The Country Wife - William Wycherley. Appunti e analisi critica., Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

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The Country Wife, William Wycherley William Wycherley (1641-1716) ➢ Born in Clive, Shropshire, as the eldest of 6 children. ➢ Thaught at home by his father until he was 15, when he was sent to France and joined the literary salon of Madame de Montasieur at Angoulème (early exposed to European influence). ➢ He returned to London just prior to the Restoration in 1659 and was admitted to the Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1660; however, he did not take a degree and returned to London where he led the life of a fashionable gentleman. ➢ He spent some time in Ireland with the Earl of Arran’s regiment in 1662, is believed to have spent time in Spain on a diplomatic mission in 1664, may have served at sea in the Second Dutch War, and was made a Captain in the Duke of Buckingham’s regiment in 1672 and became his equerry. ➢ Like his patron, he had a reputation as a womanizer and a libertine, while his plays established his reputation and he was a favorite at court. ➢ Wycherley should have been comfortable for life, but was foolish enough to secretly marry the Countess of Drogheda when her husband died. She had a very bad reputation, and he fell from favor. She brought financial problems with her, and when she died leaving him her large fortune, her family contested the will and Wycherley became involved in endless law suits. ➢ He was sent to the Fleet Prison for 7 years for debt. James then pardoned him and granted him a pension of £200 a year, and probably at this time Wycherley converted, or returned, to Roman Catholicism. Unfortunately, the pension was lost when James lost the throne (1689), and his financial troubles continued until he inherited the estate of Clive Hall on the death of his father in 1697. ➢ He did not grow old gracefully as his memory soon started to deteriorate. He died on January 1st 1716. THE PLAYS Wycherly is an important figure in Restoration drama, although his reputation as a dramatist rests on only 4 plays: ▪ Love in a Wood (staged in 1671); ▪ The Gentleman Dancing Master (1672); ▪ The Country Wife (1675); ▪ The Plain Dealer (1676). All his plays are comedies based on the behavior of fashionable London society of the time; his themes are of sexual license in a climate of lewd, bawdy immorality, which reflects the amoral attitudes of the audience. But his young men and women flirt in clever, witty, repartee, i.e. a witty or sharp reply; a quick, clever retort. THE COUNTRY WIFE: SOURCES - Molière, L’école des maris (1661) and L’école des femmes (1662): from the first, the author took the idea of a dupe who become a go-between (repressive Sganarelle), while the second presents old Arnolphe, who is so frightened of women that he decides to marry his ward, Agnès, a girl entirely unacquainted with the ways of the world since she has been raised in a convent; - Terence, The Eunuch (161 BC): Chaerea, a young man, gains entry to the all-female household of Thais, a prostitute and brothel-operator, by pretending to be a eunuch. He is made (his daughter) Pamphila’s personal overseer. To his friend Antiphon, Charea later relays the shocking account of his rape of Pamphila. THE COUNTRY WIFE: SUCCESS Wycherley's two greatest plays were steadily performed through the first half of the 18th century, but their bawdiness made them increasingly hard to stage. The Country Wife was first staged in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The king, Charles II, loved it enough to see it 3 times, and is even said to have joined the final ‘dance of cuckolds’ at the end of the performance. The Country-Wife, though still described as “one of our most celebrated Comedies”, was too obscene for 18th-century tastes. It was revised into a two-act play by John Lee in 1765, with Horner removed, and in 1766 David Garrick recast it as the bland romantic comedy The Country Girl, in which Margery Pinchwife and her husband reappear as Peggy Thrift and Jack Moody. This was a great success. It later suffered the neglect common to Restoration plays in the 19th century, and in 1919 Montague Summers’s Phoenix Society at the Regent Theatre (London) was attacked for plans to produce it. However, their production of The Country Wife in 1924 proved extremely successful, although it was not performed in its original form. Scholar Bonamy Dobrée brilliantly characterized Wycherley as “being all angles and unwieldy muscular lumps, shot with unexpected streaks of grace” (1924, 78). The Country Wife has emerged as the most successful of Wycherley’s plays, and was steadily performed in the 20th century. It is now recognized as one of the period’s major achievements, and is perhaps the most studied and frequently performed of all Restoration plays. 20TH CENTURY (REVIVAL) PRODUCTIONS • Royal Court (1956) – directed by George Devine, starring Joan Plowright as Margery Pinchwife; • Chichester Festival Theatre (1969) – directed by Robert Chetwyn, starring Maggie Smith as Mrs Pinchwife. THE COUNTRY WIFE – MINERVA, CHICHESTER 2018: Directed by Jonathan Munby; Susanna Fielding ad Mrs Pinchwife; Belinda Lang as Lady Fidget and Lex Shrapnel as Horner. The Country Wife (1675) Brilliant satire, but it escapes the definition: the author rather defines it as a reflection of the society. 3 main plots: 1. Horner (unrepentant rake). 2. Pinchwife (retired rake). 3. Harcourt (“former” rake). Female characters: 1. Margery Pinchwife: the naïve Country Wife, married to Pinchwife, falls for Homer and believes that Horner will marry her; later she will adapt to the society rules. 2. Lady Fidget: married to Sir Jaspar Fidget, wishes to be reputed as the perfect wife but then sleeps with Homer. 3. Alithea: Pinchwife’s sister, engaged to Sparkish, a superficial man passionate about theatre and the social activities; he married her only for economic interests, she falls in love with Harcourt and marries him. “He’s a fool that marries…” All the plot revolves around a foolish man who trusts his wife upon another man. ▪ Pinchwife marries Margery because she is naïve and will never (he thinks) make bad things; but unconsciously, not voluntarily, he “gives” his wife to Horner, who will flirt and seduce her, realizing his worst fear of being cuckold. ▪ Fidget is always on a run (being fidgety = always busy), his business is political rather than commercial, he’s involved with court, he almost forces his wife upon Horner. ▪ Sparkish thinks that he will gain prestige by showing off his mistress, but the only consequence is that Harcourt falls in love with Alithea and so does she. She’s the one who says NO because she’s engaged, she resists, but at the end Sparkish is instrumental to their marriage. ▪ Horner + Margery = the most interesting relationship because it deals with some unresolved issues of sexual freedom and marital oppression. THE SETTING - LONDON: COURT, TOWN AND CITY In the performance, the director makes good use of the Restoration stage mechanisms and movements. The only bed chamber seen on stage is Pinchwife’s one, a marital bedroom. But at the same time there are 3 great settings: 1. The Court: Whitehall Palace, it burned down in 1698, with only Inigo Jones’ Banqueting House remaining. 2. The town: the fashionable society of London, though distinctions from the court of which the characters are aware. Lady Fidget belongs to the Town 3. The city: the less fashionable and commercial society of London, centered around the north side of London Bridge. The wives of the merchants were proverbially considered fair game for the wits of court and town. It was a common idea in the Restoration that getting married is a sort of bondage, a death sentence, being legally linked is only an incentive to adultery because it’s monotonous, there’s no sexual variety and it’s easy to get tired. METAPHOR OF THE GAMESTER: a marriage vow is like a penitent gamester’s oath, that wants to stop but isn’t able to: a gamester will be a gamester whilst his money lasts, and a whoremaster whilst his vigor (= his physical strength). Horner, the master of womanizer, has the best view: he has seen Pinchwife at the playhouse sit with a “country-wench” in the eighteenpenny place: he’s more ashamed to be with his wife than with a wench. THEY HAVE BEEN SEEN AT THE PLAYHOUSE: THE ROLE OF THE THEATRE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. ACT II – SCENE I: A room in Pinchwife’s House MRS. MARGERY PINCHWIFE and ALITHEA Margery inquires immediately as naïve. She’s very curious, but she doesn’t understand why her husband doesn’t let her take a walk in the town. She doesn’t even know the meaning of jealousy. At the theatre, she enjoyed the play but she liked the most the actors. IT’S HER HUSBAND THAT PLANTED THE SEED OF CURIOSITY IN HER MIND. When Pinchwife arrives, Margery calls him “BUD”, a term of endearment used for children. This word is inappropriate for an older and jealous husband, but at that time, “bud” could signify a stupid fellow or a yearling calf, the later so called because its horns were still “in the bud”. He’s referring to him as stupid, he’s not horned yet but he will. He calls her “town-woman” because he’s angry that she’s been seen. Pinchwife only talks to women by giving orders. While he talks with Alithea about the town, he orders her to KEEP HIS WIFE IN IGNORANCE, because she must not know where the men are to be found; the LANGUAGE is a great vehicle of knowledge. By enumerating all the fun things that the city of London offers, he stimulates his wife’s curiosity. Pinchwife is possessive, he wants to control her likings, her movement, her body and language = PHYSICAL AND MENTAL RESTRICTIONS. But Margery reacts: I did not care for going: but when you forbid me, you make me as ‘twere desire it. DESIRE MAKES HER A THINKING SUBJECT, with a will of her own. Pinchwife decides that his wife shall never again go to the theatre, because “one of the lewdest fellows in town, who saw you there, told me he was in love with you”. Pinchwife creates a trap for himself: he accidentally stimulates even more his wife’s curiosity. The theatre as a public display – 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. In The Republic, Plato saw the theatre as a place of base mimics, 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 during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, when both the courtly and the commercial theatres of England, France, Spain and Italy found themselves under attack of various ecclesiastical factions. In England, though some puritans (such as Milton) loved drama and some high churchmen (Stephen Gosson, Jeremy Collier) wrote against it, the theatre’s most vociferous opponents were Puritans such as Philip Stubbes (The Anatomie of Abuses, 1595) and William Prynne, who lost his ears for criticizing Queen Henrietta Maria’s participation in masques (in Histriomastix, 1633). Thatre as a locus of transgressive sexuality Theatre is a place of corruption, of moral pollution, a sort of spiritual poison that destroys our soul. The only instruction that it can provide is to hate virtue, and not to promote it. Some of the most important writings against the theatre: ▪ Stephen Gosson, The School of Abuse (1579); Plays confuted in five actions (1582): theatre as a moral threat; ▪ Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses (1595): “if you will learn to comtemne GOD and al his lawes you need to goe to no other schoole, for all these good Examples, may you see painted before your eyes in enterludes and playes”. Central dilemma = it’s the element of SPECTATOR COMPLICITY which makes the experience perilous. Attending the theatre is a potential disregard of the normative rules for female conduct: although sit in a restricted area, women may attend the theater with the intention of making themselves conspicuous. ▪ Margery becomes a sexually desiring spectator of the actors onstage: “The Player-men are finer folks”, finer than her husband, the only man that she’s ever seen. The fact that she DESIRES something means that she’s gradually attaining a degree of subjectivity, which is not easy to control. ▪ The object of Horner’s sexualized looking: by saying that “one of the lewdest fellows in town told me he was in love with you”, Pinchwife stimulates even more his wife’s curiosity, resulting in the danger of being a cuckold. Gosson: A woman going to the theatre cannot help being noticed, even if she goes for the genuine interest of the play. Attracting “looking eyes that burn with lust” is unintentional, like when you’re under the sun and you get tanned whether you want it or not. Women are compared to cities, and cities can be assaulted. Theater-going in the country wife - Concentric circles of viewership Margery’s disobedience originates (at least in Pinchwife’s estimation) in an act of unstaged theater-going. Different degrees of viewership and sexualization: DANGER + EXPOSITION TO THE SAME DANGER. Windows and language He wishes to contain his wife not only physically, but also linguistically. Even staying at home is a risk, because women would look at other men though the windows. Gosson: “You neede not goe abroad (outside) to be tempted, you shall be intised at your owne windows. the best counsel that I can give you, is to keepe home, & shun all occasion of ill speech” (Schoole of Abuse). Pinchwife pairs this idea that going out and being seen might generate desire, but staying home makes sure to stay away from ILL-SPEECH: “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” (4.2). Jeremy Collier: English critic, cleric and anti-theatrical polemist, contemporary of Wycherley. He attacks plays such as The Country Wife, especially for “Their Smuttiness of Expression; Their Swearing, Profainness, and Lewd Application of Scripture; Their Abuse of the Clergy; Their making their Top Characters Libertines, and giving them Success in their Debauchery … and Indecency of their Language” (A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the Stage). The new language Pinchwife tries to keep his wife ignorant: “do not talk so before my wife”; “do not teach my wife, where the men are to be found”; “were you not talking of plays, and players, when I come in?”. He wishes to have her speak when he commands and silent when he desires. However, it is his own reticence and restrictions that inspire her curiosity: “I did not care for going, but when you forbid me, you make me desire it”. “She desired not to come to London; I would bring her… She never asked me. I was myself the cause of her going”. “I’ve gone too far, and slipt before I was aware”. Collier: “The Old Romans were particularly careful their Women might not be affronted in Conversation”. for this reason, the Unmarried kept off from Entertainment for fear of learning new Language (A Short View). When women go to the theatre, they learn a new language of desire, lust, sexual transgression, that make them escape the control of their husbands. At first, Margery used baby names like “bud”, appearing as naïve, but later she learns the ability to allude her husband’s linguistic and sexual control [→ the sword, the penknife and the pen] Pro-theatrical language Pinchwife voices and undermines at the same time the power of theatrical criticism. Margery may be seen as a fool (she has to be trained to be deceitful), but she is seemingly preprogrammed to enjoy illicit sexual adventures. Wycherley’s construction of the play shows that women are inherently and universally inflected by sexual desire. The play and Wycherley himself adopt a common pro-theatrical language, meaning that it’s not the theatre that corrupts the characters, but the opposite: the theatre is only corrupt because it reflects the society’s own corruption. The theatre can neither provoke nor repress the society’s values and vices. Pinchwife watches Horner Horner watches Margery Margery watches the actors Sir Richard Baker (religious writer and historian): “[Antitheatricalists] ought rather to lay all the blame of Plays bad actions upon the world: for if the world were good, Plays would be good; but if the world be bad, Plays are but the Glasses, the do but their kind to represent it as it is; and therefore, no fault of theirs, if they be bad too”. (Theatrum redivivium or the theatre vindicated). Names and signs From the very first scene, someone misreads the signs by attributing to it an absurd or wrong signification, setting the pattern which leads the characters to be blinded by private obsessions. Semiotic precision in the names → semiotics = study of signs and sign-using behavior. ▪ Frank Harcourt = free from deceit, but he will trick both Sparkish and Alithea; he will disguise himself as a parson and perform a false ceremony to make the marriage invalid. ▪ Alithea Pinchwife = her name means truth; her stubborn truth to Sparkish is revealed to be more gentile affectation rather than authentic loyalty. ▪ Sir Jasper Fidget = a restless man of business, that constantly misreads the signs. ▪ Jack Pinchwife = he’s supposed to be the domestic tyrant, but in the end he’s a would-be tyrant, because he can’t control her wife anymore. The penknife and the sward are signs of his failure and weakness. His jealousy and obsession with cuckoldry is a sign of not being powerful, because he’s MORE OBSESSED BY HORNER RATHER THAN THE DANGER FOR HIS WIFE TO BECOME A VICTIM (the woman is an object contended between the 2 men). ▪ Horner: verbal and gestural paradox, he says something and mimics something else (I make no more cuckolds, sir. [Makes horns], 1.1). Sr Jasper responds suggesting an absurd solution: mercury, used to cure syphilis. Horner is just the sign of a man (he mimics horns with his fingers, he’s able to do it), but his advertised emasculation is to be understood as a sign of the exact opposite, true manhood. Opposites: satiric inversions ▪ Dainty Fidget: possessing or displaying delicate taste, perception, or sensibility; refrains to anything that is vulgar or not appropriate, but she does the opposite. She’s the major exponent of the virtuous gang, she’s interested in keeping the appearance of being delicate and sophisticated, but she’s adulterous with Horner. ▪ Mrs Squeamish: averse to freedom or familiarity of intercourse; distant, reserved, cold. Instead, she’s also a member of the virtuous gang. She doesn’t stand for niceness and refinement. Harcourt and Alithea discuss on her marriage with Sparkish. Harcourt says that marriage is an enemy to him because his beloved woman is marrying another man, and he wishes it were in his power to break the match. Sparkish keeps faking his love for Alithea; he says that she has wit too, as well as beauty, and invites Harcourt to go with her in a corner and test her. Pinchwife immediately defends his sister: “If you are not concerned for the honour of a wife, I am for that of a sister; he shall not debauch her. bring men to her! let 'em make love before your face! thrust 'em into a corner together, then leave 'em in private! is this your town wit and conduct?”. However, Alithea is not even tempted by Harcourt, even if he insists in his true love, because she has to keep her word and preserve her reputation. Jokes about the meaning of words: Harcourt reveals that Sparkish’s intentions are not romantic: he’s going to receive a £5000 dowry. He’s very outspoken in his courtship. Back to Sparkish, Alithea reveals that Harcourt had “spoke scurrilously” of him (and lists a series of negative adjectives) and had been making love with her. But when Sparkish threats him to kill him, Alithea suddenly changes her mind and defends him by saying that they only spoke of friendship to Sparkish, to try whether she was concerned enough for him, and Harcourt only made love to her to be satisfied of her virtue. Sparkish excuses himself and they go to the play. At the theatre, Pinchwife says that his wife is not there because “she has locked the door and is gone abroad”, but Lady Fidget is clever enough to understand: “No, you have locked the door and she’s within”, meaning that he didn’t want her to go. Left alone, Lady Fidget and Mrs. Squeamish talk about the “nasty world”, where men don’t care anymore about their wives, and they believe that cuckolding “is not an injury to a husband, till it be an injury to our honors; a woman of honor loses no honor with a private person”, “the crime’s the less when it is not known”: Later, Horner goes out into the next walk alone with Margery and Pinchwife starts frenetically looking for his wife, exits and returns on stage multiple times. Mrs. Pinchwife comes back running, with her hat full of ORANGES and dried fruit under her arm. Oranges (and China oranges) It is no coincidence that among all fruits, he gives oranges. BREECH’S ROLE: it speaks the theatre language of sexual invitation; following the tastes of the audience, women were sometimes dressed as men in the plays because wearing trousers would make their bodies much more revealing. This is another prove of the fact that, in the Restoration, the playhouse was a place of public display. Reference to the ORANGE WENCHES: girls who sold refreshments in the theatre, but also be generous in other kind of services, their body. Pinchwife puts her in a situation that, rather than protecting her, casts her into a role and make her appear even more desirable. He’s making up one excuse after another to escape this situation, but he constantly makes it worse. He provokes the situation, he’s the cause of it all: Indeed, I deserve it, since I furnished the best part of it. In fact, Margery wants to share the fruits because, together with them, Horner has given him a gift too: horns! ACT IV – SCENE I: Pinchwife’s House in the morning Sparkish is about to marry Alithea, and Harcourt says he will provide a parson. Instead, he disguises as a parson in order to make their marriage invalid, faking to be his twin brother in orders. It is clear both to Alithea’s and to the audience’s eyes that it’s Harcourt, but Sparkish keeps being blind. He only cares about appearances; he has to behave according to the custom: he needs to get married in the canonical hour (8-12 a.m.). Harcourt has the appearance of a chaplain and speaks typically like one too. Alithea wants to have an end to the ridiculous love, she wants to marry him out of honor, because she’s given her word, but time’s passing and Harcourt tries to delay the marriage: I desire nothing more than to marry you presently, which I might do, If you yourself do. If Alithea accepted, Harcourt would marry her right away, but since he’s not able to convince her, his new plan is to at least ruin his rival’s project. SCENE II: A bedchamber in Pinchwife’s House Pinchwife wants to hear again and again by his wife what has happened with Horner. He wants to know every detail, to understand if he’s become a cuckold or not. Apparently, Horner had just kissed her repeatedly (thinking it was little Sir James), and asked her to be at the window by 11 o’clock and he would walk under it at that time. She stayed still, to avoid being discovered. He blames Margery’s behavior on Horner, or rather on the fact that she’s a woman, because in his vision women are inferior creatures that can be easily guided and manipulated. As a consequence, Pinchwife will have her write a letter to Horner. She thinks that it’s useless to write a letter to a person that is in town: Pinchwife is happy with her response because it’s a naïve opposition. The sword, the penknife and the pen Sparkish: “What! drawn upon your wife? You should never do that, but at night in the dark, when you can't hurt her.” (4.4). “To draw upon” has a double sense: take the sward but also be ready for sex. The sword in Pinchwife’s hands becomes a symbol of patriarchal power and imposition, but also sexual inadequacy in saying that he “can’t hurt her”, meaning that he can’t perform. Pinchwife makes his wife write a letter to Horner, trying to force his language into her pen: an exertion of masculine will, designed to control her sexual choices and restrict access to her body. “Write as I bid you, or I will write whore with this penknife in your face”: the penknife represents sexual failure, comic travesty of that relationship, but also a more violent expression that can be found also in Shakespeare’s Othello: “Was this fair paper, this most goodly book, / Made to write whore upon?”. Shakespear’s character has gone back to a childlike behavior, she’s always submissive; on the contrary, Margery is an evolutionary character, from naïve to sophisticated, in fact she will be able to elude her husband and make him a cuckold. Pinchwife threatens multiple times Margery with the sword but never acts: Othello at the end fulfills his threats with the sword, whereas Pinchwife is a failed Othello. It is as though Margery were to become his pen, the passive agent of Pinchwife’s inscriptions. But once he puts the pen in her hands, he can’t control her anymore. He falls victim of his own linguistic by accidently exposing her to inappropriate speech: Margery will write a new letter with the new words she’s learned (nauseate, loathed, detest, 4.4). She will change the 2 envelopes and Pinchwife will literally put his wife in Horner’s hands by giving him the letter. HE GIVES HER THE INSTRUMENT TO ESCAPE HIS CONTROL: the pen gives her the POWER OF A MAN. If the penknife is a miniature version of a sword, it is also a species of sadistic pen, that combines 2 forms of phallic aggressiveness. The pen is both a phallic sign and a fashioner of signs, because you write with it. It becomes the perfect emblem of the male desire to inscribe his will upon the world and specifically upon the female body. SCENE III: Horner’s Lodging Quack inquires Horner of his stratagem and he says that it’s working: old, rigid husbands think me as unfit for love, as they are; but their wives, sisters, and daughters know, some of 'em, better things already. Your bigots in honor are just like those in religion; they fear the eye of the world more than the eye of Heaven; and think there is no virtue, but railing at vice, and no sin, but giving scandal. Lady Fidget arrives, and together with Horner they talk about honor, endowing it with a new meaning. Horner states that you can’t talk about honor, a virtuous and divine quality, while you’re planning on doing something that involves the devil (adulterous sexual relationship), because it would make the charm impotent. Lady Fidget wants to be extra sure that Horner is not going to reveal the secret to save her reputation, but by spreading the rumor of being impotent he’s doing the exact same thing, he’s being cautious, and nobody will suspect. Sir Jasper arrives while they’re hugging; she tries to make an excuse (checking if he’s ticklish) and puts him at a distance. Lady Fidget locks herself in Horner’s chamber to go look for pieces of China, and he goes to her by entering the back door. The following chat is full of double meanings recalling what Horner is going to do with Margery, while Sir Jasper doesn’t understand a thing. Mrs. Squeamish enters looking for the woman-hater, the toad, ugly, odious best, meaning Horner. She tries to “help her” look for China, meaning that she would have liked to join them, but the door is locked. Old Lady Squeamish, the only truly women of quality of the gang, arrives and inquires after her granddaughter (Margery), but she trusts Horner too because he’s a snake without his teeth. The same course of action as before: Lady Fidget enters with a piece of China and Horner following, not only a linguistic relationship between the 2 scenes, but also the same idea (before it was fruits, now pieces of China, all symbols). The prettiest piece of China Particular piece of porcelain, a large blue and white “Rolwagen” vase (17th century). They enjoyed great popularity in Europe as decorative objects. The Dutch word (literally “rolling wagon”) may have been derived from an element in a scene which frequently occurs on these vases, namely a figure seated in a cart with two big wheels, the rolwagen. Suggesting shape = sign of Horner’s sexual phallic organ. Index of urban accomplishments: China is used as an obscene term, to signify sex, just like honor, the key term of courtly culture, they both signify respectable behaviors, HERE ARE BOTH DEGRADED to become euphemism for sexual appetite. Emblems of civilized society become a sign for their opposite, a code of secret, private bestiality. Mrs. Squeamish would like a “piece of China” too; Horner says he has none left but promises her a roll-waggon for the next time, since women of quality never think they have China enough. Lady Fidget has an innocent literal understanding. After this scene, Quack now is actually convinced that the stratagem works. The humor of the scene doesn’t come from the word China, but from Horner and Lady Fidget’s ability to trade mutual confidences in a coded language which becomes increasingly sexual from the context, not the words. Such coded language is arbitrary, thus suggesting that context alone creates meaning rather than the particular signification given to words. Horner interprets and puts to use the “particular” signs of his clique (entourage of people). Pinchwife delivers the letter to Horner: “you are over-kind to me, as kind as if I were your cuckold already; yet I must confess you ought to be kind and civil to me, since I am so civil to you, as to bring you this.” While he reads it, he doesn’t get why a husband so jealous and possessive as him should bring him a letter by his wife. He soon realizes that he doesn’t know what’s inside it. The secret of Mrs. Pinchwife’s disguise in her brother is revealed, always through Pinchwife’s silly phrases, and Horner fakes being shocked about it: Why would you not tell me it was she? My freedom with her was your fault, not mine. I’d never do it before her husband’s face. Pinchwife feels victorious and powerful (there will be danger in making me a cuckold, I wear a sword, play with any man’s honor but mine, kiss any man’s wife but mine), but the result is ridiculous and ironic, because he doesn’t know yet that he’s been tricked. SCENE IV: A room in Pinchwife’s House Pinchwife catches his wife writing another letter for Horner and using the exact same negative words that he would have made her use to describe Horner, but she uses them to describe Pinchwife. She has prepared herself, she has studied, she has learned how to become a new person, not the country wife she used to be anymore. The letter is the sign of Margery’s desire to escape her marriage and sleep with Horner. She needs to be freed by this unfortunate match, but she needs Horner’s help before the next day, or else she will be forever out of her reach, “for I can defer no longer our…”. And before that she could finish her letter, Pinchwife snatches the paper from her and threatens her drawing his sword (after many other attempts during the play) = since he’s not able to control her by his language, he tries by violence. Sparkish arrives and asks to dine together. Pinchwife locks her in a room to “make his rage take a breath”. Sparkish’s answer → ACT V – SCENE I: Pinchwife’s House That’s how Margery finishes the phrase: “For I can defer no longer our – wedding – Your slighted Alithea”. Margey is quick at making up excuses: she makes him believe that Alithea had her write this letter at her place because, in case of Horner being cruel or refusing her, she could have disowned it, the hand not being hers. Pinchwife buys it because he thinks that her writing style, according to him, would never be this sophisticated; which proves that she has improved in her town education. She plays exactly on the fact that he thinks that she’s still the naïve country woman, as if she could never be that clever in her lies. Sparkish and Alithea got married but it was not valid. This makes him think that what Margery has told is the truth. For him, this is the perfect solution: Horner will have his sister, preventing his pretensions to his wife. I’d rather be akin to him by the name of brother-in-law, than that of cuckold. Pinchwife wants to talk to her immediately, but Margery says that she’s too ashamed to look at him in the face; she will only talk to him after talking with Horner; she wants to be led to Horner’s lodging but she’ll come out only wearing a mask and the candle put out. The mask Used to protect in public places the reputation of nicer ladies, but also especially in the playhouse it was the trade sign of the prostitutes. That’s why its use had been progressively abandoned by ladies of quality (Queen Anne forbade the use of them). But here it is used to protect her reputation, she doesn’t want to be seen by other people. DOUBLE MEANING = METATHEATRICAL DIALOGUE AND EXCHANGE: the actress is wearing a mask in front of an audience in which at the same time also prostitutes sat, so people knew very well these cultural codes. Elements that lead us to the use of language: Interpreting the signs In order to participate in the world, you have to interpret the signs. Géraud de Cordemoy: in A Philosophical Discourse Concerning Speech, Comformable to the Cartesian Principles, he categorizes words according to type of usage and designated 2 classes of signs: ordinary and particular. this is what happens in the paly to: read differently by different people, some groups share a secret code, - ordinary signs: «The signes, which I call ordinary, are those by which most men are wont to declare certain things, and those are meerly of institution: Some are more universal, others less. E. g. When we will, without a voice, say that we consent, we give a signe with the head, quite differing from that which we make to shew, we consent not: so we make certain signes with the hand to drive one away. And these kinds of signes are general enough; but those, by which we declare our respect to one another, though commonly they be the same in a whole Country, yet they are very different in another». - particular signs: «The signes I call particular, are those in which a whole Nation or a whole Commonalty agrees not, but which are instituted 'twixt two persons or a few more, to signifie certain things, which they would not have others to take notice of». Horner and the ladies use certain words/gestures in a completely different way, secret way, which other people cannot understand. this allows them to have freedom. These signs are followed by a subgroup. Horner especially proves proficient and fluent in this kind of language: signs do not have an isomorphic relationship with universal concepts. China House, that’s my cue = he’s quick to get the meaning and read the signs properly, even though that particular sign does not have any resemblance with the concept it stands for. Horner can read not only the signs but also women. Horner: a sign (of a man) to be (rightly) read He’s just an icon without any substance. Is he really a winner in the end? There’s a bitter aftertaste in the story, because he undergoes a semiotic degradation: Horns → fruit → roll-wagon → brimmer. It’s a progressive reduction from all-conquering rake to kept man. He himself at the beginning made these signs: horns with his hands, the forbidden oranges he gives Margery, but he’s the fruit instead; then the sign of the joke of the China scene, the roll-wagon, suggested in its shape, he’s reduced to the form of his genitals, no more a person; dear brimmer (glass) and toast, Horner himself becomes the brimmer because the brimmer let me enjoy him first (the wine and the man), makes the husbands short-sighted Mrs. Squeam. Lovely brimmer! let me enjoy him first. L. Fid. No, I never part with a gallant till I've tried him. Dear brimmer! that makest our husbands short-sighted. Progressive reduction from all-conquering rake to kept man → inviting from the audience a ridicule matching of the scorn in which his supposed impotence is held by Dorilant, Harcourt and their fashionable circle. The dancing cuckolds at the end invite the audience to laugh, but also to the ridicule matching of the disdain in regards of Horner, he’s lost his virility, he’s included in the general scorn he’s a winner but not completely. Michel Foucault, History of sexuality (1976) From the 18th century onwards, a new mechanism of circulation of sexual partners develops. Alliance: a system of marriage, of fixation and development of kinship ties, of transmission of names and possessions. This deployment of alliance, with the mechanisms of constraint that ensured its existence, lost some of its importance as economic processes and political structures could no longer rely on it as an adequate instrument or sufficient support. Particularly from the 18th century onward, Western societies created and deployed [= arranged] a new apparatus which was superimposed on the previous one, and which, without completely supplanting the latter, helped to reduce its importance. I am speaking of the deployment of sexuality: like the deployment of alliance, it connects up with the circuit of sexual partners, but in a completely different way. ALLIANCE VS SEXUALITY The deployment of alliance is built around a system of rules defining the permitted and the forbidden, the licit and the illicit, whereas the deployment of sexuality operates according to mobile, polymorphous, and contingent techniques of power. − The deployment of alliance has as one of its chief objectives to reproduce the interplay of relations and maintain the law that governs them; what is pertinent is the link between partners and definite statutes; firmly tied to the economy due to the role it can play in the transmission or circulation of wealth. − The deployment of sexuality, on the other hand, engenders a continual extension of areas and forms of control; it’s concerned with the sensations of the body, the quality of pleasures, and the nature of impressions, however tenuous or imperceptible these may be; linked to the economy through numerous and subtle relays, the main one of which, however, is the body, that produces and consumes. Sexuality is tied to recent devices of power; it has been expanding at an increasing rate since the 17th century; the arrangement that has sustained it is not governed by reproduction; it has been linked from the outset with an intensification of the body with its exploitation as an object of knowledge and an element in relations of power. Example: Margery becomes a desiring subject; she must be controlled because her body seeks pleasure, she wishes to explore what’s outside. ALLIANCE: Marriages of alliance were based on what Michael McKeon characterizes as «the exchange of women aimed at the establishment of kinship relations between men», the purpose of which was to increase and consolidate the political power of the ruling class, while simultaneously reproducing sharply defined class and gender divisions that ensured its perpetuation. Women were merely pawns in an exchange that was aimed at preserving the interests of men who dominated the patriarchal social hierarchy. Under the regime of alliance, women of the aristocracy or propertied classes were clearly perceived as property; they either belonged to their fathers or husbands. Consequently, these women had no claim to ownership of their bodies as a reproductive site for the transmission of power. SEXUALITY: This situation was radically altered over the course of the 18th century through the development of what Foucault identifies as «the main elements of the deployment of sexuality», the primary one of which, he maintains, was «the feminine body» itself. Despite the fact that women were no longer required to bring property or wealth into marriage with the deployment of sexuality, the reproductive function of their bodies clearly took on added significance, since «names and possessions» were still transmitted through that body. Women’s bodies were still understood as property and women were required virtue, chastity, in the exchange for social valorization -- namely, marriage. As a result, virtue, by safely containing desire, became the means by which women’s bodies, already viewed as property, attained social value as a chaste but sexualized commodity that women could now trade on the marriage market as a means of rising socially. The Country Wife dramatizes the discrepancy between forms of sexual control, which are specific to alliance, and emancipation of sexuality. It is Horner who actually recognizes the existence and the inclusion of female pleasure. Marriage “Marriage is rather a sign of interest than love; and he that marries a fortune, covets a mistress, not loves her.” “Married women show all their modesty the first day, because married men show all their love the first day.” In the Renaissance, but also until later in the 17th century, 4 main criteria governed the choice of marriage partners: 1. The advancement of the individual or the family (ex. New kinsmen); 2. The ideal of parity (especially of rank); 3. The character of the proposed partner; 4. Personal affection, or love (= basic personal compatibility). RESTORATION MARRIAGE: Fashionable gentlemen assumed sexual freedom to be a natural right, and they were inclined to be fairly indulgent to their wives’ infidelities, yet they wanted settled affections of marriage. For their part, women of the same class were beginning to feel that they had the right to arrogate the freedoms of the male sex. COMPANIONATE MARRIAGE: developed slowly over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries. Emotional satisfaction in marriage became increasingly more important than marriage for the sake of economic and social alliance. Nevertheless, only between 1720 and 1780 did the marriage of romantic love start to replace arranged marriages. A few Restoration comedies clearly anticipate this change, but coexisting uneasily with this development is an older view of love and marriage, where marital choices are guided by prudential and economic considerations. “companionate”: of a romantic relationship, marriage, that emphasizes companionship, equality, and mutual respect. Marriage based on the love and free choice of the partners, that is, companionship + economic security were the prime goals of marriage. Once it was doubted that affection could and would naturally develop after marriage, decision- making power had to be transferred to the future spouses themselves, and more and more of them in the 18th century began to put the prospects of emotional satisfaction before the ambition for increased income or status. LOOKING FOR A HUSBAND At the beginning of the 18th century, it was still common among the Quality for a father to arrange his daughter’s marriage: she would at best have a veto over his choice. When a gentleman was casting around for a husband for his daughter, his first considerations were security, family, title, land. In society, marriage was recommended as an alliance of sense. Too much sensibility – still more sensuality – was suspect. Duties of married women: obey the husband, produce heirs, run the household, be ladylike. MARRIAGE À LA MODE: Property and ‘interest’ were key concerns in the Parliamentary debates over Hardwicke’s legislation. With the accumulation of commercial wealth in the first half of the 18th century, there was a considerable increase in the incidence of the ‘marriage à la mode’, which united money and status. SECRET MARRIAGES: A man and woman could be legally married in Shakespeare’s day by making a private agreement without a church or priest. Such a marriage might have been frowned upon – and was usually formalized later in church – but it still had the full force of law. A promise per verba de futuro occurred “[w]hen the Parties contracting Spousals do use words of future time”. This kind of matrimonial promise signalled “the entrance and beginning of Marriage” which became effectual and binding after it had been sanctioned by a church minister. LORD HARDWICKE’S MARRIAGE ACT OF 1753: Until the middle of the 18th century, marriages could take place anywhere provided, they were conducted before an ordained clergyman of the Church of England. This encouraged the practice of secret marriages which did not have parental consent and which were often bigamous. It also allowed couples, particularly those of wealthy background, to marry while at least one of the partners was under age. In 1753, however, the Marriage Act, promoted by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hardwicke, declared that all marriage ceremonies must be conducted by a minister in a parish church or chapel of the Church of England to be legally binding. AN ACT FOR THE BETTER PREVENTING OF CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE. 26 GEO. 2 C.33 • All marriages in any place other than in a church or public chapel, and without banns or license, were to be «null and void to all Intents and Purposes whatsoever». • Detailed rules were laid down concerning the publication of banns in the parish of the parties upon «three Sundays preceding the Solemnization of Marriage during the Time of Morning Service, or Evening Service». • The parson could refuse to publish the first banns unless he had been given at least seven days’ notice of the parties’ names and place of residence. • If a parent declared dissent to the proposed marriage at the time when the banns were published then that publication was void. • Clergymen performing marriages without following these procedures were to be punished with fourteen years’ transportation and the marriage declared void. PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE OVER THE BILL The bill produced one of the most heated debates in the House of Commons before it passed there by a vote of 56. Trade vs privilege: • Opponents spoke the progressive language of trade. Secret unions between people of unequal fortune benefit the public because «they serve to disperse the wealth of the kingdom through the whole body of the people, and to prevent the accumulating and monopolizing of it into a few hands; it’s an advantage to a free and trading society». • Proponents spoke the conservative language of land and privilege. One of them deplored clandestine marriage as «an evil by many of our best families have often suffered». «How often the heir of a good family seduced and engaged in a clandestine marriage, perhaps with a common strumpet [whore]? How often have we known heiress carried off by a man of low birth or perhaps by an infamous sharper [a cheater, a fraud]? ». SCOTLAND: A MATRIMONIAL PARADISE As the Hardwicke’s Act did not apply in Scotland, English ‘runway’ couples were able to obtain a valid marriage certificate in the Scottish border towns such as Ayton, Coldstream, Lamberton, Mordington, Norham and Paxton. Gretna Green was long famous as the goal of eloping English couples seeking hasty marriage. Because of a change in English law in 1754, English couples seeking a quick marriage were obliged to cross the border into Scotland, where Scottish law required only that the couples declare before witnesses their wish to be married. At Gretna Green the ceremony was usually performed by the blacksmith, though any person might officiate, and the tollhouse, the inn, or (after 1826) Gretna Hall were the scenes of many such weddings.