Tho’ this play met with greater applause, than the author expected, yet it was not without its enemies.  These were people of the graver sort, who blamed the looseness of the scenes, and the unguarded freedom of the dialect.  These complaints induced Vanbrugh to make some observations upon them in his preface, which he thus begins, ’To go about to excuse half the defects this abortive brat is come into the world with, would be to provoke the town with a long useless preface, when ’tis, I doubt, sufficiently sour’d already, by a tedious play.

’I do therefore, with all the humility of a repenting sinner, confess it wants every thing—­but length, and in that I hope the severest critics will be pleased to acknowledge, I have not been wanting.  But my modesty will sure attone for every thing, when the world shall know it is so great, I am even to this day insensible of those two shining graces, in the play (which some part of the town is pleased to compliment me with) blasphemy and bawdy.  For my part I cannot find them out; if there were any obscene expressions upon the stage, here they are in print; for I have dealt fairly, I have not sunk a syllable, that could be ranged under that head, and yet I believe with a steady faith, there is not one woman of real reputation in town, but when she has read it impartially over in her closet, will find it so innocent, she’ll think it no affront to her prayer book, to lay it upon the same shelf.’

Being encouraged by the success of the Relapse, he yielded to the sollicitation of lord Hallifax, who had read some of the loose sheets of his Provok’d Wife, to finish that piece; and after throwing them into a proper form, gave the play to the Theatre in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields.  Though Sir John had a greater inclination to serve the other company, yet the request of lord Hallifax, so eminent a patron of the poets, could not be resisted.  Sir Thomas Skipwith was not offended at so reasonable a compliance, and the Provok’d Wife was acted 1698, with success.  Some critics likewise objected against this, as a loose performance; and that it taught the married women how to revenge themselves on their husbands, who should offend them.

The play has indeed this moral, that such husbands as resemble Sir John Brute, may expect that neglected beauty, and abused virtue, may be provoked to yield to the motives of revenge, and that the forcible sollicitations of an agreeable person, who not only demonstrates a value, but a passion for what the possessor slights, may be sufficiently prevalent with an injured wife to forfeit her honour.

Though this event may often fall out, that the brutality of a husband produces the infidelity of a wife, yet it need not be shewn upon the stage; women are not generally so tame in their natures, as to bear neglect with patience, and the natural resentments of the human heart will without any other monitor point out the method of revenge.  Besides, every husband ought not to be deemed a brute, because a too delicate, or ceremonious wife, shall, in the abundance of her caprice, bestow upon him that appellation.  Many women who have beheld this representation, may have been stimulated to imitate lady Brute in her method of revenge, without having suffered her provocation.  This play verifies the observation of Mr. Pope,