The Country Wife: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Country Wife, credited to William Wycherley, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Country Wife by William Wycherley. Read in English by a full cast. One of the most notorious Restoration comedies in existence, William Wycherley’s The Country Wife is a lively and riotous exploration of courtly and city life in the seventeenth century, which was rife with unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. For the basis of his plot, Wycherley here borrows heavily from the work of Molière, but abandons the French master’s unity and economy by introducing several interlocking storylines and characters, all of them clamoring for attention amidst Wycherley’s hard-hitting colloquial dialogue and double entendres. The main plot follows the clever town rake Horner, who feigns impotence in order to seduce women of quality and cuckold their unwitting husbands. One woman who takes interest in him is Margery, a seemingly naive country girl married to the pathologically jealous Pinchwife. Her desire to pursue an illicit affair with Horner yields a multitude of complications and misunderstandings, many of which are left scandalously unresolved by the time the final line is spoken. With startlingly frank explorations of gender dynamics, marital structures, female autonomy, misogyny, and seventeenth-century societal obligations, as well as an infamous “china scene” positively dripping with innuendo, The Country Wife remains a classic of its genre that continues to invite fresh and exciting interpretations with each new performance. - Summary by Tomas Peter Horner: Tomas Peter Harcourt: Son of the Exiles Dorilant: MajorToast Pinchwife: Scotty Smith Sparkish: ToddHW Sir Jasper Fidget: Nemo Boy: Melanie Jensen Quack: Alan Mapstone Margery Pinchwife: Availle Alithea, sister of Pinchwife: Leanne Yau Lady Fidget / Bookseller: Beth Thomas Dainty Fidget, sister of Sir Jasper: Foon Mrs. Squeamish: Sonia Old Lady Squeamish: Eva Davis Lucy, Alithea's maid: TJ Burns Narrator: Campbell Schelp Editor: Tomas Peter

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Country Wife
• Author credits: William Wycherley
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 5
• Listed recording duration: 3:34:58

Catalogue topics

• comedy
• play
• London
• marriage
• seduction
• social class
• wit
• hypocrisy

Track guide

1. 01 - Act 1 — 33:38
2. 02 - Act 2 — 35:32
3. 03 - Act 3 — 42:27
4. 04 - Act 4 — 56:29
5. 05 - Act 5 — 46:51

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.