Jessica Swale
NELL GWYNN
NICK HERN BOOKS
London
www.nickhernbooks.co.uk
Contents
Title Page
An Interview with Jessica Swale
Acknowledgements
Original Production
Dedication
Characters
Nell Gwynn
About the Author
Copyright and Performing Rights Information
‘The People Loved Her Because She Was One of Them’
An Interview with Jessica Swale
Speaking to Heather Neill
Nell Gwynn, orange seller and mistress of Charles II, is a figure of legend, but where did she come from?
It’s hard to know exactly; working-class lives weren’t recorded in enough detail for there to be accurate records, but many believe she was brought up in Coal Yard Alley in Covent Garden, where her mother, ‘Old Ma Gwynn’, kept a brothel. Nell probably worked there, either serving drinks to clients or as a prostitute. Some say she worked as a herring gutter or oyster hawker before she began selling oranges in the pit at Drury Lane. Her father died in a debtors’ prison and she had one sister called Rose. Part of the joy of writing Nell Gwynn has been sketching around the bones of the known facts, imagining and inventing. I never set out to write a documentary-style play, but even if I had, the task would have proved impossible with the inconsistencies and contradictions in her history.
What was the life of an orange seller like?
The girls sold sharp China oranges and sweetmeats in baskets, whilst earning tips passing messages between punters and backstage like a seventeenth-century Tinder. Many were prostitutes too. It’s not clear how Nell got onstage, but I like to imagine that she was spotted wittily doing her job by Charles Hart.
Hart was the star of the day.
Yes and she did become his mistress. Dryden wrote plays for them both in Thomas Killigrew’s company. Nell was a highly successful and popular comic actress and, although she was illiterate, it’s very likely that she really did invent and perform the Epilogue of our play.
What was theatre like when it was re-established after Cromwell’s Commonwealth?
When Charles II returned from France in 1660, he licensed two theatre companies in London: Killigrew’s King’s Company at Drury Lane and Davenant’s Duke’s Company at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. I imagine Killigrew must have been under tremendous pressure as the two companies were in constant competition. At Drury Lane there was an apron stage and a pit filled with benches rather than standing groundlings. Society was much smaller then, so all classes would meet at the theatre – and the Globe emulates that democratic feel. As for Dryden, it is funny that so many of his plays are badly written, but he must have felt the weight of expectation; theatre was re-emerging after an eleven-year gap, he was at the helm of the new culture, the King wanted new plays – it can’t have been easy. No wonder they reinvented so many familiar texts. There was a fashion for rewriting Shakespeare, particularly cheering up the tragedies. King Lear was given a new ending in which Cordelia survives, and Dryden wrote a ‘new play’ called The Enchanted Island, about Prospero and his two daughters – Miranda and Dorinda. Sound familiar? Yet, though his plays haven’t stood the test of time, he was a successful poet and even became Poet Laureate.
How did the first actresses fit into the picture?
Charles II had seen actresses on stage in Paris and decided it was high time we followed fashion. However, the early actresses got a rather raw deal. Writers knew the audiences interest in actresses was often voyeuristic, so played into this by writing body-exposing rape scenes, or writing ‘breeches parts’, in which women, disguised as tight-trousered men (exposing their shapely legs) were then revealed to be female with the dramatic exposure of their breasts. Punters often paid an extra penny to watch the actresses change, many of whom were prostitutes. This was Nell’s world, but I wanted her to question it. If she was learning the craft, falling in love with acting, surely someone of her wit and intelligence would want better parts to play than the ‘wilting waifish woman’. She wasn’t the first woman on stage; that was probably Margaret Hughes, or possibly (as in this play) Moll Davies at the rival company, but Nell was in the first wave of actresses.
You have had considerable success directing plays of this period. Did you consider writing in the style of a Restoration play?
Whilst I originally considered writing in a Restoration style, I thought it would be alienating (and a little perverse) to use archaic language, to be overly verbose and use magniloquent phraseology unnecessarily (you see). What was far more important to me was to capture the quick wit of the time and the equivalent of that for us is more akin to modern farce. So that’s what this is. I’ve peppered it with period references, but I’ve chosen to use modern syntax and diction, with the occasional anachronism for comic effect.
You have actors demonstrating ‘attitudes’, poses to indicate emotions. Would the acting style have seemed alien to us?
It’s easy to assume that it was melodramatic, but actually Pepys describes the best actors as seeming real, so I wonder if the style somehow used precise physical positions as a structure, rather like ballet, whilst still being emotionally connected, like naturalism. The ‘attitudes’ weren’t static poses but frameworks of movements and gestures which actors used to underscore the text. As theatres were large buildings, it was important that emotion could be read in an actor’s posture. Heightened emotion, stylised, but still real.
Are the songs in the play based on the music of the period?
They’re certainly inspired by it. I love writing lyrics, and had been listening to everything from Purcell to an album called The History of Bawdy Songs, which tells you all you need to know! So I would write in pastiche of a style, then pass the lyrics on to Nigel Hess, who would transform them by writing original melodies and scoring them so beautifully that they’d become unrecognisable. He is a genius, I think.
How much is known of Nell’s relationship with the King?
I think they really were in love. She was his favourite mistress for many years, and they spent a lot of private time together. He had a secret passage built from his court rooms in Westminster to her house in Pall Mall, so they could rendezvous for card games and evenings away from the public. Unlike Barbara Castlemaine, she made no attempt to interfere in politics and never asked for a title for herself (though she did for her sons). Louise de Keroualle, another favourite mistress and Nell’s rival, was tremendously unpopular and was known as ‘the Catholic whore’. There’s a story that a crowd once attacked Nell’s coach thinking Louise was inside, so Nell merrily stuck her head out and said ‘Hold, good people, I am the Protestant whore!’ which garnered whoops and cheers from the delighted onlookers. The people loved her because she was one of them. And, of course, there’s Charles’s famous dying wish: ‘Don’t let poor Nellie starve.’
Who was Arlington, the courtier?
Arlington was an ambitious adviser to the King, significantly older and more experienced. I’ve conflated him with Buckingham to give Charles a right-hand man. He may seem outspoken in his manner with the King, but the reality is that the Court was terribly shaken after the Commonwealth, and it was essential that Charles didn’t put a foot wrong. The divine right of kings had just been re-established, order restored, the aristocrats returned. If Arlington and his courtiers could ensure the King’s image was spotless, divine, he would stay on his pedestal. But if his saintly image was tarnished by an affair with a prostitute from Coal Yard Alley, who would see him as divine then? What would stop the next Cromwell?
One of your themes is celebrity.
It’s fascinating to ask whether Nell’s celebrity was beca
use of her brilliance as an actress or because she was the King’s mistress. Pamphleteers – like paparazzi today – would quickly report the activities of the famous, and Charles (and his mistresses) were the hot topic. There was such a frenzy to see him that they even allowed the public into the gallery to watch him eat dinner at night. There was a culture of writing lewd poems about society figures; just look at Rochester. So if there’s a few dirty jokes in the play, don’t blame me, it’s all in the name of historical accuracy…
Was it difficult to distinguish fact from legend and gossip?
Yes, and I made a decision early on that the play should be an entertaining homage to Nell rather than an attempt at documentary-style historical accuracy. Otherwise the play would be a week long, and have to include the fire of London, the plague and the entire Court decamping to Oxford in 1665, just for starters. I made giant wall charts coursing the events of the theatre and the Court, but even then there are contradictions where historians debate when and how. I have drawn on hearsay; the story of the laxatives, for example. But primarily I wanted to honour Nell’s memory, to capture her spirit and what she stood for rather than stick slavishly to facts. The key events of the play are historically accurate, but I’ve allowed myself to embellish. Primarily, I wanted it to be fun. And if it’s a play that Nell would have enjoyed, that’s enough for me.
Reprinted with kind permission of Shakespeare’s Globe.
Heather Neill is a freelance journalist and theatre historian.
Acknowledgements
A play, as Killigrew would no doubt attest, is nothing without its company of players. Enormous thanks to the acting company at the Globe and in the West End; to Dominic Dromgoole for saying yes, to the cast, crew and creative team, to Nigel Hess for his gorgeously bawdy songs, Hugh Durrant for his extraordinary set and costumes, Matt Dann for inexhaustible enthusiasm and most of all to Chris Luscombe, who has the patience of a saint and the sense of humour of a devil, and with whom I have had the greatest adventure.
A huge thank you to our producing triumvirate, Nica Burns, Eleanor Lloyd and Paula Marie Black, an inspirational team, who have made the West End transfer possible.
Thank you to the actors at LAMDA who breathed life into these characters in their infancy, when the script was a Dryden-esque scribble. To Joanna Read, Derek Bond, to Raz Shaw and his cast, Bathsheba Piepe, Adam Scott-Rowley, Daisy Badger, Donal Gallery, Ollo Clark, Raphael Acloque, Sally O’Leary and Toby Gordon. Thank you too to all at RADA, particularly Lloyd Trott, dramaturg extraordinaire. Thank you to our Globe workshop actors – the indefatigable George Banks, Penelope Beaumont, Michael Bryher, Natalie Casey, Jackie Clune, Gerard McCarthy, Dorothea Myers-Bennett and David Newman.
Thank you too to the writers before me who have brought this period to life so vividly and laid the ground for those who write about the era now. In particular, April de Angelis, Jeffrey Hatcher, Graham Hopkins, Charles Beauclerk, and Lady Antonia Fraser.
Thank you to Matt Applewhite, Sarah Liisa Wilkinson and all at Nick Hern Books, to Helen Mumby and the team at MLR, to Ella Smith for helping me find my funny bones, to my folks for their constant support and to Michael, for always being there, late-night whisky at the ready.
J.S.
Nell Gwynn received its West End premiere at the Apollo Theatre, London, on 12 February 2016 (previews from 4 February), with the following cast:
NELL GWYNN
Gemma Arterton
ROSE GWYNN
Anneika Rose
NANCY
Michele Dotrice
OLD MA GWYNN/QUEEN CATHERINE
Sarah Woodward
LADY CASTLEMAINE/LOUISE DE KÉROUALLE
Sasha Waddell
ENSEMBLE
Paige Carter, Ellie Leah
KING CHARLES II
David Sturzaker
CHARLES HART
Jay Taylor
THOMAS KILLIGREW
Michael Garner
EDWARD KYNASTON
Greg Haiste
JOHN DRYDEN
Nicholas Shaw
LORD ARLINGTON
David Rintoul
NED SPIGGET
Peter McGovern
ENSEMBLE
Matthew Durkan, George Jennings
MUSICIANS
Musical Director/recorders/shawm/voice
Emily Baines
Violin/recorders/shawm/voice
Sharon Lindo
Guitars/recorders/chalumeau/voice
Richard Mackenzie
Curtal/serpent/recorders
Nicholas Perry
Director
Christopher Luscombe
Designer
Composer
Nigel Hess
Lighting Designer
Nick Richings
Sound Designer
Jeremy Dunn
Choreographer
Charlotte Broom
Assistant Director
Matthew Dann
Casting Director
Matilda James
Produced in the West End by Nica Burns, Eleanor Lloyd Productions and Paula Marie Black
Nell Gwynn was first performed at Shakespeare’s Globe, London, on 19 September 2015, with the following cast:
NELL GWYNN
Gugu Mbatha-Raw
ROSE GWYNN
Anneika Rose
NANCY
Amanda Lawrence
OLD MA GWYNN/QUEEN CATHERINE
Sarah Woodward
LADY CASTLEMAINE/LOUISE DE KEROUALLE
Sasha Waddell
KING CHARLES II
David Sturzaker
CHARLES HART
Jay Taylor
THOMAS KILLIGREW
Richard Katz
EDWARD KYNASTON
Greg Haiste
JOHN DRYDEN
Graham Butler
LORD ARLINGTON
David Rintoul
NED SPIGGETT
Angus Imrie
Director
Christopher Luscombe
Designer
Hugh Durrant
Composer
Nigel Hess
An earlier version of Nell Gwynn was performed by students at LAMDA, as part of the 2014 Long Project, directed by Raz Shaw.
For my four Nells.
For Nell Leyshon. Because that’s where it all started.
For Gugu, for making Nell a real woman, ‘with skin and heart and some sense in her head’ at the Globe.
For Gemma, for bringing her to life so vividly and reinstating Nell in her own neck of the woods, in London’s West End.
And for Nell Gwynn, of course. I owe you one.
Characters
THE LADIES
NELL GWYNN, our heroine
ROSE GWYNN, Nell’s sister
NANCY, Nell’s dresser and confidante
LADY CASTLEMAINE, Charles’s most ambitious mistress
LOUISE DE KEROUALLE, Charles’s French mistress
QUEEN CATHERINE, Charles’s Portuguese wife
OLD MA GWYNN, Nell’s mother, a brothel madam
THE GENTS
KING CHARLES II, the King, obviously
CHARLES HART, leading actor in the King’s Company
THOMAS KILLIGREW, actor-manager of the King’s Company
EDWARD KYNASTON, actor in the King’s Company, plays the women’s parts
JOHN DRYDREN, playwright
LORD ARLINGTON, Charles II’s adviser
NED SPIGGETT, actor in training in the King’s Company
Other parts are played by members of the company.
The play can be performed with a smaller company when parts are doubled.
Setting
The time is the 1660s. Charles II has ascended the throne.
We begin in the playhouse in Drury Lane, London.
Note on the Text
A forward slash (/) denotes overlapping dialogue, where the second speaker begins when the slash appears in the previou
s person’s line.
Note on the Music
The songs in this script form an essential and (I hope) joyous part of Nell Gwynn. I wanted the play to celebrate the musicality of the Restoration theatre, which brimmed with song and dance. Most of the lyrics are original, some I have borrow from composers of the era. To get a feel for the genre I’d recommend listening to Purcell for something puritanical, then washing it down with the Baltimore Consort’s The Art of the Bawdy Song for kicks. Whilst you’re free to set the lyrics to music yourselves, I would highly recommend you use Nigel Hess’s beautiful song arrangements, which can be licensed from Nick Hern Books.
This ebook was created before the end of rehearsals and so may differ slightly from the play as performed.
ACT ONE
Scene One
Prologue
Fanfare. The play is about to begin! The doors open and the young actor NED SPIGGETT steps out onto the stage to speak the prologue of John Dryden’s new play.
NED. ‘’Tis said that you, the judges of the town,
Would pass a vote to put all prologues down.
For who can show me, since they first were writ,
They e’er converted one hard-hearted nit.’
(Realising his mistake.) Wit. Wit!
NED tries to carry on, but he’s thrown. He continues awkwardly.
‘Yet London’s mended well; in former days
Good prologues were as scarce as now good plays.
Our poet hopes / you – ’