Orange Seller, Actress, Mistress to the King: Nell Gwyn

          Nell Gwyn is one of the most well known actresses of the Restoration period because of her ability to captivate her audience, her relationship with the King and her amazing transformation from a poor server in her mother's brothel to famous actress and finally wealthy courtesan.

          Eleanor ‘Nell’ Gwyn was born February 2, 1650 and traditionally believed to have been born in Hereford in Pipe Well Lane, though some believe she was born in London or Oxford.  Nell was raised by her mother, who is said to have been an alcoholic and the hostess of a brothel, and brought up with her sister Rose serving spirits to her mother’s customers.  There is speculation that Nell was worked as a child prostitute and it is known that around the age of 12 she took a lover for a short number of years.  In her youth Nell and her sister Rose were hired by a friend of their mother’s, Mary Meggs, to sell oranges and other concessions in Theatre Royal, where Charles II was known to frequent.

Nell Gwyn became an actress at the Theatre Royal around 1664 after gaining knowledge of the theatre through her orange-selling job.  She was taught the acting arts by Charles Hart and John Lacy, both of whom are thought to be her lovers.  Nell generally performed well and made herself a star in the theatre, even to the king who hired her, among others, for private plays while the public playhouses were closed due to the black plague, from 1665-66. 

Within two years after the end of the black plague Nell was a mistress to the king and gave birth to her first son with him in 1670, at the age of 20.  The same year her son was born, Nell returned to the stage for a last few performances before officially retiring.  Though the king had multiple mistresses, Nell remained his favorite until his death because of her honest wit, granting her living son a title and giving her the lease and later the ownership of a her own property which is to this day outside of the reach of the crown.  When Nell died in 1687 her estate was valued at over 100,000 English Pounds, in Restoration dollars.  Not too bad for an orange-selling actress eh?

 

Newfangled Contraptions, 3D design and Lighting the Stage

           During Cromwell’s near 20 year rule of England, Charles II spent his exile in France and the Spanish Netherlands where theatre was far more advanced than the theatre in England.  Charles II was a great supporter of the arts and immediately reestablished theatre in England once he returned to his throne.  Before theatre had been condemned by Cromwell, the scenery for each play remained the same throughout the entire production and the sun’s light was used to light the stage, but after the restoration of the monarchy, innovation in the area of theatrical productions was needed.  Over the course of the puritan rule, theatre did not entirely stop but slowed and moved indoors in order to escape the notice of the government.  Because indoor theatre could not depend on natural light and scenery, it was forced to find new ways to light and set the stage for action.

            Though changeable scenery had been in use in France and Ireland for a long time, the first changeable scenery production in England took place at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields on the 28^th of June 1661—an opera/play called The Siege of Rhodes.  Charles II himself made an appearance for the first time at a public playhouse in order to see the spectacle.  After one playhouse introduced changeable scenery, the others had no choice but to follow their lead in order to sell tickets.  The settings themselves were not the only innovation; the methods used to change the sets were of great importance.  Because the set changes were done in front of the audience, efficiency was paramount and to cope with the demands of set changes everything from pulley systems to roller-rails in the floor and even sub-stage organization accessed through trapdoors were used (and even used as elements within the plays—Aphra Behn’s The Rover trapdoor scene).

            Lighting was originally provided by the sun in the afternoon showings of outdoor plays but when theatre moved inside it was necessary to find new ways of lighting the stage, made more difficult by the fact that gas lighting and electricity were unavailable in the Restoration period.  In the early years after Charles II was restored to the throne, windows, candle chandeliers and candle footlights were used to illuminate the stage.  In order to ‘color’ the light, bottles of colored liquids were placed in front of the candles and provided atmosphere for different scenes.  It was not until the mid 1700’s that candle mounts called ladders were introduced to light the sides of the stages, and kerosene lamps were invented which greatly lessened the effort involved in lighting a play.

            I find it fascinating how much our modern theatres depend on techniques developed during the Restoration to entertain their audiences.  Too cool!

           

What Restoration Playhouses Looked Like

The two components of theatre are the written and the performed but many times only the written aspect of theatre is studied.  Since plays are written for the stage, without a clear idea of what a Restoration stage looked like it is difficult to imagine the playwright’s intentions for the play.  

After Cromwell’s ban of the theatre in 1642, the theatre buildings sat and practically decayed for two decades before Charles II took the throne and allowed them to reopen.  The old theatre buildings were generally in bad condition and could not be used.  In conjunction with the disrepair, the Jacobean style of the buildings was not favorable for the new sets and lighting styles and new buildings were needed. 

            The seating in Restoration theatres could be arranged in a rectangular pattern within a narrow playhouse or in a semicircle configuration with rows radiating up the length of the auditorium from the stage to the back of the room.  The pit was reserved for the low class and the view of the entire stage was poor and at times slightly obstructed by elements of the play.  Because of the poor view, pit seats were the cheapest in the theatre.  Behind the pit was the gallery, where the middle class sat, which extended from the pit to the back of the theatre.  The Gallery seats had a good view of the stage and because of the better view they cost more, though certainly not as much as the box seats.  The box seats were built in a semicircle around the pit and galley and were level with or higher than the stage, giving the occupier an excellent view of the action.   Generally only the very wealthy could afford box seats because of the price, but for the view and the ability to avoid persons of lower stations, they paid the premium.

            The stage of some 17^th century theatres were framed in a proscenium arch that served to focus the attention of the audience on the actors (and actresses), while other theatres presented a stage that jutted forward into the audience through the proscenium arch or without one.  On stages that protruded into the auditorium, audience members would at times climb onto the stage and interact with the actors because there was no real barrier between the stage and the people, though this practice is most closely associated with earlier periods.

 

           

 

 

King Charles II, The Merry Monarch

           After 18 years of Cromwell and Puritan governance, many English citizens were overjoyed to have King Charles II restored to his rightful throne and normality returned to the people.  During the English Civil War King Charles I was executed and his son, Charles II was exiled and fled to France to meet his remaining family and later to the Spanish Netherlands once the former allied with Cromwell and the English Commonwealth.  Charles II’s coronation took place in 1661at the age of 30, after the reign of Cromwell, though official documents were rewritten to state that Charles II had immediately succeeded to the throne after his father’s death.  The rule of Cromwell was, in essence, struck from the official record by the new king, Charles II, nicknamed the “Merry Monarch” because of his devotion to pursuits of pleasure.

During the reign of Cromwell the theatre was banned and all actors were deemed rogues—indeed the theatre offended Cromwell’s Puritan ideals so much that many playhouses were torn down during his usurpation of power.  Under King Charles II the theatre sprang into being and after the suppression of the previous puritan government, it excelled in bawdy comedies of manners and in the celebration of sexuality and libertinism.  Charles II specifically granted Royal patents, which gave rights to stage plays, to the King’s Company and the Duke’s Company who built new playhouses in place of those that had been demolished in Cromwell’s great purge.  Charles II not only supported the reemergence of the theatre but decreed for the first time in English history that women were to be permitted on stage so they could play female roles.  The emergence of women on the stage increased the already ravenous appetites of the theatre spectators because now the bawdy female characters were played by real women who exuded a tremendous sex appeal after 18 years of sexual repression—King Charles was quite a fan of women on the stage, even going so far as to take Nell Gwyn for a mistress.

Indeed, Charles was simply a fan of women, stage or no, and is reported to have acknowledged 14 illegitimate children by multiple women through whom his bloodline continues to this day.  Despite his many mistresses and illegitimate children his wife, Catherine was unable to conceive and the throne passed to Charles’s brother James.  On his deathbed popular actress and long-time mistress Nell Gwyn was in the king’s thoughts; Charles II is reported to have said, “Let not poor Nelly starve”.

A link or two…

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-closure-of-the-theatres/

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/r/restoration-drama/

 

What Kind of Restoration?

Restoration theatre is a very specific area of study which focuses on England during the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries and on the written and performance components of theatre.  Though all times, places and areas of literature have their own contexts, the socio-political context of Restoration theatre is so important that the arts from that time are not called Charlesoneian or Post-Cromwellian, though they certainly could be, but are simply recognized by a very complex political shift—the restoration of the monarchy to the seat of power. 

            In 1642 the English Civil War began in which there were major conflicts between those in support of the monarchy and those in support of a parliamentary system of government.   King Charles I had fallen from the favor of many of his subjects and in 1649 he was tried for various crimes against the people and was executed; his son, Charles II and others were exiled.  After the execution of the king, England became a commonwealth and Oliver Cromwell was appointed the Lord Protector, though he only protected members of certain groups within the commonwealth.  Cromwell believed that God acted through him and in the name of God and the Puritan ideology he reshaped England into a fierce Protestant nation, condemning Catholicism, work on the Sabbath, immoral behavior and such things as vibrant clothing and frivolous uses of time.

            Theatre, deemed synonymously immoral and frivolous by Cromwell was eradicated from England during the 18 years of his/ his son’s rule.  Charles I, whom Cromwell succeeded in executing, had been a supporter of the theatre and after the interregnum his son Charles II reestablished the theatre in the joy, appeasement and restoration of all.

"The Libertine" and the Theatrical Truth of The Earl of Rochester

I have just watched “The Libertine”, featuring Johnny Depp as the Earl of Rochester, John Wilmot, and was, as the Earle would say, moved.  Depp played the role of a man who desperately wanted to feel and have meaningful connections in life but whose experiences were largely limited to the superficial.  The audience watches as the Earl of Rochester drinks away his talent and his life in the desire to experience something other than his melancholic emptiness that exists in spite of his title, position, possessions and beautiful, loving wife.  Depp perfectly captures the essence of a man who sees pettiness and worthlessness in the highest endeavors of society, and artistic beauty in the decadence and overindulgence of the classic tortured soul.  

The Earl says, “I wish to be moved. I cannot feel in life. I must have others do it for me here in the theatre” and continues to say, “ the theatre is my drug, and my illness is so far advanced that my physic must be of the highest quality”.  Theatre indeed offers one of the best mirrors to reality in the satires of comedies and the necessary catharsis of the tragedy.  Aristotle saw the importance of the theatre and its ability to disassociate the audience from their lives and societies and reveal the idiocy and/ or horrors that they willingly participate in.  The issue with the Earl of Rochester is that he did not realize that, in his illness, he had become his drug, had become theatre and allowed art to permeate his every action and word.  In life the Earl sought an experience that could give him a cathartic release; drink only temporarily numbs the sting of the emptiness, sexual release is fleeting and finally he falls into the abyss of self loathing and hates himself even more when he realizes that two things will happen; the people who care for him will either continue to love him despite his repulsiveness or they will feel apathy towards him, not because of what he has allowed himself to become, but because it was he who chose the path to digression.

Over the course of the film, the Earl referred to himself as a natural being; he says to an actor in a tone of condescension, “I am Nature, you are art. Let us see how we compare”. While the actor plays a character and speaks the lines given to him, the Earl is free to create himself in his own image, not directed or cued into one action or another; however, the Earl is so concerned with his personal rebellion and need to feel anything that he cannot realize that his life is theatre.  The Earl cannot be art and simultaneously be an objective viewer of himself.  Though the Earl recognizes the anti-societal message of his life’s play, he cannot appreciate his life, a commentary on the banality of humanity and quest for catharsis, as a reflection of the world around him. 

When the Earl approaches Lizzie, he says to her, “I think I can make you an actress of truth, not a creature of artifice”, but no matter how truthful an actress is in her acting, her role is not to create, but only to modify another’s creation—she can allow herself to feel what she assumes a character would feel, but she is separated from that character because she is real and it is a reflection of the playwright’s interpretation of reality.  An actress can imitate a role and, for all intended purposes can become a character, but there is a separation between a person and the art of another, ergo an actress is not a character (except the character that is herself).  The Earl, a piece of art in and of himself, can only see truth in art and interpretation and perceives that what is reality is true artifice.