The Country Wife by William Wycherley
William Wycherley’s popular comedy about the seduction of a the wife of a jealous country squire by the cunning (and aptly named) lecherous man-about-town, Horner. First produced by Forest Forge in this touring adaptation for 5 actors.
Script Excerpt
Horner: Well, my dear doctor, hast thou done what I desired?
Quack: I have undone you forever with the women, and reported you throughout the town as an eunuch – with as much trouble as if I had made you one in earnest.
Horner: But have you told all the midwives you know, the orange wenches at the playhouses, 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 chamber-maids, waiting-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 –
Horner: As the smallpox.
Quack: And to the married women of this end of the town as –
Horner: As their own husbands.
Quack: They will frighten their children with your name.
(Voices off. Quack investigates!)
Quack: A gentleman coming up. (Exit Quack)
Horner: A pox! Some former acquaintance who, I am afraid, expect their sense should be satisfied of the falsity of the report. (Enter Pinchwife.) No; this formal fool. –– Pinchwife!
Pinchwife: Your humble servant.
Horner: Well, Jack, by thy long absence from the town, the grumness of thy countenance, and the slovenliness of thy habit, I should give thee joy, should I not, of marriage?
Pinchwife: (Aside) Death! does he know I’m married too? I thought to have concealed it from him at least. –– My long stay in the country will excuse my dress, and I have a suit of law, that brings me up to town, that puts me out of humour.
Horner: Well, but am I to give thee joy? I heard thou wert married.
Pinchwife: What then?
Horner: Why, the next thing that is to be heard is, thou ’rt a cuckold.
Pinchwife: (Aside) Insupportable name!
Horner: But I did not expect marriage from such a whoremaster as you, one that knew the town so much, and women so well.
Pinchwife: Why, I have married no London wife.
Horner: Come, come, I have known a clap gotten in Wales. But she’s handsome and young?
Pinchwife: (Aside) I’ll answer as I should do. – No, no, she has no beauty but her youth; no attraction but her modesty; whole-some, homely, and housewifely, that’s all. She’s too awkward, ill-favoured, and silly to bring to town.
Horner: Then methinks you should bring her, to be taught breeding.
Pinchwife: To be taught! No, sir, I thank you. Good wives and private soldiers should be ignorant. (Aside) I’ll keep her from your instructions, I warrant you.
Horner: But, prithee, why would’st thou marry her? If she be ugly, ill-bred, and silly, she must be rich then?
Pinchwife: As rich as if she brought me twenty thousand pound; for she’ll be as sure not to spend her moderate portion as a London baggage would be to spend hers. Then, because she’s ugly, she’s the likelier to be my own; and being silly and innocent, will not know the difference betwixt a man of one-and-twenty and one of forty.
Horner: But methinks wit is more necessary than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it.
Pinchwife: ’Tis my maxim, he’s a fool that marries, but he’s a greater that does not marry a fool. What is wit in a wife good for, but to make a man a cuckold? A fool cannot contrive to make her husband a cuckold.
Horner: No, but she’ll club with a man that can. And what is worse, if she cannot make her husband a cuckold, she’ll make him jealous, and then ’tis all one.
Pinchwife: Well, well, I’ll take care for one, my wife shall make me no cuckold, though she had your help, Master Horner; I understand the town, sir.