The Country Wife (New Mermaids)) Book

This play is a disheartening indication of the negligible role wives play in a 'homo-social' society like Restoration England. Because the gentlemen spend all day and most of the night together debating carousing and philandering their wives are lonely bored and susceptible to suggestion. Jack Horner sees an opportunity here and spreads the rumour of his sexual impotence. Mocked by the men for his alleged harmlessness Horner gets unlimited access to the wives who choose to keep his secret. If Horner embodies ultimate immorality driven to find ever keener pleasures to excite him his match is Margery a young wife from the country who embodies natural amorality: she sees nothing wrong with propositioning Horner because she has no moral sense at all. At its core this farce about sex conducts a philosophical argument about the nature of man (and woman) and the conventionality of sexual mores.