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.
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© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- “I pray sir, hear me: I am married”: Language and Sexual Politics in Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi
- A Changeling Becomes Titania: The Realm of the Fairies in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
- Queering Time: The Temporal Body as Queer Chronotope in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
- Digging the Liminal Spaces: Chronotopic Representation of Liminality in Seamus Heaney’s North and Station Island
- Bodily and Spiritual Borders in the Parsi Males of Rohinton Mistry’s Tales from Firozsha Baag
- Guarding the Guardians: Fictional Representation of Manipulated and Fake News in Graham Greene’s Work
- Restoration Celebrity Culture: Twenty-First-Century Regenderings and Rewritings of Charles II, the Merry Monarch, and his Mistress “Pretty, witty” Nell Gwyn
- The Contemporary South African Trauma Novel: Michiel Heyns’ Lost Ground (2011) and Marlene van Niekerk’s The Way of the Women (2008)
- Reviews
- Rhona Alcorn, Joanna Kopaczyk, Bettelou Los and Benjamin Molineaux (eds.). 2019. Historical Dialectology in the Digital Age. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, xvii + 274 pp., 42 figures, 33 tables, £ 80.00.
- Reviews
- Aaron J. Kleist. 2019. The Chronology and Canon of Ælfric of Eynsham. Anglo-Saxon Studies 37, xxii + 347 pp., 1 illustr., Cambridge: Brewer, £ 75.00.
- Michael J. Warren. 2018. Birds in Medieval English Poetry: Metaphors, Realities, Transformations. Nature and the Environment in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Brewer, ix + 259 pp., 6 illustr., £ 60.00.
- Julia Boffey and Christiania Whitehead (eds.). 2018. Middle English Lyrics: New Readings of Short Poems. Cambridge: Brewer, xviii + 310 pp., 8 illustr., £ 60.00.
- Elizabeth Archibald, Megan G. Leitch and Corinne Saunders (eds.). 2018. Romance Rewritten: The Evolution of Middle English Romance. A Tribute to Helen Cooper. Studies in Medieval Romance. Cambridge: Brewer, xii + 295 pp., £ 60.00.
- Rory G. Critten. 2018. Author, Scribe, and Book in Late Medieval English Literature. Cambridge: Brewer, 238 pp., 3 illustr., £ 60.00.
- Catherine Sanok. 2018. New Legends of England: Forms of Community in Late Medieval Saints’ Lives. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, ix + 360 pp., 8 illustr., $ 65.00/£ 54.00.
- Pete Bearder. 2019. Stage Invasion: Poetry & the Spoken Word Renaissance. London: Outspoken Press, 210 pp., € 12.50.
- Kirsten Twelbeck. 2018. Beyond the Civil War Hospital: The Rhetoric of Healing and Democratization in Northern Reconstruction Writing, 1861–1882. Bielefeld: transcript, 438 pp., € 49.99.
- Marius Henderson and Julia Lange (eds.). 2017. Entangled Memories: Remembering the Holocaust in a Global Age. Heidelberg: Winter, 500 pp., 48 illustr., € 54.00.
- Sonja Frenzel und Birgit Neumann (eds.). 2017. Ecocriticism: Environments in Anglophone Literatures. Anglistik und Englischunterricht 86. Heidelberg: Winter, 2017. 264 pp., € 32.00.
- Rubén Cenamor and Stefan L. Brandt (eds.). 2019. Ecomasculinities: Negotiating Male Gender Identity in U. S. Fiction. Lanham: Lexington Books, 206 pp., $ 95.00/£65.00.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- “I pray sir, hear me: I am married”: Language and Sexual Politics in Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi
- A Changeling Becomes Titania: The Realm of the Fairies in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
- Queering Time: The Temporal Body as Queer Chronotope in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
- Digging the Liminal Spaces: Chronotopic Representation of Liminality in Seamus Heaney’s North and Station Island
- Bodily and Spiritual Borders in the Parsi Males of Rohinton Mistry’s Tales from Firozsha Baag
- Guarding the Guardians: Fictional Representation of Manipulated and Fake News in Graham Greene’s Work
- Restoration Celebrity Culture: Twenty-First-Century Regenderings and Rewritings of Charles II, the Merry Monarch, and his Mistress “Pretty, witty” Nell Gwyn
- The Contemporary South African Trauma Novel: Michiel Heyns’ Lost Ground (2011) and Marlene van Niekerk’s The Way of the Women (2008)
- Reviews
- Rhona Alcorn, Joanna Kopaczyk, Bettelou Los and Benjamin Molineaux (eds.). 2019. Historical Dialectology in the Digital Age. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, xvii + 274 pp., 42 figures, 33 tables, £ 80.00.
- Reviews
- Aaron J. Kleist. 2019. The Chronology and Canon of Ælfric of Eynsham. Anglo-Saxon Studies 37, xxii + 347 pp., 1 illustr., Cambridge: Brewer, £ 75.00.
- Michael J. Warren. 2018. Birds in Medieval English Poetry: Metaphors, Realities, Transformations. Nature and the Environment in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Brewer, ix + 259 pp., 6 illustr., £ 60.00.
- Julia Boffey and Christiania Whitehead (eds.). 2018. Middle English Lyrics: New Readings of Short Poems. Cambridge: Brewer, xviii + 310 pp., 8 illustr., £ 60.00.
- Elizabeth Archibald, Megan G. Leitch and Corinne Saunders (eds.). 2018. Romance Rewritten: The Evolution of Middle English Romance. A Tribute to Helen Cooper. Studies in Medieval Romance. Cambridge: Brewer, xii + 295 pp., £ 60.00.
- Rory G. Critten. 2018. Author, Scribe, and Book in Late Medieval English Literature. Cambridge: Brewer, 238 pp., 3 illustr., £ 60.00.
- Catherine Sanok. 2018. New Legends of England: Forms of Community in Late Medieval Saints’ Lives. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, ix + 360 pp., 8 illustr., $ 65.00/£ 54.00.
- Pete Bearder. 2019. Stage Invasion: Poetry & the Spoken Word Renaissance. London: Outspoken Press, 210 pp., € 12.50.
- Kirsten Twelbeck. 2018. Beyond the Civil War Hospital: The Rhetoric of Healing and Democratization in Northern Reconstruction Writing, 1861–1882. Bielefeld: transcript, 438 pp., € 49.99.
- Marius Henderson and Julia Lange (eds.). 2017. Entangled Memories: Remembering the Holocaust in a Global Age. Heidelberg: Winter, 500 pp., 48 illustr., € 54.00.
- Sonja Frenzel und Birgit Neumann (eds.). 2017. Ecocriticism: Environments in Anglophone Literatures. Anglistik und Englischunterricht 86. Heidelberg: Winter, 2017. 264 pp., € 32.00.
- Rubén Cenamor and Stefan L. Brandt (eds.). 2019. Ecomasculinities: Negotiating Male Gender Identity in U. S. Fiction. Lanham: Lexington Books, 206 pp., $ 95.00/£65.00.