_The Country Wife_ was written, according to its author's own statement, about the year 1671 or 1672. Its production upon the stage was subsequent to that of _The Gentleman Dancing-Master_, to which allusion is made in the prologue, and antecedent to that of the earlier-written _Plain Dealer_, in the second act of which the author inserted some critical observations upon _The Country Wife_. The first performance of _The Plain Dealer_, as will afterwards appear, admits not of a later date than that of March, or the very beginning of April, 1674; it follows then that _The Country Wife_ was brought forward some time between the early spring of 1672 and that of 1674. It was acted by the King's Company, established during these two years at the theatre in Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and was published in the year 1675. If we can overlook the immorality which, in this play, is more offensive and pronounced than in any of Wycherley's other dramas, we shall find in _The Country Wife_ a brilliantly written and skilfully constructed comedy, superior to either of the preceding dramas from the same pen, and surpassed, among comedies of the Restoration, only by its author's own masterpiece, _The Plain Dealer_. The plot of _The Country Wife_ is partly based upon two comedies by Molière--_L'Ecole des Femmes_ and _L'Ecole des Maris_. From the former of these Wycherley derived his conception of the jealous man who keeps under close restraint a young and ignorant woman, with the vain hope of thereby securing her fidelity to him. Agnes's innocent confessions to Arnolphe of her lover's stratagems and her own esteem for him find a counterpart in the Country Wife's frankness on a similar occasion, but beyond these points of coincidence there is little resemblance between the two plays. From _L'Ecole des Maris_, again, Wycherley has borrowed one or two incidents: the imprisoned girl's device of making her would-be husband (in the English play, her actual husband) the bearer of a letter to her gallant, and the trick by which Isabella causes her tyrant, under the impression that she is another woman, to consign her with his own hands to his rival. Steele has published, in the _Tatler_ of April 16, 1709, a very just criticism upon this play, which, as it cannot fail to interest the reader, I venture to subjoin. "Will's Coffee-house, April 14.