Appunti di Letteratura inglese, libro consigliato: The Country Wife, Wycherley

A PUBLIC DISPLAY

Theatre is a PUBLIC DISPLAY and an INAPPROPRIATE PLACE for a wife (Mrs Pitchwife watches the

actors). He wants to keep her in ignorance and he doesn’t want Alithea to instruct and teach her wife where to

find men >> “Don’t teach, talk to her” imperative, imposition of him. The problem is that he breaches (viola)

his own rules and he reveals that one guy is in love with her. He wishes to contain her wife’s desire also

physically (contain wife’s body)

The idea was that the theatre was a palace where women can be potentially corrupted > A PLACE OF

CORRUPTION. Problem to control the language and spectacole > potentially disseminating dangerous ideas

THE ANTITHEATRICAL PREJUDICE

In the Western tradition, moral or religious objections to the theatre have been raised during most of the

periods in which it has enjoyed prosperity and influence but also during many in which it has not.

Plato, for example, included the theatre centrally in his attack on the mimetic arts in The Republic. He was

eagerly seconded by the early church fathers, who supplemented his view of the theatre as a place of base

mimicry calculated to raise our animal passions against our reason by adducing biblical prohibitions

against falsity in general and dressing up in particular.

ANTI-THEATRICAL POLEMIC enjoyed its European heyday (periodo d'oro) during the Reformation and

Counter-Reformation, when both the courtly and the commercial theatres of England, France, Spain, and Italy

found themselves under attack from various ecclesiastical factions.

In England, though some Puritans (such as Milton) loved drama and some high churchmen (such as the

lapsed playwright STEPHEN GOSSON and, more influentially, the Restoration pamphleteer JEREMY

COLLIER) wrote against it, the theatre's most vociferous opponents, associating drama with courtly corruption

and Popish ritual, were Puritans such as PHILLIP STUBBES (The Anatomie of Abuses, 1595) and William

Prynne, who lost his ears for criticising Queen Henrietta Maria's participation in masques (in Histriomastix,

1633).

THEATRE AS A LOCUS OF TRANSGRESSIVE SEXUALITY

Stephen Gosson two writing against theatres:

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- The Schoole of Abuse (1579)

- Plays confuted in five actions (1582)

THEATRE AS A MORAL THREAT > Plays as morally POLLUTED and corrupted

Going to the theatres is against religious principles > corruption entered by ears and eyes, it’s spiritual poison

and destroys the soul.

Theatre as a contagion > the only teaching and instruction is to hate virtues.

Philip Stubbes:

❖

- The Anatomie of Abuses (1595)

“if you will learn to comtemne (disprezzare) GOD and al his lawes, to care neither for heaven nor hell, and to commit al

kinde of sinne and mischeef you need to goe to no other schoole, for all these good Examples, may you see painted

before your eyes in enterludes (entertainment) and playes”

Religious connotation is hard and also often actors paint their faces (make up). Moral theatres are on the

virtues of the religious side

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Central dilemma = it is the element of spectator complicity which makes the experience dangerous.

Attending the theatre = potential disregard of the normative rules for female conduct.

THE PLAYER-MEN ARE FINER FOLKS

● Margery as a sexually desiring spectator of the actors onstage > she makes a comparison between

her husband and the actors. She isn’t interested in the entertainment value but in seeing good looking

actors.

Theatre is an adultery desire > Mr Pitchwife wishes to control someone who has already an own desire: a

thinking subject is more difficult to control

● The object of Horner's sexualized looking > while she’s sitting in the theatre.

She might be encouraged to actively participate in the economy (exchange) of LUST.

Mrs Pitchwife may find sexual pleasure by being seeing and discovering new pulses (secret pleasure as

adultery) > transformace her into sexual desire. She hasn't until that point >> she learned how to distinguish

between old husband and young handsome actors

“one of the lewdest Fellows in Town, who saw you at the olay told me he was in love with you”

Margery = sexualized by Horner

Pinchwife = cuckold

Gosson: «if you present yourself in open Theatres. Thought is free: you can forbidd no man, that vieweth you, to neate you, and that

neateth you, to iudge you, for entring to places of suspition. Wilde Coltes (young male horses); when they see their kinde begin to bray;

& lusty bloods at the showe of faire women, give a wanton sigh, or a wicked wishe . .. Looking eyes, have lyking hartes, liking harts

may burne in lust. We walke in the Sun many times for pleasure, but our faces are tanned before we returne: though you go to

theaters to see sport, Cupid may catche you ere you departe . . . It you . . . lovne lookes with an amorous Gazer, you have already

made your selves assaultable, & velded your Cities to be sacked»

You go to the theatre you are noticed and you could generate a lustful potential desire. You risk igniting

(accendere) the desire of young men.

It’s not intentionally > go to the theatre to be noticed. Like when the sun blinds (abbronza) you

unintentionally, you may also be interested in playing (but people notice you).

Women are like a city, and she could be attacked or sacked on the way to the theatre. This happens to Mrs

Pitchwife who tries hard to be desired by Horner

THEATRE-GOING IN The Country Wife

Margery's disobedience originates (at least in Pinchwife's

estimation) in an act of unstaged theatre-going.

Wycherley thus constructs CONCENTRIC CIRCLES OF VIEWERSHIP in which female spectatorship

engenders, as Gosson cautions, an unruly female sexual will.

More than the actual adultery, she tricks him from the linguistic point of view before doing it physically. We

don’t see them in the playhouse, but we know what happened.

CONCENTRIC CIRCLES OF VIEWERSHIP

What happens in the theatre:

Margery sees the plays, Horner looks at

Margery > CONCENTRIC VIEWERSHIP

Crossing complicated different degrades of

viewership and sexualisation

Pincthwife's fear is that (he brings his wife to

theatre) she can learn from other women's

behaviour.

Pitchwife is watching Horner watching his

wife watching the actors > CONCENTRIC VIEWERSHIP

WINDOWS AND LANGUAGE

He’s so jealous, he locks her in the house and forces her to stay at least three steps away from the Window

telling her that he has someone who controls her in the street > spy in the street

He wishes to contain his wife not only physically but also to contain her language

Pinchwife: «And be sure you come not within three strides [long steps] of the window, when I am gone; for I

have a spy in the street»

Gosson: «You neede not goe abroade (to go out far from the house) to be tempted, you shall be intised

(provocare, accendere) at your owne windowes. The best counsel that I can give you, is to keepe home, &

shun all occasion of ill speech» (Schoole of Abuse) >>> Going out and being seen can provoke desire, stay

home will make sure that women stay away (shun = evitare). Also ill speech language can also corrupted her

Jeremy Collier (1650-1726) - English critic, cleric and anti-theatrical polemist

A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the Stage (1698)

Collier attacked plays such as The Country Wife, especially for:

- Their Smuttiness (volgare) of Expression

- Their Swearing, Profaneness and Lewd Application of Scripture

- Their Abuse of the Clergy

- They make their Top Characters Libertines, and give them Success in their Debauchery … Rankness,

and Indecency of their Language” >> Horner is unpunished he continue to produce tricks

Country wife is a permeation of that language to the eyes of Collier profane and smutting (profana)

expression of language

THE NEW LANGUAGE

.

Learn of a NEW LANGUAGE >> learning a language of desire and sexual transgression was again an idea

supported from the antitheatrical.

The moral texture and the language used in these plays are source of immorality and corruption >>

METATHEATRICAL reference to the antitheatrical PREJUDICES

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Jeremy Collier would insists that virtuous woman must avoid this new language that the theatre suggest to

women:

Collier: «The Old Romans were particularly careful their Women might not be affronted in Conversation: For

this reason the Unmarried kept off from Entertainments for fear of learning new Language» (A Short View).

Pinchwife [to Alithea]:

“do not talk so before my Wife” (2.1.42)

“do not teach my Wife, where the Men are to be found» (2.1.52-53)

“were you not talking of Plays, and Players, when I came in?” (2.1.60-61).

In the letter-writing scene, he tries to force his language into her pen, an exertion of masculine will designed

to control her sexual choices and restrict access to her body >> He dictate her to write a letter to Horner

SCENE OF THE LETTER:

ACT FOURTH SCENE II

She is very CANDIDE (ingenua), naive and sincere with her husband

“Yes, I warrant you” Mrs Pinchwife blames (incolpa) Margery’s behaviour on the fact that she’s a woman

“So, 'tis plain she loves him”

and she would be potentially deluded (illusion no deludere) from LOVE. In his vision women are creatures

that must be guided and directed but when they fall in love, love tells them to cheat.

She views a social opportunity: Horner is in town so why write him a

“Lord, what d'ye make a fool of me for?”

letter in fact she wants to visit him. She’s naive about Mr Pinchwife’s intentions and he’s happy to hear such

naive objections and discourses because she can't’ get what he wants to make.

Mrs Pitchwife speaks not her language but Mr Pitchwife’s language

He wishes to control in his wife

“Though I suffered last night”

MISCHIEF (Coltello a serramanico ) also alludes to a demasculinization > the object is

“Once more write”

"small" (Double meaning)

Margery is now use inappropriate language to call an older husband = to perform naive and very far from

sexually transgressive

Now she gradually earns and learn he ability to allude husband control also sexually

She rewrite the letter to Horner says completely different things Pinchwife will give the letter (rewrite form his

wife) to Horner> it is Pinchwife that put the instrument of potential transgression in his wife hands

THE SWORD, THE PENKNIFE AND THE PEN

PEN > objects she’s using

PEN KNIFE > coltello serramanico (small one)

SWORD > in the scene IV when Mrs Margery is writing another letter to Horner, her husband threat her

These three objects might be read as phallic objects and connected to the sexual relationship between

Mr and Mrs Pinchwife. The sword becomes a penknife >>>