You're Dead to Me - Nell Gwyn (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: August 5, 2023

Greg Jenner and his guests travel back to 17th-century England to meet a celebrity of the Restoration era. As was one of the first actresses in comedy and a mistress to King Charles II, Nell Gwyn's life was as eventful as her turns on the stage.Greg is joined by associate professor and writer, Diana Solomon and by comedian, actor and writer, Jess Knappett.For the full-length version of this episode, please look further back in the feed.Script by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Research by William Clayton Produced by Cornelius Mendez

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, a BBC Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I am a public historian, author and broadcaster. I'm the chief nerd on the funny kids show Horrible Histories. And today we are packing our theatre programmes and interval snacks to travel all the way back to the 17th century, to England,

to learn all about the actress, queen of comedy and mistress to King Charles II, it's Nell Gwynne. And to do that, I'm joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, she's an associate professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada and is an expert on theatre, print culture and best of all, the careers of funny women in the 17th century. It's Professor Diana Solomon. Welcome, Diana. Thank you so much for having me. And in Comedy Corner, we are joined very handily by a comedian, actress, writer and producer.

You'll know her from loads of stuff, including her hilarious sitcom Drifters, which she wrote, produced and starred in, as well as the Inbetweeners movie, 8 Out of 10 Cats, Drunk History and an unforgettable turn on Taskmaster. And sitcom Ghosts, one of the best out there. It's the brilliant Jessica Knappett. Or is it Jess Knappett? Well, I answer to both, really. Let's just go with Jess because it's quicker. All right welcome to the show Jess Knappett. Thank you it's such a pleasure to be here I love this podcast. Have you heard of Nell Gwynn Jess? Yeah I mean there's some

quite negative associations with Nell Gwynn I feel. I did think oh Nell Gwynn bawdy romp of an actress and that's why you thought we'll get nap it on i get it you thought we'll get the modern day nel gwynn on that's what we'll do so what do you know this is where i have a go at guessing what listeners at home might know about today's subject. And you may know that Life of Nell Gwynn is one of the greatest of the Rags to Riches stories, or in this case, Poor Putter Pal-Mal. Maybe you've heard that Nell Gwynn started her theatrical career selling fruit in playhouses before becoming an acting sensation and then catching the eye of King Charlie II.

Nell Gwynn pops up a fair bit in pop culture. Most recently, you may have caught Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Gemma Arterton starring in Jessica Swale's award-winning play Nell Gwynn in the West End, which is soon to be a movie starring Emma Mackey. But how did a working class lass become the beloved toast of London and the apple of the merry monarch's eye? And is there more to her than just being a cheeky charmer? Let's find out, shall we? Professor Diana Nelgwin, probably born around 1650, bang in the middle of a completely chaotic century. Can you give Jess and our listeners a super speedy summary of the context of the middle

of the part of that century, the culture, the politics? It was a very chaotic time. Following the execution of Charles I in 1649, there was a short-lived republic in the British Isles where there was no monarch, the Puritans were in charge, and Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector. By 1660, however, Charles II returned from exile in Europe and recovered the throne. This is generally thought of as quite a celebratory time, but the restoration did not, in fact, restore stability to the realm. However, Charles did bring back lots of enjoyable elements that the Puritans had gotten rid of, including the theatre. So Nell Gwynne is born into this political maelstrom in about 1650, give or take.

What do we know of her childhood? It's slim pickings. We can be sure she came from a very poor family, and we're quite sure she got a job selling oranges at the theatre in her very early teens or perhaps even younger. She's basically a doctor now. I mean, selling oranges, that's your latter day Barocca hander-outer. And how does Nell Gwynn go from selling oranges in the aisle to getting onto centre stage? I mean,

is it drama school? Is it open casting? Is it Restoration Britain's Got Talent? So Gwynn started out selling oranges in the theater around the year 1663, before taking bit parts in plays a year later. We can't exactly pinpoint her debut, but she was certainly on stage in credited roles by the age of about 13 or so in 1664. We do know that 1667 was a big year for Nelquin. She played two key roles in plays that we believe premiered that year. One role was the part of Myrda in James Howard's play, All Mistaken or the Mad Couple. Myrda was the love interest to Philidor, played by her probably real-life lover, Charles Hart.

The other role that she is perhaps best known for was that of Florimel in John Dryden's play Secret Love or The Maiden Queen. The play was an enormous success, and Gwyn became a leading lady of the King's company at that point. Wow. She's a star, 1667. So this role is Florimel. The play is called The Secret Love or The Maiden Queen. Could they not decide which one or is that the entire name? So most of the plays in the Restoration did have these subtitles as well. And sometimes the two parts of a title might even refer to two different plots. So Secret Love or The Maid and Queen is actually what's known as a split plot play,

where there was a comic plot and a serious plot. I've actually been in a restoration play. It's actually a bit of a nightmare getting an audition for a play because then you have to read the whole play. It was only a few scenes then you have to read the whole play. It was only a few scenes so I just read the bits I was in and then I got it but then I looked at the play and I was like I'm only in that little bit and I had to do like a three-month run or something. It was honestly quite tedious doing the same thing over and over again and only having a little part but to me that the joy of being an actress is that you get to do different things every day if i can interject you actually would have enjoyed acting in the restoration then because the actors they didn't have an entire copy of the script they just had

their own parts so you wouldn't have had to read the whole thing well that's the thing isn't it that's what most actresses do they They're just like, oh, boring, boring, boring, my bit. Yeah. Boring, boring, boring, boring. My bit. What are the skills required for an actress in comedy in the mid 1600s?

Nell Gwynn is illiterate, we think, right? So I guess good memory for a start. We think maybe she was semi-literate. She seems to have been able to write her initials or possibly her name. We don't actually know about her reading skills.

She had many, many talents that allowed her to just capture the love of the audience. So one of the roles that she excelled at was playing one half of a witty couple. So she would play in the Restoration's version of Shakespeare's Beatrice and Benedict. But in these Restoration couplings, the women was actually given a bit more power in the relationship. So Gwyn and Charles Hart made an excellent pairing where they exchanged witty banter. They starred as versions of this witty couple in at least eight different plays. And many of these plays were revived. So they were very, very popular.

That just, to me, it sounds like she's playing off the audience a little bit. And the fact that she's illiterate, I wonder if she was a bit of an improviser. It's very hard as a theater historian to know exactly what went on on the stage. And so something like improvisation is one of those big questions that we don't know how much of it happened. So another aspect of restoration taste in comedy that Gwynn excelled at was the so-called Britches role, where actresses playing female characters cross-dressed for part of the play as a young man, and they wore the britches. Ironically, they looked more feminine because they were showing off their ankles and calves. Also, restoration plays typically

began with a dramatic prologue and ended with an epilogue. And these were short, usually poetic speeches, often allotted to comic actors. And so Gwyn naturally delivered several of these. And you mentioned the britches part, Diana. So Samuel Pepys is a huge fan of Nell Gwyn, and particularly he says, there is a comical part done by Nell, which is Florimel, that I never can hope ever to see the like done again by man or woman. So great a performance of a comical part, both as a mad girl and then most and best of all, when she comes in as a young gallant.

So as a young man, that's a pretty good review, isn't it? So she's not just a bit of fluff. You know, she's good. It sounds pretty cool, though, that she was having this great role as a woman and then basically went off and put her britches on and came back in as a gallant it's much funnier when a woman does some sort of impersonation of a of a male character one quarter of all restoration plays featured a britches part they loved it and also they're presumed there's some songs i mean we know that nell can can sing, she's a triple threat. All of this makes it sound like she's a star, she's a hit, she's making good money, everyone loves her. But the conditions at the time for

actresses, they're not good. So we don't have much in the way of salary records from the early restoration. But we do know that some male actors had an opportunity that female actors didn't have, which was that they could hold shares in the acting company. The other thing we should mention, Diana, is that actresses were highly sexualized, often against their will, of course. Their dressing rooms were open to the public, right? Men could just breeze in and go and see the famous actress they'd spent two hours ogling. Is that just female actors or is that any actor? Theoretically, they could visit any actor.

We do have a lot of reports of men visiting female actors backstage. For example, Samuel Pepys writes about how he goes backstage with his wife. He sees Gwyn undressing and both he and his wife kiss her at a certain point peeps is watching the play he's turned to his wife and he said do you want to go backstage after and watch her undress and uh give her a kiss she's gone no Samuel while we're doing it but it tells us a lot about the paradoxical status of a famous actress on the stage on the stage. On the one hand, she's renowned, she's known, perhaps becoming rich.

And yet at the same time, people feel that they can just access her whenever they want. They can just wander in and say, I want to look at you. I want to kiss you. So 1667 is her big breakout year. And Secret Love is the great play that she's in, written for her, as you say, Diana. And if Jess and I were to jump in a time machine and try and go and see that play, what's the theatre going to be like? Are we sitting down? What's it smell like? What's it sound like? The theatre in the Restoration was quite different from what we expect when we go to the theatre today. We expect, for example, the lights to go down. That was not the case in the Restoration Theatre. The entire auditorium was lit. It was

still quite segregated with different sections of the theatre designated for different people. So the aristocrats would sit in the boxes. Footmen, for example, were only admitted to the upper gallery after Act IV. They don't get to see the whole play. Well, there was actually a lot of people who paid what they called after money, where they got to enter the theatre after Act 3 of the play. Some people would pay to see Acts 4, Act 5, the epilogue and any other entertainment that happened after that. Oh my god, that's brilliant. All the footmen outside just being like, oh, what's your favourite bit? The end, yeah, the end end i like the end as well and then of course the theaters were totally raucous places we also know that orange shelling was taking place during the play rather than just at intermission audiences some of them would come

clearly not to see the play but to chat with their friends, to show off their new clothing. I can't imagine how big these performances must have had to have been on stage to cut through. Is she having to react to the audience? Because the theatre could seat up to 700 people, which was actually much more intimate than later on in the 18th century when we get into the thousands, there was the idea that you could be more of a subtle performer in the restoration. The actor Thomas Betterton was said to be able to act with his eyes versus in the late 18th century. Yeah, so that does imply a level of subtlety. Yeah, you could interpret that anyway though, can't you? That could just be a lot of winking.

It's true. It's true. It's not surprising that there is so much addressing of the audience. From what I remember, there's lots of asides and things, aren't there? Also, the purpose of the prologue and epilogue was to directly address the audience and to say, in some kinds of words, please like our play and come back tomorrow night and bring all of your best friends. Keep supporting live comedy. Yes, exactly.

So the authors of the new plays didn't actually get paid until the third night of performance. And there were plenty of plays that did not make it to the third night so one of the things that the author wants to do is to say yes come back especially on the third night bring everyone you know so i can get the biggest paycheck as possible so nell gwynne is having to act over a pretty raucous noisy hectoring crowd maybe but she's clearly good at it she's clearly funny and people love her another person who seems to be into her is the Earl of Dorset. So she perhaps has had a relationship with Charles Hart, but then she seems to have an affair with the Earl of Dorset. An Earl is one of the most powerful men in the country. And then she goes one better than an Earl,

and she goes all the way up the ladder to the top dog, Mr. Charles II, King of England. Rumours are swirling about their romance from about mid-1668. We don't know how they met, and we're not sure exactly when she became his mistress, but what we do know is that by late 1669, she was definitely pregnant with his child, and she gave birth in May of 1670 to his illegitimate son. She returned to the stage after that for a few months, but by February of 1671, she had retired from the stage. And at that point, she was approximately 20 years old. She was never quite the queen of the stage that we tend to think of her these days,

but it's the securing of the king's heart that really cements her in history. Yeah, so the son is called Charles Beauclerc, but there is a brief moment where she comes back to the stage after having had the child, and now the public gets a stare at her. That must have been so intriguing or, you know, the gossip and the rumour. Yeah, it's seriously hot celeb goss, isn't it? The obvious thing really, Diana, is that she now commits to being the royal mistress. She moves into a rented house, which backs on to St. James's Palace,

which is rather handy, within 100 metres of the King. Wave to daddy! And they have a second child on Christmas Day in 1671. 1671 nel gwyn is retired from the stage at 20 she's now i suppose spending time at the royal court on the one hand it's a place of partying and licentiousness and raucousness because king charles ii he's a party animal and on the other hand it's a place of power and privilege and posh people trying to get ahead and very sharp elbows. How does she fit into this slightly strange world? No, Gwyn survived and thrived at court because she both embraced her lowly birth

and didn't let anyone shame her for it. So for example, when her mother died in 1679, Gwyn was met with a crowing of contemporary satirists, but instead of shying away, it is said that she organized a splendid, extravagant funeral for her mother, riding in an elaborate coach with her sister Rose from Covent Garden to St. Martin's in the Fields, where her mother was to be interred. So she didn't hide who she was, but she also adapted her behavior to suit the lifestyle expected of her new status. So who's Charles II's wife? The Queen is Catherine of Braganza. She must be absolutely livid at this point. What do we know about her? What's her take on this? She seems to have been barren.

The issue of who's going to succeed to the throne after Charles is a big issue. There are plenty of illegitimate children, but there are no legitimate children. The job of a queen is to give an heir and she perhaps has medical condition, we don't know, but that doesn't happen. There is also, of course, rival mistresses. Another is Mole Davis, who's an actress. According to one story story and i don't know how legit this is apparently nell finds a way to sabotage mole having a fun saucy night with the king do you want to guess what the sabotage is she puts something in her food does she give her food poisoning she gives her a laxative don't she we don't know if it's true gwyn has the kind of big personality that so many stories have attached themselves to her and

you know while 99 of them are not true it just speaks to how you know what what a personality she had a bit of a mean girls vibe going on at court there isn't it yeah jess if you've got any comedy uh nemesis any rivals in the comedy world that you enjoy launching into a heated gossip exchange with? You can't lull me into talking about my rivals on here, Greg. But yeah, I relate. I relate. I'm much too cowardly to have any nemesis or rivalry, but I do get confused quite a lot for Greg James on Radio 1.

And people say I look like Joe Wicks a lot, even though he's a much more handsome and athletic man. At least it's not an insulting mix-up. It's nice to be a very talented broadcaster, very handsome athletic man. The problem is I look neither handsome nor talented. It's not you is it? It's not me, I'm not as good as either of them. There's also another rival that we should mention, and this is the king's French lover called Louise de Keroual. Nell and Louise, they do have quite a serious rivalry. It gets a bit bitter. So in the 1670s, Louise possessed an unfortunate trifecta of attributes, which made her unpopular.

She was an extravagant spender. She was Catholic and she was French. So those three put together in one mistress was not good. By the 1680s, then, things are getting a little bit tense at court because Charles hasn't had a legitimate heir. And so there is now a question of like, well, who's going to take over? We've had a civil war in the 1640s. This is very scary. The problem is the king's brother is Catholic. James, Duke of York, is a Catholic and England's meant to be Protestant. Nell Gwynne is on Team Protestant and she's supporting the Duke of Monmouth, who's one of the king's illegitimate children.

And then I suppose Louise de Carouel is on Team Catholic. Is it fair to say, Diana, at this point, Nell does get sucked into a political question? She does. So she was closely allied to supporters of the Protestant cause, like the Duke of Monmouth, who she tried to get to reconcile with the king in 1679, as well as the Duke of Buckingham. But Louise de Carrel, on the other hand, was for a time associated with the rival politician Lord Danby. And in 1679, she supported the Catholic James Duke of York to succeed to the throne. So as such, the rivalry between mistresses then took on a political edge. There's a very famous story about Gwynne and like so much with Gwynne, this story may or may not be true. But

there's a very famous story where Gwynwyn was riding in her coach. The coach was supposedly attacked by a mob in Oxford and they mistook her for Louise. But Gwyn apparently put her head out of the window and proclaims, pray good people be silent. I am the Protestant whore. In that sense, we see there, that's her diffusing the situation, but also still putting the blame on Louise, right? Absolutely. Nell Gwynn is quick, she's funny, she's witty, but she's quite savvy. But that's the comedian in her, isn't it?

It's like absorbing all of the things that you're worried that people are going to say about you. You say them first, and then they won't be said about you. That's right. Yeah, and there's also a there's a satire in 1682 called a dialogue between the duchess of portsmouth and madame gwynne in which nell gwynne says to louise in my clear veins best british blood does flow whilst thou like a french toadstool first did grow the press are on her side they're making nell to be the mean girl, as you say, Jess. Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it, that they're using these two women in the public eye to politicise the sides of Catholicism and Protestantism.

There are lots of mistresses in Charles's life, but we're quite fond of saying that Nell Gwynn is his favourite. Is that true or is that a bit of romance? It's really hard to say. We love her the best. We think that she was at or near the top, but he favored many mistresses and she never became queen of the mistresses. She never received a title unlike some of his other mistresses. But unlike some of the others, Gwyn remained close to Charles until his death in February 1685. Bishop Burnett reported that Charles II's last words were, let not poor Nellie starve. Again, this may not be true,

but James II did continue to support Gwyn after Charles' death. Let her not starve isn't exactly give her loads of stuff. That's true. Please ensure the mother of my children doesn't die of malnutrition. But yes, I suppose it's an idiom, isn't it? It's a phrase. She got some money, I think. A nice, comfortable apartment, a bit of money, and she got to live out her days in comfort.

Is that fair? Definitely, yes. She definitely lived a life of comfort. So let's talk about the end of her life then. Do we know how she meets her end? She doesn't live much beyond Charles. She dies in 1687. She would have been the age of just 36 or 37. We don't know what she died of. We do know that Charles II had a venereal disease and infected Louise at the very least. But true to her popular reputation for generosity, Nell left lots of money

in her will to charity. She left 100 pounds to the debtors of the parish of St. Martin, 20 pounds a year to release debtors from prison every Christmas day, and even 50 pounds for poor Catholics for showing my charity to those who differ from me in religion. So she seems to have heart of gold and she's funny and she's beautiful and people love her. So what do you reckon, Jess? You a fangirl? Are you on team Nell? Or have you heard some stuff that's changed your mind? If anything, I'm more of a fan than when I knew vaguely things about her that I'd read on a Wikipedia page. Now, I'm, yeah, I mean, obsessed. Excellent. Oh, that's great. A convert.

You've done your work, Diana. To the restoration. Yay! The nuance window! This is where Jess and I take a little break and we give two minutes to our expert, Professor Diana, to talk about Nell Gwynn. And you're going to talk about Nell as a comedy performer and her comedy persona. And without much further ado, Professor Diana, the nuance window, please. So the point I'd like to focus on about Nell Gwynn is how rare it was in the late 17th century in England for a woman to practice comedy, and how even rarer it was to tell the kind of naughty, daring jokes that Gwyn delivered.

Gwyn was among the first generation of professional English actresses performing on the public stage, so she and the others had no role models, only each other. Gwen's style of comedy was bawdy and personal, but notably not self-deprecating. The scholar Joanne Gilbert points out that self-deprecating comedy is a strategy often adapted by marginalized comedians, a category which arguably still applies today with women remaining as the marginalized majority. But Gwyn's comedy seems to have been anything but self-deprecating. Instead, it was self-celebratory. Before she met Charles II, Gwyn had two lovers also named Charles. So we think one was the actor Charles Hart, and the other one is Charles Sackville Lord Buckhurst. So during her affair with the king, she liked to call him Charles III. Calling the king Charles III is such a daring and immodest joke.

At a time when a woman's prior sexual activity would have been something to conceal, a woman who engaged in premarital intercourse would have been considered ruined and undesirable on the marriage market, the joke also risks debasing the king. It riffs on his very title and reminds him that just like him, she too has slept with other people, and therefore that he shares an equivalence with this woman of low birth and proximity to prostitution. So the joke fits with Bishop Burnett's description of Gwynn as the indiscreetest and wildest creature that ever was in court. And for such a creature to have found a place in court in her time was truly remarkable. Amazing. Bravo. Jess, what's your thoughts on that? Well, it's really interesting because I have been quite a fan of self-deprecating humour but I'm really admiring of people who don't I don't want to say resort to it but who find other ways to be funny

especially women and I think it's becoming increasingly more important and so that's really inspiring actually to hear that. All that's left for me is to say a huge thank you to our guests. In History Corner, we've had the tremendous Professor Diana Solomon from Simon Fraser University. Thank you, Diana. Thank you so much for having me. I had a wonderful time. And in Comedy Corner, we have the magnificent Jess Knappett. Thank you, Jess. Thank you. Who's doing the epilogue? That's your job.

And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we pull back the curtain on another instalment of historical hilarity. But for now, I'm off to go and put laxatives in Greg James's lunch. Bye! Hi, it's Amit Katwala. And Charlotte Stavrou here. We wanted to tell you that season two of All Consuming from BBC Radio 4 is here. In this series, we'll be once again delving into our culture of consumption by examining the services and products that have changed the world. This time we're looking at houseplants. I fell in love with that madly. The idea of just turning a plant into this giant analogue synthesiser.

Running shoes. The beauty of it is you get a chance to understand performance at the highest level. And tea. It's the connection and the safety cues to your body that it's over and you're safe. And much more. So join us for the second season of All Consuming, available on BBC Sounds. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's.

It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. you