# The Country Wife: every role by lines, words, and stage time

> William Wycherley. 17 speaking roles, 29,126 words, about 208 minutes of speech.

- URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/the-country-wife
- Last updated: 2026-10-08

**Horner** has the most to say in The Country Wife: about 714 lines and 5,857 words, 20.1% of the play. The Country Wife is a Restoration comedy in which Horner pretends to be impotent to pursue other men’s wives, while Pinchwife tries to hide his young wife from the town. Horner and Pinchwife are nearly equal, at about 20% and 18% of the words. Pinchwife speaks in 11 of 12 sections, and Mrs. Pinchwife, the country wife of the title, has about 9%.

- Speaking roles: 17
- Scenes: 12
- Words: 29,126
- Speech time: 208 min

## Every role, largest first

| Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Horner | 714 | 5,857 | 20.1% | 41.8 | 6 |
| Pinchwife | 661 | 5,347 | 18.4% | 38.2 | 11 |
| Sparkish | 451 | 3,768 | 12.9% | 26.9 | 8 |
| Mrs. Pinchwife | 328 | 2,641 | 9.1% | 18.9 | 7 |
| Harcourt | 267 | 2,110 | 7.2% | 15.1 | 5 |
| Lady Fidget | 243 | 2,041 | 7% | 14.6 | 4 |
| Alithea | 262 | 1,984 | 6.8% | 14.2 | 6 |
| Sir Jasper | 195 | 1,595 | 5.5% | 11.4 | 6 |
| Lucy | 108 | 894 | 3.1% | 6.4 | 4 |
| Dorilant | 107 | 830 | 2.8% | 5.9 | 4 |
| Quack | 91 | 743 | 2.6% | 5.3 | 4 |
| Mrs. Squeamish | 84 | 610 | 2.1% | 4.4 | 3 |
| Mrs. Dainty | 57 | 389 | 1.3% | 2.8 | 3 |
| Lady Squeamish | 31 | 256 | 0.9% | 1.8 | 2 |
| Boy | 7 | 49 | 0.2% | 0.4 | 3 |
| Bookseller | 1 | 4 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| All the Ladies. | 1 | 3 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |

## Who speaks in which scene

Words each role speaks in each scene (scene: words). Scenes: 1.1 = Act 1, Scene 1; 2.1 = Act 2, Scene 1; 3.1 = Act 3, Scene 1; 3.2 = Act 3, Scene 2; 4.1 = Act 4, Scene 1; 4.2 = Act 4, Scene 2; 4.3 = Act 4, Scene 3; 4.4 = Act 4, Scene 4; 5.1 = Act 5, Scene 1; 5.2 = Act 5, Scene 2; 5.3 = Act 5, Scene 3; 5.4 = Act 5, Scene 4.

- **Horner**: 1.1 (1,819), 2.1 (331), 3.2 (814), 4.3 (1,454), 5.2 (476), 5.4 (963)
- **Pinchwife**: 1.1 (431), 2.1 (670), 3.1 (526), 3.2 (706), 4.2 (840), 4.3 (487), 4.4 (424), 5.1 (616), 5.2 (197), 5.3 (120), 5.4 (330)
- **Sparkish**: 1.1 (397), 2.1 (560), 3.2 (1,310), 4.1 (411), 4.3 (328), 4.4 (192), 5.3 (487), 5.4 (83)
- **Mrs. Pinchwife**: 2.1 (434), 3.1 (260), 3.2 (214), 4.2 (887), 4.4 (165), 5.1 (411), 5.4 (270)
- **Harcourt**: 1.1 (384), 2.1 (393), 3.2 (1,091), 4.1 (159), 5.4 (83)
- **Lady Fidget**: 1.1 (146), 2.1 (705), 4.3 (461), 5.4 (729)
- **Alithea**: 2.1 (684), 3.1 (195), 3.2 (310), 4.1 (462), 5.3 (218), 5.4 (115)
- **Sir Jasper**: 1.1 (303), 2.1 (642), 3.2 (104), 4.3 (262), 5.2 (120), 5.4 (164)
- **Lucy**: 3.2 (100), 4.1 (522), 5.3 (83), 5.4 (189)
- **Dorilant**: 1.1 (409), 2.1 (75), 3.2 (308), 5.4 (38)
- **Quack**: 1.1 (316), 4.3 (167), 5.2 (161), 5.4 (99)
- **Mrs. Squeamish**: 2.1 (219), 4.3 (234), 5.4 (157)

## The longest speeches

| Speech | Scene | Words | Lines |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Mrs. Pinchwife: ““For Mr. Horner.”—So, I am glad he has told me his name. Dear Mr. Horner! but why should I send thee such a letter that will vex thee, and make thee angry with me?—Well, I will not send it.—Ay, but then my husband will kill me—for I see plainly he won’t let me love Mr. Horner—but what care I for my husband?—I won’t, so I won’t, send poor Mr. Horner such a letter—But then my husband—but oh, what if I writ at bottom my husband made me write it?—Ay, but then my husband would see’t—Can one have no shift? ah, a London woman would have had a hundred presently. Stay—what if I should write a letter, and wrap it up like this, and write upon’t too? Ay, but then my husband would see’t—I don’t know what to do.—But yet evads I’ll try, so I will—for I will not send this letter to poor Mr. Horner, come what will on’t.” | Act 4, Scene 2 | 364 | 37 |
| Pinchwife: “How’s this? nay, you shall not stir, madam:—“Dear, dear, dear Mr. Horner”—very well—I have taught you to write letters to good purpose—but let us see’t. “First, I am to beg your pardon for my boldness in writing to you, which I’d have you to know I would not have done, had not you said first you loved me so extremely, which if you do, you will never suffer me to lie in the arms of another man whom I loathe, nauseate, and detest.”—Now you can write these filthy words. But what follows?—“Therefore, I hope you will speedily find some way to free me from this unfortunate match, which was never, I assure you, of my choice, but I’m afraid ’tis already too far gone; however, if you love me, as I do you, you will try what you can do; but you must help me away before tomorrow, or else, alas! I shall be forever out of your reach, for I can defer no longer our—our—” what is to follow “our”?—speak, what—our journey into the country I suppose—Oh woman, damned woman! and Love, damned Love, their old tempter! for this is one of his miracles; in a moment he can make those blind that could see, and those see that were blind, those dumb that could speak, and those prattle who were dumb before; nay, what is more than all, make these dough-baked, senseless, indocile animals, women, too hard for us their politic lords and rulers, in a moment. But make an end of your letter, and then I’ll make an end of you thus, and all my plagues together.” | Act 4, Scene 4 | 280 | 28 |
| Horner: “Doctor, thou wilt never make a good chemist, thou art so incredulous and impatient. Ask but all the young fellows of the town if they do not lose more time, like huntsmen, in starting the game, than in running it down. One knows not where to find ’em; who will or will not. Women of quality are so civil, you can hardly distinguish love from good breeding, and a man is often mistaken: but now I can be sure she that shows an aversion to me loves the sport, as those women that are gone, whom I warrant to be right. And then the next thing is, your women of honour, as you call ’em, are only chary of their reputations, not their persons; and ’tis scandal they would avoid, not men. Now may I have, by the reputation of an eunuch, the privileges of one, and be seen in a lady’s chamber in a morning as early as her husband; kiss virgins before their parents or lovers; and may be, in short, the passe-partout of the town. Now, doctor.” | Act 1, Scene 1 | 180 | 18 |
| Sparkish: “Damn the poets! they have turned ’em into burlesque, as they call it. That burlesque is a hocus-pocus trick they have got, which, by the virtue of Hictius doctius topsy turvy, they make a wise and witty man in the world, a fool upon the stage you know not how: and ’tis therefore I hate ’em too, for I know not but it may be my own case; for they’ll put a man into a play for looking asquint. Their predecessors were contented to make serving-men only their stage-fools: but these rogues must have gentlemen, with a pox to ’em, nay, knights; and, indeed, you shall hardly see a fool upon the stage but he’s a knight. And to tell you the truth, they have kept me these six years from being a knight in earnest, for fear of being knighted in a play, and dubbed a fool.” | Act 3, Scene 2 | 148 | 15 |
| Mrs. Pinchwife: “Well, ’tis e’en so, I have got the London disease they call love; I am sick of my husband, and for my gallant. I have heard this distemper called a fever, but methinks ’tis like an ague; for when I think of my husband, I tremble, and am in a cold sweat, and have inclinations to vomit; but when I think of my gallant, dear Mr. Horner, my hot fit comes, and I am all in a fever indeed; and, as in other fevers, my own chamber is tedious to me, and I would fain be removed to his, and then methinks I should be well. Ah, poor Mr. Horner! Well, I cannot, will not stay here; therefore I’ll make an end of my letter to him, which shall be a finer letter than my last, because I have studied it like anything. Oh sick, sick!” | Act 4, Scene 4 | 146 | 15 |
| Pinchwife: “I agree to all. Let her make haste.—There, ’tis out—” | Act 5, Scene 1 | 143 | 15 |
| Sparkish: “No, madam, I thank you. I suppose, that was a contrivance too of Mr. Horner’s and yours, to make Harcourt play the parson; but I would as little as you have him one now, no, not for the world. For, shall I tell you another truth? I never had any passion for you till now, for now I hate you. ’Tis true, I might have married your portion, as other men of parts of the town do sometimes; and so, your servant. And to show my unconcernedness, I’ll come to your wedding, and resign you with as much joy, as I would a stale wench to a new cully; nay, with as much joy as I would after the first night, if I had been married to you. There’s for you; and so your servant, servant.” | Act 5, Scene 3 | 136 | 14 |
| Lady Fidget: “Not every way.—But let us sit and be merry.” | Act 5, Scene 4 | 122 | 13 |
| Sparkish: “I love to be envied, and would not marry a wife that I alone could love; loving alone is as dull as eating alone. Is it not a frank age? and I am a frank person; and to tell you the truth, it may be, I love to have rivals in a wife, they make her seem to a man still but as a kept mistress; and so good night, for I must to Whitehall.—Madam, I hope you are now reconciled to my friend; and so I wish you a good night, madam, and sleep if you can: for tomorrow you know I must visit you early with a canonical gentleman. Good night, dear Harcourt.” | Act 3, Scene 2 | 116 | 12 |
| Alithea: “But marry Mr. Horner! my brother does not intend it, sure: if I thought he did, I would take thy advice, and Mr. Harcourt for my husband. And now I wish, that if there be any over-wise woman of the town, who, like me, would marry a fool for fortune, liberty, or title, first, that her husband may love play, and be a cully to all the town but her, and suffer none but Fortune to be mistress of his purse; then, if for liberty, that he may send her into the country, under the conduct of some huswifely mother-in-law; and if for title, may the world give ’em none but that of cuckold.” | Act 5, Scene 3 | 114 | 12 |

## Small roles that can be doubled

These pairs of small roles never speak in the same scene, so one actor could play both. Check entrances and silent appearances in your script before you cast it this way.

- Quack and Bookseller
- Mrs. Squeamish and Bookseller
- Mrs. Dainty and Bookseller
- Lady Squeamish and Bookseller
- Boy and Bookseller
- Bookseller and All the Ladies.

## Questions actors ask

### Who has the most lines in The Country Wife?

Horner, with about 714 lines and 5,857 words, 20.1% of everything spoken in the play. Pinchwife is next, with about 661 lines (18.4%).

### How long is The Country Wife?

The full text has 29,126 spoken words, about 208 minutes at 140 words a minute before pauses, scene changes, and cuts. Most productions cut the text, so running times vary.

### How many speaking roles are in The Country Wife?

17 named roles speak in this edition, across 12 scenes. 5 of them have less than 2% of the words, which is why small parts are often doubled.

## How we count

Counts are computed from the full text of the [Standard Ebooks edition](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-wycherley/the-country-wife) (public domain; retrieved 2026-10-08). Words are every spoken word, with stage directions removed. Lines are verse lines as printed, plus prose at 10 words a line, because prose has no fixed line breaks; editions differ, so other sources give slightly different line counts. Time is words at 140 words a minute, before pauses and stage business. A role is counted in a scene when it speaks there. To count a script that is not in the library, paste it into the [script line counter](https://www.offbook.com/tools/script-line-counter).