the most beautiful stage direction: the Steinkirk scene

What: In Act V of Colley Cibber’s 1704 comedy The Careless Husband, upon finding her husband asleep beside her handmaiden, Lady Easy [Takes a Steinkirk off her Neck, and lays it gently on his Head.] Why: Following up his popular sex farce Love’s Last Shift, in which the moral is “a wife is as good […]