Charles II by Clare Jackson

Author:Clare Jackson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141979779
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-01-26T16:00:00+00:00

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The Wildean adage that ‘Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life’ might well have been written with Charles II’s reign in mind as the turbulent excesses of the royal court often rivalled the more exuberant antics on the Restoration stage. As Aphra Behn famously rued in the prologue to The Feigned Courtesans (1679): ‘The Devil take this cursed plotting age, / It has ruined all our plots upon the stage’ since ‘Every fool turns politician now’.1 Indeed, Charles II’s return to power was inextricably associated with the re-opening of London’s playhouses, after stage plays had been banned by parliamentary edict in 1642. A royal patent issued in August 1660 conferred the right to perform plays on two companies – the King’s and the Duke’s – forming the basis of the modern rights exercised by the Drury Lane Theatre and the Royal Opera House. The inauguration of Restoration theatre has thus been acclaimed as ‘an act of state’ and equivalent to the creation of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the 1920s.2 As one contemporary playwright put it, ‘The Playhouse is the nation’s weather-glass’,3 for the theatre offered the irresistible opportunity to present the real-life ‘dramas’ – political, religious and sexual – of Charles’s reign in allegorical, tragic or comedic guise. Blurring the boundary between royal ceremonial and dramatic depiction, one of the Restoration stage’s most prominent actors, Thomas Betterton, twice borrowed the coronation robes worn by Charles in 1661 as theatrical costumes for plays such as Roger Boyle’s The History of Henry the Fifth (1664), which celebrated the reassertion of English dominance in France. Later depictions of the Restoration court emphasized its theatricality and penchant for role-playing. In Sir Walter Scott’s Peveril of the Peak (1823), for instance, an imaginary exchange between Charles II and George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, is cut short when the king reminds Buckingham ‘that we have an audience to witness this scene’ and that they ‘should walk the stage with dignity’.4

In practical terms, Charles’s patronage of public theatres removed the need for his treasury to fund the production costs of lavish court entertainments, while he also enthusiastically attended plays away from London, including those ‘acted in a barn, and by very ordinary Bartholomew Fair comedians’ in Newmarket.5 The monarch also exerted control over material performed, reviewing the content of forthcoming schedules with playhouse managers and discussing the plots of plays with dramatists. In the preface to his rhymed tragedy Aureng-Zebe (1676), John Dryden confirmed that not only had his text benefited from ‘the king’s perusal’ before completion, but ‘the most considerable event’ in the drama had also been ‘modelled’ by Charles.6 Having grown accustomed to watching female parts performed by women in French and German theatres during the 1650s, Charles also transformed professional opportunities for English actresses overnight by issuing a royal patent in 1662 declaring that all female roles should henceforth be played by women. An uglier side to Charles’s interest in the theatre emerged in December 1670, however, when the MP

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