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/