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The Amorous Machiavellism of The Country Wife

1977; Western Michigan University; Volume: 11; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cdr.1977.0036

1936-1637

Gorman Beauchamp,

Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research

The Amorous Machiavellism of The Country Wife Gorman Beauchamp Criticism of The Country Wife is agreed that the play repre­ sents Wycherley’s supreme dramatic achievement; beyond that, however, it is every critic for himself. Allardyce Nicoll, for example, judged The Country Wife “a bright and glorious farce” in which innuendo “is brought to a stage of utmost perfection,”! while William Archer, echoing the sentiments of Jeremy Collier and Lord Macaulay, pronounced it loathsome, “surely the most bestial play in all literature.”2 Some commentators, following Lamb, burke the moral problem of the play by locating it in that “Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is duty, and manners per­ fect freedom,” that “speculative scene of things, which has no reference whatever to the world that is.”3 Others, however, view the play as a searching exploration of contemporary social prob­ lems or mores: “a moving drama,” claims J. W. Krutch, “the result of a realistic imagination as powerful almost as Ibsen’s.”4 In its point of view, some would have The Country Wife a satire and some a celebration of the society it reflects.5 Here, according to Clifford Leech, “Wycherley not merely lashes but delights in his age,” fondling even while exposing it;6 but for Bonamy Dobree “the clever, cynical dialogue, the scathing irony, the remorseless stripping of all grace from man” are so overpower­ ing as to prevent the play from being considered a comedy at all “in the ordinary sense.”7 While most modem critics have managed to detect some sort of ideal that redeems the play from sheer cynicism or mere frivolity—an ideal usually found to ad­ here in the Alithea-Harcourt subplot—Anne Righter can find nothing: “In its overall effect, The Country Wife is nihilistic.”8 This somewhat bewildering variety of opinion demonstrates, if nothing more, how difficult it is to come to terms with Wycher­ ley’s mordant drama, to offer an interpretation that will pass as 316 Gorman Beauchamp 317 even a folie a deux. For the approach, then, that I want to sug­ gest, I will make no very great claim, only that it seems to me to offer an interesting perspective from which to view the play that has not been previously adopted. The cue for this reading is Homer’s pronouncement to Lady Fidget: “I am a Machiavel in love, Madam.” Offered in the heat of seduction, Homer’s claim is nonetheless quite accurate: he is an amorous Machiavel, a Borgia of the boudoir whose conquests are all sexual ones. Beyond that, however, the spirit that animates The Country Wife is itself a sort of amorous Machiavellism, the translation of Realpolitik into terms of the erotic intrigues of the Restora­ tion salon, in much the same manner that Machiavelli himself translated his political ideas into the context of sexual farce in La Mandragola.9 I That Cesare Borgia serves as the hero of The Prince ac­ counts in no small part for the notoriety of that seismic little work: “I could not suggest better precepts to a new prince,” Machiavelli declares, “than the example of Cesare’s actions” (VII). 10 Judged by the canons of traditional morality, Borgia would stand condemned as unscrupulous, perfidious, contemp­ tible even by the standards of his age. Thus, in reversing this judgment, Machiavelli reveals, with unmistakable clarity, the nature of his political criteria: a radically different axiology operates in The Prince from that which obtains in prior political discourse, at least of the Christian era. “In the actions of all men and especially princes, where there is no court of appeal, the end is all that counts” (XVIII). His praise of Borgia and his methods can be seen as epitomizing the separation that Machiavelli is thought to have wrought of politics from ethics, a view expressed, for example, by Cassirer: “The sharp knife of Machiavelli’s thought has cut off all the threads by which in former generations that state was fastened to the organic whole of human existence. The political world has lost its connection not only with religion or metaphysics but also with all other forms of man’s ethical and cultural life.”!! But the praise of Borgia...