women as possible. He achieves this by the paradoxical means of pretending to be impotent, though he is the most sexually active character in the play. The women he seduces, however, are eager accomplices in cuckolding their husbands. Horner's apparent impotence serves a dual purpose. It allows him to gain access to the women, and it also helps him to identify which women are the most licentious, since they are the ones who are particularly repelled by his apparent impotence.

Horner is without shame or pride. He does not care that the men in the play see him as a lesser man, since he exercises covert power by cuckolding them. These men do not elicit the audience's sympathy for a variety of reasons. Most notably Pinchwife is a hypocrite who expects complete fidelity from his wife while boasting of his sexual conquests. Fidget is a less malign character but his credulity and foolishness make him the opposite of the shrewd businessman he appears.

The Country Wife is generally considered exceptionally licentious and immoral even by the standards of Restoration comedy. This is primarily because it lacks a moral center. Even Harcourt and Alithea, the nearest thing in the play to conventional lovers, are duplicitous and cynical. Horner escapes unscathed because no one else in the play has a superior standard of morality by which he could be judged.

A satire uses comedy and exaggeration to highlight moral weaknesses in characters and society. Written in 1675, The Country Wife, reflects the new sexual daring and exuberant excess of the Restoration, the period beginning in 1660 when the monarchy was restored to power in England. This followed a period of civil war and Puritan rule under Oliver Cromwell. The Puritans banned the theater as a morally corrupting influence, part of their imposition of strict and sober moral values on society. Having been repressed for a decade, people went wild once the Puritans were out of power.

The Country Wife represents the renewed spirit of freedom to explore sexual themes about adultery and lust in a play. The play is both irreverent in its focus on sex, especially the plot thread in which Horner has the rumor put out that he is impotent so that he can safely seduce married women, and a satire poking fun at the new spirit of sexual excess in London.

Many of the themes of The Country Wife, such as the sexual hypocrisy of the period, the social pretensions of city people, and the greed of the marriage market, became staples of eighteenth-century theater. Outrageous comic situations, exaggerated characters, and names which communicated characters' exaggerated features—such as Quack and Pinchwife in this play—also became part of eighteenth-century theater. However, The Country Wife was not alone in using these tropes in the late seventeenth century: they were widespread in this rollicking and daring period.