Sir Charles, a younger son with no estate, is unhappily married to the wealthier, older and "ill-bred" Lady Beauclair.
At the end of the play it is revealed that Lady Beauclair's first husband, Mr Flywife, is alive and back to London after several years in Jamaica.
Wildlove finally changes his attitude and reveals his true feelings for Mrs Beauclair when he mistakenly thinks she has married another man.
[2] Jose Yebra suggests that the play mirrors contemporary 'anxieties and fears in view of the overall change undergone by the English society in late seventeenth century... Once the Carolean sexual libertinism abated, the Augustan stage became more reactionary and morally repressive.
It combines the conservative traits patriarchal Augustan theatre demanded from female writers with Pix’s pro-female discourse that contests, albeit timidly, women’s discrimination.