SOURCE: Vance, John A. “‘Plagues and Torments’: The Country Wife.” In William Wycherley and the Comedy of Fear, pp. 81-129. Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 2000.

In the excerpt below, Vance discusses Wycherley's varied portrayals of fear and weakness in The Country Wife. As portrayed by Wycherley, the male's primary fear is the loss of sexual potency, while the female's is perpetual incarceration.

Coming fresh from a reading of The Gentleman Dancing-Master, one may detect a seamless transition to The Country Wife. That is, Wycherley takes us from the courtship phase (Hippolita and Gerrard) to the married state (the Fidgets and Pinchwifes) and displays the male's greatest fear (the loss of manhood) made manifest in Pinchwife's experiences and that of the women (perpetual incarceration) both surmounted in Lady Fidget and realized in Margery Pinchwife.¹ And then there is the continued attention the playwright's gives to ironic notions of...