Daily Inspiration Quote by William Wycherley

A line like this only works because it’s brazenly domestic about something socially explosive. Wycherley, a Restoration dramatist who made a career out of elegant cruelty, turns adultery into real estate: the mistress as a “little country retreat near the town.” The metaphor flatters and diminishes at once. A retreat is charming, restorative, even tasteful; it’s also property, a place to be used, scheduled, and left behind. He drains the affair of romance and risk and replaces it with logistics.

The specific intent is comic candor with a knife in it. Restoration comedy thrives on saying the quiet part out loud, then pretending the honesty is sophistication. “Not to dwell in constantly” frames fidelity less as a moral choice than as a matter of urban planning. The mistress is an amenity, not a relationship; “only for a night and away” makes secrecy sound like good manners. It’s a guide to compartmentalization dressed up as worldly wisdom.

The subtext is power: men get mobility, women get assigned functions. The country retreat is close enough to be convenient, far enough to be deniable - which is to say, the perfect arrangement for preserving a man’s public respectability while indulging private appetite. That’s the Restoration ethos in miniature: a culture freshly unbuttoned after Puritan restraint, obsessed with surfaces, reputation, and the pleasurable arts of hypocrisy. Wycherley isn’t simply endorsing the cynicism; he’s selling it with a wink, letting the audience enjoy the scandal while recognizing how cold the bargain really is.