As a restoration comedy, humor is at the heart of Wycherley's play. Like many other restaurant comedies, The Country Wife is characterized by a wacky, witty-generated humor that runs throughout the play, sexual innuendo, and great dramatic irony. However, Wycherley's use of humor serves much more than just creating entertainment for the audience. Through humor, Wycherley addresses some of his key thematic concerns, ultimately providing a damning indictment of the state of this “sick” Restoration society. The social mores and values ​​of Wycherley's stereotypical characters are constantly mocked. So while Wycherley creates entertainment through this humor, he also forces his contemporary audiences to evaluate the values ​​that were at the heart of their society. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Wycherley's use of humor as a means to entertain and address key thematic concerns can be seen through the character of Pinchwife. This is because by creating humor at Pinchwife's expense, Wycherley is able to put forward the idea that town husbands play a significant role in their own cuckolding. This is a central idea of ​​the play, as a key theme of Wycherley's is to discuss why marriage as an institution has become so sick. Wycherley uses humor as a tool to emphasize this idea in Act V Scene II where Pinchwife unwittingly hands over his wife to Horner, thus ensuring his cuckolding. Humor is created through the dramatic irony that Pinchwife believes he is delivering his sister and not his wife, but the audience knows otherwise and knows that he is ensuring his own fate with this action. So when Pinchwife says to Horner, “Last time, you know, sir, I brought you a love letter. Now you see a mistress. there is enormous dramatic irony that generates humor, not least because of Pinchwife's use of the word "mistress" to describe his own wife. Yet Wycherley's humor does more than just entertain. The fact that Pinchwife literally hands his wife over to Horner is extremely symbolic and develops Wycherley's idea that husbands are to a large extent the cause of their own cuckolding. Thus, Wycherley uses comedy as a tool to show the audience his ideas about the problems within marriages in Restoration society and to demonstrate his idea that, in many ways, husbands are to blame. Humor through dramatic irony like this is a key element. However, Wycherley's use of sexual innuendo and double entender is equally important in generating humor throughout the play. In many cases, this humor seems to have the sole purpose of entertaining and generating laughter thanks to the scandalous nature of the innuendoes. Yet even some of Wycherley's crudest humor has deeper underlying thematic concerns that it addresses. This is seen for example in Act IV Scene III between Horner and the "Virtuous Gang". After Horner outrageously has sex with Lady Fidget under Sir Japer's nose without him realizing it, the audience sees that China becomes a euphemism for such sex. Thus, the audience sees the humor created by the use of this euphemism in front of Sir Jasper without him realizing it. This can be seen for example with Lady Fidget's statement that "we quality women never think we have enough China". Humor is created when.