Skip to content
Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter March 11, 2020

Restoration Celebrity Culture: Twenty-First-Century Regenderings and Rewritings of Charles II, the Merry Monarch, and his Mistress “Pretty, witty” Nell Gwyn

  • Laura Martínez-García EMAIL logo
From the journal Anglia

Abstract

Charles II was a figure of controversy during his reign and continues to be one of the most iconic and well-known British monarchs; the portrayals of this King vary significantly from one author to the other and from one period to the next, but they invariably focus on his penchant for frivolity and his sexual liaisons. One of his favourite royal mistresses is Nell Gwyn, the oyster girl, turned orange seller, turned actress, turned mother of Dukes. The figure of ‘pretty, witty’ Nelly has fascinated biographers, filmmakers and novelists for centuries due to its Cinderella-like undertones and the natural fascination that the first female performers have exerted on the public imagination. This paper studies modern rewritings of Charles’s and Nell’s affair and of the two lovers themselves, to trace the attitudes towards the King’s illicit affair and towards the actress’s social climbing. The aim of this paper is to question the motivations for these re-imaginings and to help discover the reasons why the monarch and his “Protestant Whore”[1] have become the focus of such varied re-writings and two of the most prominent characters of the British public imagination, surpassing the boundaries of their professions, to become part of popular culture.

Works Cited

Ashley, Maurice. 1971. Charles II, the Man and the Statesman. London: Praeger.Search in Google Scholar

Bagwell, Gillian. 2011. The Darling Strumpet. London: Avon.Search in Google Scholar

Baker, Kage. 2012. Nell Gwynne’s On Land and At Sea. Burton, MI: Subterranean Press.Search in Google Scholar

Baker, Kage and J. K Potter. 2009. The Women of Nell Gwynne’s. Burton, MI: Subterranean Press.Search in Google Scholar

Beauclerk, Charles. 2005. Nell Gwyn: Mistress to a King. New York: Grove Press.Search in Google Scholar

Behn, Aphra. 1996. “The Feign’d Curtizans, or, A Nights Intrigue (1679)”. In: Janet Todd (ed.). The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. VI: The Plays, 1678–1682. London: Pickering, 83–159. <https://www.oxfordscholarlyeditions.com/view/10.1093/actrade/9781851960170.book.1/actrade-9781851960170-work-2> [accessed 5 Apr. 2018].10.1093/oseo/instance.00212646Search in Google Scholar

Brown, William J., Michael D. Basil and Mihai C. Bocarnea. 2003. “Social Influence of an International Celebrity: Responses to the Death of Princess Diana”. Journal of Communication 53.4: 587–605.10.1111/j.1460-2466.2003.tb02912.xSearch in Google Scholar

Bush-Bailey, Gilli. 2007. “Revolution, legislation and autonomy”. In: John Stokes (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to the Actress. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 15–32.Search in Google Scholar

Bush-Bailey, Gilli. 2009. Treading the Bawds: Actresses and Playwrights on the late-Stuart stage. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Carvalho, Cristina. 2014. “Charles II: A Man Caught Between Tradition and Science”. Panorâmica: Revista Electrónica de Estudos Angl o-Americanos / An Anglo-American Studies Journal 3:5–24.Search in Google Scholar

Chapman, James. 2005. Past and Present: National Identity and the British Historical Film. London: I.B.Tauris.10.5040/9780755698820Search in Google Scholar

Conway, Alison. 2006. “Known Fact or Urban Legend? Nell Gwynn’s Oxford Pronouncement”. Notes and Queries 53.2: 209–210.10.1093/notesj/gjl030Search in Google Scholar

Cunningham, Peter. 2009. The Story of Nell GwynAnd the Sayings of Charles the Second. Kirkwood, NY: Ballou Press.Search in Google Scholar

Davies, Serena. 2013. “David Starkey: it is ‘ludicrous’ to suggest that historical novelists have authority”. The Telegraph. <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10049866/David-Starky-it-is-ludicruous-to-suggest-that-historical-novelists-have-authority.html> [accessed 10 February 2020].Search in Google Scholar

Deary, Terry. 2010. Horrible Histories Collection. London: Scholastic.Search in Google Scholar

Ezell, Margaret J. M. 2017. The Oxford English Literary History: Volume V: 16451714: The Later Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198183112.003.0001Search in Google Scholar

Felando, Cynthia. 2004. “Clara Bow is It”. In: Andrew Willis (ed.). Film Stars: Hollywood and Beyond. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 1–24.Search in Google Scholar

Fletcher, Anthony. 1999. Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 15001800. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Foucault, Michel. 1998. The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge: The Will to Knowledge v. 1. London: Penguin.Search in Google Scholar

Fraser, Antonia. 2004. King Charles II. London: Orion Pub Co.Search in Google Scholar

Granger, James. 2010. A supplement, consisting of corrections and large additions to a Biographical History of England, ... and a list of curious portraits of eminent persons not yet engraved: To the author, James Granger, Volume 2 of 2. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale ECCO, Print Editions.Search in Google Scholar

de Groot, Jerome. 2009. The Historical Novel. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203868966Search in Google Scholar

Gundle, Stephen. 2008. “The ‘Bella Italiana’ and the ‘English Rose’: Reflections on Two National Typologies of Feminine Beauty”. In: Manfred Pfister and Ralf Hirtel (eds.). Performing National Identity. Leiden: Brill Rodopi. 137–155.10.1163/9789401205238_009Search in Google Scholar

Hanrahan, David C. 2006. Charles II and the Duke of Buckingham: The Merry Monarch and the Aristocratic Rogue. Stroud: The History Press.Search in Google Scholar

Harris, Anita. 2003. Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Harris, Tim. 1990. London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration Until the Exclusion Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Harris, Tim. 2006. Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms, 16601685. London: Penguin.Search in Google Scholar

Horrible Histories: Seasons 1–5. 2013. Dir. Steve Connelly and Dominic Brigstocke. IMPORTS.Search in Google Scholar

Howe, Elizabeth. 1992. The First English Actresses: Women and Drama, 16601700. Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Johnson, Sarah L. 2005. Historical Fiction: A Guide to the Genre. Devon: Libraries Unlimited.Search in Google Scholar

Kear, Adrian and Deborah Lynn Steinberg (eds.). 1999. Mourning Diana: Nation, Culture and the Performance of Grief. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Keating, Erin M. 2013. “Envious Productions: Actresses, Audiences, and Affect in the Restoration Playhouse”. Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 16601700 37.2: 37–53.Search in Google Scholar

Kenyon, J.P. 1990. Stuart England. London: Penguin Group.Search in Google Scholar

Luckhurst, Mary and Jane Moody. 2005. “Introduction: The Singularity of Theatrical Celebrity”. In: Mary Luckhurst and Jane Moody (eds.). Theatre and Celebrity in Britain, 1660–2000. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 1–11.10.1057/9780230523845Search in Google Scholar

Luckhurst, Mary and Jane Moody (eds.). 2005. Theatre and celebrity in Britain, 16602000. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230523845Search in Google Scholar

MacLeod, Catharine. 2001. “Good, but Not Like’: Peter Lely, Portrait Practice, and the Creation of a Court Look”. In: Julia Marciari Alexander and Catharine MacLeod (eds.). Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of Charles II. London: National Portrait Gallery. 50–61.Search in Google Scholar

Martínez-García, Laura. 2014. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century English Comedies as a New Kind of Drama: A Foucauldian Interpretation of Family Relations, Sexuality, and Resistance as Psychological Power. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.Search in Google Scholar

Martínez-García, Laura. 2016 a. “Nell Gwyn as the Epitome of Englishness: The Case of Anna Neagle, the True English Rose”. In: On the Move: Glancing Backwards To Build a Future in English Studies. Bilbao: Servicio de Publicaciones Universidad de Deusto. 133–140.Search in Google Scholar

Martínez-García, Laura. 2016 b. “Nell Gwyn’s many after-lives: Taming ‘the Protestant Whore’ in 21st century popular fiction”. ANTAE JOURNAL 3.2: 181–195.Search in Google Scholar

Martínez-García, Laura. 2017. “Nelly or Ellen? Revamping the First English Actresses in Contemporary Popular Culture”. SEDERI Yearbook 27: 213–228.10.34136/sederi.2017.10Search in Google Scholar

Martínez-García, Laura and Raquel Serrano González. 2015. “How to Represent Female Identity on the Restoration Stage: Actresses (Self) Fashioning”. International Studies. Interdisciplinary Political and Cultural Journal 16.1: 97–110.10.2478/ipcj-2014-0007Search in Google Scholar

Maus, Katharine Eisaman. 1979. “‘Playhouse Flesh and Blood’: Sexual Ideology and the Restoration Actress”. ELH 46.4: 595–617.10.2307/2872481Search in Google Scholar

McGuigan, Jim. 2000. “British Identity and ‘The People’s Princess’”. The Sociological Review 48.1: 1–18.10.1111/1467-954X.00200Search in Google Scholar

McManus, Darragh. 2008. “Grunge is ancient history”. The Guardian. <https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2008/oct/31/grunge> [accessed 23 February 2020].Search in Google Scholar

Molloy, J.F. 1885. Royalty Restored: Or, London Under Charles II. London: Ward & Downey.Search in Google Scholar

Nell Gwyn. 1926. Dir. Herbert Wilcox. Simply Media.Search in Google Scholar

Nell Gwyn. 1934. Dir. Herbert Wilcox. Simply Media.Search in Google Scholar

Nipps, Karen. 2014. “Cum privilegio: Licensing of the Press Act of 1662”. The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 84.4: 494–500.Search in Google Scholar

Nussbaum, Felicity. 2005. “Actresses and the economics of celebrity, 1700–1800”. In: Mary Luckhurst and Jane Moody (eds.). Theatre and Celebrity in Britain, 16602000. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 148–168.Search in Google Scholar

Nussbaum, Felicity. 2008. “‘Real, Beautiful Women’: Actresses and The Rival Queens”. Eighteenth-Century Life 32.2: 138–158.Search in Google Scholar

Orgeron, Marsha. 2003. “Making ‘It’ in Hollywood: Clara Bow, Fandom, and Consumer Culture”. Cinema Journal 42.4: 76–97.Search in Google Scholar

Parmar, Priya. 2011. Exit the actress. New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster.Search in Google Scholar

Payne Fisk, Deborah and John Canfield. 1995. Cultural readings of Restoration and eighteenth-century English theater. Athens: University of Georgia Press.Search in Google Scholar

Pearse, Maplas. 1969. Stuart London. London: Macdonald.Search in Google Scholar

Pepys, Samuel. 1870. Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys. 3rd ed. Ed. Richard Braybrooke. London: Frederick Warne & Co.Search in Google Scholar

Perry, Gillian, Joseph R. Roach and Shearer West. 2011. The first actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.10.3998/mpub.4693833Search in Google Scholar

Popple, Jennifer Elizabeth. 2011. Spectacular Bodies: Nell Gwyn, Elizabeth Barry, and Anne Bracegirdle As Symbols of Contract, Struggle, and Subversion in Restoration England, 1660170. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar.Search in Google Scholar

Pullen, Kirsten. 2005. Actresses and Whores: On Stage and in Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Raymond, Joad. 2006. Pamphlets Pamphlteering Early Modern Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Roach, Joseph. 2003. “Celebrity Erotics: Pepys, Performance, and Painted Ladies”. The Yale Journal of Criticism 16.1: 211–230.Search in Google Scholar

Roach, Joseph. 2005. “Public Intimacy: The Prior History of ‘It’”. In: Mary Luckhurst and Jane Moody (eds.), Theatre and Celebrity in Britain, 1660–2000. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 15–30. <https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523845_2> [accessed 15 Mar. 2019]Search in Google Scholar

Rojek, Chris. 2004. Celebrity. London: Reaktion Books.Search in Google Scholar

Shaw, Harry E. 1983. “An Approach to the Historical Novel”. In: The Forms of Historical Fiction: Sir Walter Scott and His Successors. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 19–50.10.7591/9781501723278Search in Google Scholar

Stage Beauty. 2005. Dir. Richard Eyre. Lions Gate.Search in Google Scholar

Stenn, David. 2000. Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild. Lanham, MD: Cooper Square Press.Search in Google Scholar

Straub, Kristina. 1992. Sexual Suspects: Eighteenth-Century Players and Sexual Ideology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Street, Sarah. 1997. British National Cinema. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Tapsell, Grant. 2007. The Personal Rule of Charles II, 168185. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer.Search in Google Scholar

Twain, Mark. 1994. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Dover Publications.Search in Google Scholar

Wallace, D. 2004. The Woman’s Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 19002000. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Search in Google Scholar

Wilcox, Herbert Sydney. 1969. Twenty-Five Thousand Sunsets: The Autobiography of Herbert Wilcox. South Brunswick, NJ: A. S. Barnes.Search in Google Scholar

Wilson, Derek. 2004. All the King’s Women. London: Pimlico.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2020-03-11
Published in Print: 2020-03-04

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 26.5.2024 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/ang-2020-0006/html
Scroll to top button