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Chargement... The Country Wifepar William Wycherley
Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. DNF @ Act II. School book. ( ) 'Bawdy' is not an adjective that ever draws me to a work of literature, but I had to read this for my course. It is very much on the one note throughout, and lacks heart, but it had its moments and some of the double entendres were very clever. I even smiled a couple of times. It must be much more entertaining when performed, when the asides work better and the physical jokes are more apparent. The Country Wife was considered fairly shocking when it was written in the fairly laid back 1670's, and between 1753 and 1924 was considered too scandalous to be performed at all. Mr Horner, a notorious rake, returns from France with a new scheme to seduce the ladies of quality of London. By paying a quack doctor to spread the rumour that he is completely impotent, he calculates that he will be allowed access to the wives and daughters that are usually kept closely chaperoned around him. This could be seen as a very predatory scheme, but the truth is that the wives and daughters are equally as ready to be seduced, as he is to do the seducing, as long as the pretence of Horner's impotency protects them from any suspicion of wrongdoing. Into this mix comes the newly married Pinchwife, who has married Marjory, the 'Country Wife' of the title, choosing an unsophisticated girl from the country expecting that she will be much more faithful and biddable than the sophisticated wives of his friends. But Marjory is very keen to experience everything that the big city has to offer ... It's always difficult to properly assess a play by reading but I can see that a production of The Country Wife could be very funny indeed! While this play was interesting in terms of context, I really didn't find it amusing or even very interesting. The action didn't really seem to go anywhere. It was a just a series of "near misses" in terms of the characters almost getting caught doing immoral things. I don't find the topic of "cuckolds" all that funny. The play was definitely witty and there was plenty of sarcastic irony, but for all that, I didn't much enjoy it. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Est contenu dansCavalcade of comedy; 21 brilliant comedies from Jonson and Wycherley to Thurber and Coward par Louis Kronenberger Four Great Comedies of the Restoration and 18th Century: The Country Wife/School for Scandal/She Stoops to Conquer/Way of the World par William Wycherley
'He's a fool that marries, but he's a greater fool that does not marry a fool.'This bawdy, hilarious, subversive and wickedly satirical drama pokes fun at the humourless, the jealous, and the adulterous alike. It features a country wife, Margery, whose husband believes she is too naïve to cuckold him; and an anti-hero, Horner, who pretends to be impotent in order to have unrestrained access to the women keen on 'the sport'. A number of licentious and hypocritical women request Horner's services - the country wife among them. The Country Wife has provoked powerfully mixed reactions over the years. The seventeenth century libertine king Charles II saw it twice, and is said to have joined the 'dance of the cuckolds' at the end of one performance; the eighteenth century actor-playwright David Garrick declared it 'the most licentious play in the English language'; the Victorian Macaulay compared it to a skunk, because it was 'too filthy to handle and too noisome even to approach'. Twentieth century productions heralded it a Restoration masterpiece. Sexually frank, and as ready to criticise marriage as infidelity, the virtuosity, linguistic energy, brilliant wit, naughtiness and complexity of this ribald play have made it a staple of the modern stage. This student edition contains a lengthy, entirely new introduction, by leading scholar, Tiffany Stern, with a background on the author, structure, characters, genre, themes, original staging and performance history, as well as an updated bibliography and a fully annotated version of the playtext. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)822.4Literature English English drama Post-Elizabethan 1625-1702Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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