The School for Wives is updated in Derek Mahon’s translation from 17th century France to the period immediately preceding the July Revolution of 1830.
This boisterous comedy is ‘a blow struck for women’ in which, as the author notes in his preface, the central character, ‘thinking to establish a school for wives, finds he has provided instead the basis of a school for love’.
‘Mahon uses rhyme with a deft abandon, playing on the qualities of the verse making language not just an instrument of fun but a great running joke in itself’, wrote Fintan O’Toole in The Sunday Tribune when he reviewed the Field Day production of High Time, Derek Mahon’s ‘brilliant translation’ of L’Ecole des Maris.
