The Constant Wife, a play written in 1926 by W. Somerset Maugham, is a comedy whose modern and amusing take on marriage and infidelity gives a quick-witted, alternative view on how to deal with an extramarital affair.

[1] A "sparkling comedy of ill manners",[2] The Constant Wife features the resourceful and charming Constance Middleton, who has long known that her husband had been having an affair with her best friend, Marie-Louise.

When the affair is publicly acknowledged, rather than reprimanding or divorcing him, she embraces the opportunity to create an independent life, starting a new job, paying her husband for room and board, and taking on her own lover.

Called one of Maugham's "most clever and captivating creations",[5] Constance is the calm, intelligent, and self-possessed wife of John Middleton, a successful London doctor.

[8] It was adapted as the film Charming Sinners (1929), with William Powell, Clive Brooks, Ruth Chatterton and Mary Nolan, directed by Robert Milton, Paramount Pictures.