The Country Wife. Will's Coffee House, 14 April 1709
This
evening the comedy called The Country
Wife was acted in Drury Lane for the benefit of Mrs Bignell. The
part which gives name to the play was performed by herself. Through
the whole action she made a very pretty figure and exactly entered into
the nature of the part. Her husband in the drama is represented to be
one of those debauchees who run through the vices of the town and believe,
when they think fit, they can marry and settle at their ease. His own
knowledge of the iniquity of the age makes him choose a wife wholly
ignorant of it and place his security in her want of skill to abuse
him.
The
poet, on many occasions where the propriety of the character will admit
of it, insinuates that there is no defence against vice but the contempt
of it: and has, in the natural ideas of an untainted innocent, shown
the gradual steps to ruin and destruction which persons of condition
run into without the help of a good education to form their conduct.
The torment of a jealous coxcomb, which arises from his own false maxims,
and the aggravation of his pain by the very words in which he sees her
innocence, makes a very pleasant and instructive satire. The character
of Horner and the design of it is a good representation of the age in
which that comedy was written; at which timelove and wenching were the
business of life, and thegallant manner of pursuing women was the best
recommendation at court. To this only it is to be imputed that a gentleman
of Mr Wycherley's character and sense condescends to represent the insults
done to the honour of the marriage bed without just reproof; but to
have drawn a man of probity with regard to such considerations had been
a monster, and a poet had at that time discovered his want of knowing
the manners of the court he lived in, by a virtuous character in his
fine gentlemen, as he would show his ignorance by drawing a vicious
one to please the present audience.
Mrs.
Bignell did her part very happily and had a certain grace in her rusticity,
which gave us hopes of seeing her a very skilful player and in some
parts supply our loss of Mrs Verbruggen.
I
cannot be of the same opinion with my friends and fellow labourers,
the reformers of manners, in their severity towards plays; but must
allow that a good play acted before a well-bred audience must raise
very proper incitements to good behaviour and be the most quick and
most prevailing method of giving young people a turn of sense and breeding.
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