There has always been bawdy humour. The Miller’s Tale, in Geof­frey Chaucer’s late 14th cen­tu­ry mas­ter­piece, The Can­ter­bury Tales, is replete with sex­u­al innu­en­do and crude behav­iour. More recent­ly, we can think about the clas­sic saucy sea­side post­cards of the ear­ly to mid-20th cen­tu­ry fea­tur­ing heav­ing bosoms, hen­pecked hus­bands and dou­ble enten­dres aplen­ty. Think too of the Car­ry On films of the 60s and 70s and the Con­fes­sions of a Win­dow Clean­er fran­chise (fun­ni­ly enough, Robin Asquith, who played the lead role in the Con­fes­sions films, also appeared in a 1972 “erot­ic com­e­dy” ver­sion of The Can­ter­bury Tales, con­tain­ing abun­dant nudi­ty, sex and slap­stick; he evi­dent­ly knew his oeu­vre).

Anoth­er age in his­to­ry that was known for its explo­sion of bawdy humour was the Restora­tion peri­od. The Restora­tion, of course, was the 1660 rein­state­ment of the Stu­art monar­chy, after ten years of Cromwell’s Com­mon­wealth of Eng­land which was char­ac­terised by a Puri­tan cul­ture that amongst oth­er things banned Christ­mas and the the­atre. Buz­zkill, much. The Restora­tion trig­gered an out­pour­ing of cre­ativ­i­ty in the arts and a Renais­sance in Eng­lish dra­ma through­out the late 17th and ear­ly 18th cen­turies. Enter Restora­tion Com­e­dy, and talk about a reac­tion to Puri­tanism: it went quite spec­tac­u­lar­ly the oth­er way, with the new King Charles II active­ly encour­ag­ing sex­u­al­ly explic­it lan­guage in plays.

The the­atres were packed and there was no short­age of play­wrights to keep them that way for a few years (the peak of Restora­tion com­e­dy per se was real­ly only the 1670s and again in the 1690s): promi­nent fig­ures includ­ed John Dry­den, George Etherege, William Dav­enant, Thomas Kil­li­grew, and William Wycher­ley. Wycherley’s com­e­dy The Coun­try Wife (1675) is a case in point. Con­tro­ver­sial for its sex­u­al explic­it­ness even in its own time, the title con­tains a lewd pun with regard to the first syl­la­ble of “coun­try”. Even in our own times, this word rarely makes in on-screen.

The play turns on two indel­i­cate plot devices: a seducer’s ploy of fak­ing impo­tence to safe­ly have clan­des­tine affairs with mar­ried women, and the arrival in Lon­don of an inex­pe­ri­enced young “coun­try wife”, with her dis­cov­ery of the joys of town life, ooh-err mis­sus. The scan­dalous decep­tion and the frank lan­guage have for much of the play’s his­to­ry kept it off the stage and out of print. It was only in 1924 that the play was staged once more; inter­est­ing­ly, itself a year and peri­od that fol­lowed a peri­od of depri­va­tion, name­ly the Great War, which under­stand­ably led to a sense of dev­il-may-care enjoy­ment of free­doms. Although clear­ly a peri­od piece, The Coun­try Wife has been acclaimed for its lin­guis­tic ener­gy and sharp social satire.