouge reminds me of the banter in works like The Importance of Being Earnest, except it’s unrestrained by Victorian sexual mores . I dig the self-referential humor about actors being evil and not allowing your innocent country wife to go to plays. Oh, that theatre was still so taboo and sexy. It would certainly be more interesting than what’s currently on at the Imperial.
This play has been too scandalous to print or perform for most of it’s history. It was replaced for a time by a boring rewrite called “The Country Girl” which has now been all but forgotten. Horner does indeed seem able to do and say the most scandalous things (foh! let’s get away from him!), in part because plays like this aren’t intended to mirror real life. Just as Marriage A La Mode was set in an “Italy” than bears no resemblance to the real thing, the events chronicled in The Country Wife aren’t meant to look like honest-to-goodness London society (when was the last time you met a Lady Fidget?). Horner and the boys can say and do whatever they like because they’re not real and aren’t meant to seem real, just as present-day caricatures function in modern drama.
This line is interesting:
“Ask but all the young fellows of the town if they do not lose more time, like huntsmen, in starting the game, than in running it down.” (Act 1)
Anyone else see echoes of the sentiments in Spenser’s ”Lyk as a Huntsman” and Herrick’s ”To Virgins, to Make Much of Time”?
Hi Kate,
I enjoyed your post a great deal, particularly the photo link to “the original” Ernest (he who went to camp and, fortunately for one and all, saved Christmas) and the obvious correlation between eunuchs and the Backstreet Boys.
The aspect of time being a primary factor for all of the characters to take action was not one I initially picked up on, but it’s definitely there. I think of Harcourt who has, literally, less than 24 hours to convince Alithea to marry him, and not Sparkish (because he loves her? Hmm. I wonder).
One wonders how long Mr. Pinchwife’s outrageously jealous behaviour could have continued at the rate he was going. If it took that much effort for him to attempt to control his wife over the span of a day, bleak times were certainly awaiting him on the horizon!
I also agree with your comment that these characters seem to be caricatures — the farce and the cheeky references certainly help to re-inforce this.
Is Lady Fidget the one who kept saying “faugh, faugh, faugh?” That was sort of unbearable.
What’s funny is that I heard about “The Country Girl” first, since I was learning about Dora Jordan last year. Didn’t actually read the play, though. I can’t imagine what it would be like without the Horner/Fidget/Squeamish/etc storyline. (No china scene? Faugh!)
If I had a dollar for each time I came here… Amazing post.