NELL. I’d forgotten the smell of this place. Wood. Paint.
HART. Sweat.
NELL. Always sweat. It’s hardly changed.
HART. I remember the first time you stood here.
NELL. I almost didn’t come up. Imagine if I hadn’t. Where I might be.
HART. Writing an epic with Aphra Behn?! Adventuring to the Indies?
NELL. Maybe. Or still in Cheapside.
HART. Or still in Cheapside.
NELL. You told me once to mine my own emotions. But nothing came. I thought I couldn’t act.
HART. You could always act.
NELL. But I didn’t… feel. Not really. I didn’t know then what it was to love. Or to lose. (Pause.) When he died I felt like I’d been capsized. Sunk. It was like stones had filled me and I couldn’t breathe. I don’t know if I can find it again. That joy.
HART. There was a time I didn’t think I would.
NELL. I’m sorry.
HART. And I. But you will. It’s just time, Nell. And patience. You’ll get it back. And until then, just do what all great actors have done since the Grecians trod the boards.
NELL. What’s that?
HART. Fake it.
NELL. Fake it? No, I couldn’t do that. At least, not on stage.
HART. Nell!
NELL. You were so sure I could do it. How did you know?
HART. Instinct. And mad faith. (Pause.) And love.
NELL. Thank you, Mr Hart. (Remembering their early exercise.) MR HART!
Scene Twelve
Epilogue
We are in the final moments of Tyrranick Love. A Roman battle and then the final sequence. NELL, as Valeria, speaks to HART (Maximus), NANCY (Servant) and NED (Placidius).
NELL. ‘Let me be just before I go away.
Placidius, I have vowed to be your wife;
Take then my hand, ’tis yours while I have life.
One moment here I must another’s be;
But this, Porphyrius, gives me back to thee.’
NELL pretends to stab herself twice, and then NED wrestles the dagger from her.
NED. ‘Help, help the princess, help!’
HART. ‘What rage has urged this act, which thou hast done?’
NELL. ‘I can no more, Porphyrius, my dear – ’
NANCY. ‘Alas, she raves, and thinks Porphyrius here.’
NELL. ‘Porphyrius, do not swim before my sight;
Stand still, and let me, let me aim aright!
Stand still, but while thy poor Valeria dies,
And sighs her soul into her lover’s eyes.’
NELL ‘dies’ and then HART pretends to stab himself – and then the other two stab themselves. Two ‘EXTRAS’ arrive with a stretcher and pick up the ‘dead’ NELL. When they get halfway across the stage she sits up and tells them to stop, in order for her to speak the epilogue. [This epilogue is almost certainly written by the real Nell Gwynn and was likely her last performance.]
Hold! Are you mad? You damn’d, confounded dog!
I am to rise, and speak the epilogue.
(Getting up.) I come, kind gentlemen, strange news to tell ye;
I am the ghost of poor departed Nelly.
Sweet ladies, be not frighted; I’ll be civil;
I’m what I was, a little harmless devil.
For, after death, we sprights have just such natures,
We had, for all the world, when human creatures;
And, therefore, I, that was an actress here,
Play all my tricks in hell, a goblin there.
Gallants, look to ’t, you say there are no sprites;
But I’ll come dance about your beds at nights;
And faith you’ll be in a sweet kind of taking,
When I surprise you between sleep and waking.
To tell you true, I walk, because I die
Out of my calling, in a tragedy.
O poet, damn’d dull poet, who could prove
So senseless, to make Nelly die for love!
Nay, what’s yet worse, to kill me in the prime
Of Easter-term, in tart and cheesecake time!
So, farewell, gentlemen, make haste to me,
I’m sure e’re long to have your company.
As for my epitaph when I am gone,
I’ll trust no poet, but will write my own:
‘Here Nelly lies, who, though she lived a Slattern,
Yet died a Princess, acting in St Catherine.’
She stands and takes in the audience. She looks to CHARLES’s box, but it is empty. She gathers herself, then she lies down gracefully to join the rest of the COMPANY, dead on stage. The crowd go mad for her. They stand and take their bow.
The End.
JESSICA SWALE
Jessica Swale is an award-winning writer and director. She trained at Central School of Speech and Drama and the University of Exeter.
Her first play, Blue Stockings, premiered at Shakespeare’s Globe and won her a nomination for Most Promising Playwright in the Evening Standard Awards 2013. She is now writing the screenplay, and an original film, Summerland, after winning a JJ Screenwriting Bursary from BAFTA. Other plays include Thomas Tallis (Shakespeare’s Globe); All’s Will That Ends Will (Bremer Shakespeare Company); adaptations of Far from the Madding Crowd, Sense and Sensibility (Watermill Theatre); The Secret Garden, Stig of the Dump (Grosvenor Park); and a new play, The Mission, about illegal adoptions in the 1920s.
Jessica is Artistic Director of Red Handed Theatre Company, which is dedicated to creating new work and rediscovering forgotten plays. Recent productions include The Rivals starring Celia Imrie, the London premiere of Palace of the End by Judith Thompson, and the first major revival of Hannah Cowley’s The Belle’s Stratagem, which won her a nomination for Best Director at the Evening Standard Awards.
Other direction includes Bedlam (Shakespeare’s Globe); Sleuth (Watermill); Fallen Angels (Salisbury Playhouse); Winter (TNL, Canada); The Busy Body, Someone to Watch Over Me (Southwark), The School for Scandal (Park Theatre); and productions at RADA and LAMDA. Jessica was Max Stafford-Clark’s Associate Director at Out of Joint from 2007–2010.
Jessica is an associate artist with Youth Bridge Global, an international NGO which uses theatre as a tool for promoting social change in war-torn and developing nations. As such, she has lived in the Marshall Islands and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, directing Shakespeare productions including The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night and The Tempest.
She has written three titles in Nick Hern Books’ popular Drama Games series: for Classrooms and Workshops, for Devising, and for Rehearsals.
A Nick Hern Book
Nell Gwynn first published in Great Britain as a paperback original in 2015 by Nick Hern Books Limited, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP
This revised edition published in 2016
This ebook first published in 2016
Nell Gwynn copyright © 2015, 2016 Jessica Swale
Jessica Swale has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover image: Gemma Arterton as Nell Gwynn, photography by Simon Turtle; design by Feast
Typeset by Nick Hern Books, London
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84842 559 0 (print edition)
ISBN 978 1 78001 662 7 (ebook edition)
CAUTION This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Amateur Performing Rights Applications for performance, including readings and excerpts, by amateurs in the English
language throughout the world should be addressed to the Performing Rights Manager, Nick Hern Books, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP, tel +44 (0)20 8749 4953, email [email protected], except as follows: Australia: Dominie Drama, 8 Cross Street, Brookvale 2100, fax (2) 9938 8695, email [email protected]
New Zealand: Play Bureau, PO Box 9013, St Clair, Dunedin 9047, tel (3) 455 9959, email [email protected]
South Africa: DALRO (pty) Ltd, PO Box 31627, 2017 Braamfontein, tel (11) 712 8000, fax (11) 403 9094, email [email protected]
Professional Performing Rights Applications for performance by professionals in any medium and in any language throughout the world should be addressed to Macnaughton Lord Representation, 44 South Molton Street, London W1K 5RT, fax +44 (020) 7493 2444, email [email protected]
No performance of any kind may be given unless a licence has been obtained. Applications should be made before rehearsals begin. Publication of this play does not necessarily indicate its availability for amateur performance.
Music Companies wishing to perform the play with music used in the original production (by Nigel Hess) should contact Nick Hern Books in the first instance.
Nell Gwynn Page 10
