Tag Archives: William Wycherley

The Horror of Sex without Love

By Robin Bates | Published: September 16, 2011

Sex without love, the subject of several sex comedies this past summer, was also an issue explored by poets and playwrights in the British Restoration.

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Extreme Jealousy, a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

By Robin Bates | Published: November 19, 2009

William Wycherley       As I’ve been writing recently about Restoration and 18th Century couples comedies, allow me one last post on a brilliant but cold play, William Wycherley’s Country Wife (1675).  I gained new insight into it when my student Stephanie Gonzalez noted that the jealousy theme in the play is one that she is very […]

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Obama as Wycherley’s Country Wife

By Robin Bates | Published: September 15, 2009

As I teach William Wycherley’s The Country Wife, I am struck by the resemblances between Restoration society and our own.The play was written in 1676 during the age of Charles II, and in some ways our worlds couldn’t be more dissimilar.This was a monarchy and a very formal society in which sincerity was viewed with […]

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