In a well-organized, double-spaced, 750-word essay, answer one of the following questions:
a) Discuss how the passage below, excerpted from Act 1 of The Country Wife, deals with the central theme of the play?
HORNER: Well Jack by thy long absence from the town, the grumness of thy countenance, and the slovenliness of thy habit, I should give thee joy, should I not, of marriage?
PINCHWIFE: [aside] Death! Does he know I’m married too? I though to have concealed it from him at least.—My long stay in the country will excuse my dress, and I have a suit of law, that brings me up to town, that puts me out of humour; besides, I must give Sparkish tomorrow five thousand pound to lie with my sister.
HORNER: Nay, you country gentlemen, rather than not purchase, will buy anything; and he is a cracked title, if we may quibble. Well, but am I to give thee joy? I heard thou wert married.
PINCHWIFE: What then?
HORNER: Why, the next thing that is to be heard is, thou’rt a cuckold.
PINCHWIFE: [aside] Insupportable name!
HORNER: But I did not expect marriage from such a whoremaster as you, one that knew the town so much, and women so well.
PINCHWIFE: Why, I have married no London wife.
HORNER: Pshaw! That’s all one; that grave circumspection in marrying a country wife is like refusing a deceitful, pampered Smithfield1 jade to go and be cheated by a friend in the country.
PINCHWIFE: [aside] A pox on him and his simile!—At least we are a little surer of the breed there, know what her keeping has been, foiled2 or unsound.
HORNER: Come, come, I have known a clap gotten in Wales; and there are cousins, justices’ clerks, and chaplains in the country, I won’t say coachmen. But she’s handsome and young?
PINCHWIFE: [aside] I’ll answer as I should do.—No, no, she has no more beauty but her youth; no attraction but her modesty; wholesome, homely, and housewifely; that’s all.
DORILANT: He talks as like a grazier3 as he looks.
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HORNER: But prithee, was not the way you were in better? Is not keeping better than marriage?
PINCHWIFE: A pox on’t! The jades would jilt me; I could never keep a whore to myself.
HORNER: So, then you only married to keep a whore to yourself. Well, but let me tell you, women, as you say, are like soldiers, made constant and loyal by good pay rather than by oaths and covenants.
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1. Well-known London market
2. Injured, literally; figuratively a deflowered or diseased woman
3. Cattle-breeder
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