William Hogarth's The Laughing Audience provided
inspiration for the production, as well as a design background for the playbill
and program cover.
During rehearsals, there were many questions that arose about
the play that dictated further research on my part, which I was glad to
undertake! The director wanted to replace the term
"bubled," which means "tricked" with another word, and
I was able to provide several alternatives that would be more accessible to the
audience members.
The term "smooty" was one that I had left out of my
performance glossary, but I was able to determine that the word is an earlier
variant on "smutty" (not suprising in Restoration comedy).
"Megrim" was another word I investigated in follow-up research; often
used in the plural sense of "megrims," it means "migraines"
or "falling sickness." The Oxford English Dictionary provided
some excellent information on the connotations of the phrase "tous'd and
mous'd," which was certainly challenging, as was investigating the meaning
of the word "puther" as it is used in the context of the script.
Other phrases in the play, such as the French "Pas par tout," merited
further research beyond what I had already provided in the glossary, as well as
assistance with correct pronunciation.
Because The Country Wife is such a bawdy play,
there were many racy in-jokes that merited further illumination and research,
and the director even asked me to investigate the use of the word
"come" in its various noun and verb forms over the centuries.
But perhaps the most interesting research I did was into
Horner's dirty reference to china: "I cannot make China for you all, but I
will have a Roll-waggon for you too another time." A "rolwagen"
is a type of Chinese cylindrical porcelain vase, or a Dutch imitation of one.
"Rolwagen" is a name still in use in the porcelain trade in Holland,
and denotes a cylindrical vase, usually with a flat lip. It also resembles a
penis, as shown below, so the in-joke can be fully understood:
