SOURCE: Knapp, Peggy A. “The ‘Plyant Discourse’ of Wycherley's The Country Wife.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 40, no. 3 (summer 2000): 451-72.

In the following essay, Knapp examines the language of The Country Wife for evidence of then current social practices and attitudes. She maintains that this play would have been understood differently by various groups of the time.

In a spirited defense of the excellences of Restoration culture, John Dryden praises King Charles II for having awakened “the dull and heavy spirits of the English, from their natural reserv'dness; loosen'd them, from their stiff forms of conversation; and made them easy and plyant to each other in discourse. Thus, insensibly, our way of living become more free: and the fire of the English wit, which was before stifled under a constrain'd, melancholy way of breeding, began first to display its force: by mixing the solidity of our Nation, with...