Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy (17 page)

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of power. Moreover, as Turner points out, the “mingling of the per-

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sonal and the political” in the Restoration monarchy “allowed any

waning of erotic energy to be read as a weakening of authority”

(108). King George’s famously monogamous erotic energy produced

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fifteen children. Of the thirteen who survived childhood, only two

were able to father legitimate children during his lifetime, and of

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those two granddaughters, only one lived long enough to produce

heirs.58 It was not possible in 1784 to predict this remarkable dwin-

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dling of the royal line, but satirists of the royal family need not look

forward to worry about the stability of the monarchy. A prince who

can only make it up to the gate in his first encounter with a famous

beauty, who is suddenly less like Prince Hal and more like his dying

father, suggests a less than robust royal family and can be seen as a

symbol of fragility that extends back at least to the father who pro-

duced him.

King George experienced his first episode of the dementia that

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eventually incapacitated him four years after
Memoirs of Perdita
was

published, but he first became seriously, even dangerously, ill in

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1765—ill enough to propose establishing a regency in case of his

death when his heir was only three years old. Macalpine and Hunter

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posit that the 1765 illness was an early manifestation of the porphy-

ria that caused his dementia, although they stress that he showed

no symptoms of madness. The danger in 1765 was generally sup-

posed to be consumption; rumors that this was the King’s first epi-

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sode of insanity, and that his incapacity was hidden from the public,

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did not begin until after his death and appear to have no basis in

fact (Macalpine and Hunter 176–82). 1788 was another matter: the

King’s dementia appeared out of the blue and remained for several

months after his physical symptoms had abated, leading his practi-

tioners to conclude that he was on the verge of becoming incurably

insane. They were alternately cautious and incautious about reporting

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C h r o n i c l e s o f F l o r i z e l a n d P e r d i t a

57

their suspicions, however, selective in their confidants and remarkably

stingy with official reports. The regency crisis made the question of

what was really going on within the royal family of immediate and

national importance. In the context of the Prince’s secret marriage

to a Catholic widow, the events of 1788 highlighted both the public

relevance and the public representation of the private lives of royalty.

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C h a p t e r T w o

Wa n de r i ng Roya l s

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. . . to define true madness,

What is’t but to be nothing else but mad? —Hamlet
2. 2. 93–94

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In “Mary Robinson and the Dramatic Art of the Comeback,”

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Michael Gamer and Terry F. Robinson write about the calculated

theatricality of Robinson’s return to London society after her affair

with the Prince ended. Suggesting that “Robinson’s years as an actress

constitute only part of her theatrical career” (220), they point to her

staging of events such as her appearance at the theater (off rather than

onstage) and her appearance in print with the carefully timed debut

of her Della Cruscan poems (247–48). Of the former, they note that

Robinson’s box at the opera became its own “theatrical space” (226),

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set with floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Ostensibly designed to make the

stage visible from every angle, the mirrors also make her the theater’s

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“most prominent spectator, since the very mirrors that improved her

own view of the stage also increased her own visibility to other audi-

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ence members.” “[J]ust as the stage was reflected and (in Robinson’s

French mirrors) amplified for the viewing pleasure of those in the

box, so was the fashionable
Perdita
reflected, amplified, and multi-

plied for the viewing pleasure of actor and audience member” (228).

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Robinson’s stage management of her recovery from her relation-

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ship with the Prince of Wales invites speculation that its commence-

ment might have been an equally managed affair. In the first instance,

she seems to have had help from the Prince. Robinson’s
Memoirs
, the

only detailed firsthand account of their meeting, position the event

as both a private command performance for the Prince and a drama

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60

R o y a l R o m a n c e s

enacted between stage and box for the entertainment of spectators on

and off stage. She reports that she felt “a strange degree of alarm” on

learning that she was to perform before the royal family, despite hav-

ing “frequently played the part” of Perdita (
Memoirs
II. 36). William

Smith, who played Leontes on December 3, joked with her in the

green room that she would “make a conquest of the Prince; for to-

night you look handsomer than ever” (37). The Prince’s box was on

the left-hand side of the stage and was close enough to see into the

wings (Byrne 98–99). He watched her chatting with Malden before

going onstage and then with “fixed attention” throughout the first

scene, which she “hurried through . . . not without much embarrass-

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ment” (
Memoirs
II. 38). He commented audibly on her beauty, which

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overwhelmed her with “confusion.” The Prince’s “particular atten-

tion was observed by every one” (38), and he bowed to her “with a

very marked and low bow” (39–40) both as the curtain was going

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down and later as she crossed the stage to leave the theater. “I felt the

compliment,” she writes, “and blushed my gratitude” (39).

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The common practice of elite men attending the theater to shop

for mistresses becomes, in Robinson’s narrative, a Cinderella tale

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about a prince’s extraordinary courtship of a modest commoner.

The observation (both visual and verbal) of those onstage and in the

audience verifies the event. The evening reprises her debut at Drury

Lane as Juliet in 1776. Then she was “nearly over-powered” by the

“thundering applause” (
Memoirs
II. 1) and the “awfully impressive”

sensation of being on stage with “all eyes . . . fixed upon” her (2), and

she barely managed to get through the first scene. The echo of that

night suggests that her appearance as Perdita is itself a performance:

she is recreating the charming confusion of her debut—an ingénue

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playing an ingénue—for those, including the Prince, who missed it

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the first time. Both moments are watersheds that she “never shall

forget” (2, 39). The Prince’s power to make her a blushing girl

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again recollects her insistence that, despite her marriage, she was in

essence a virgin when they began their affair, her heart “as free from

any tender impression as it had been at the moment of my birth”

(
Memoirs
I. 69).

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Robinson probably revised the tale in the telling. Critics have

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noted the self-fashioning project of the
Memoirs
, and this includes her

acquaintance with the Prince.1 December 3, 1779 may not have been

the first time they laid eyes on each other, and there was probably

more calculation on both sides than her account suggests.2 She is,

however, not alone in romanticizing and sentimentalizing the begin-

ning of their affair. As Judith Barbour points out, “It is now not

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W a n d e r i n g R o y a l s

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possible to decide which one of the Florizel and Perdita couple set

the camp tone of their joint performance of sensibility” (“Garrick’s

Version” 130). The Prince had a habit of using romantic pseudonyms

in the service of seduction. Just before his affair with Robinson, he

had been pursuing his sisters’ governess, Mary Hamilton. He wrote

her a series of passionate letters, addressed to “Miranda” and signed

“Palemon.”3
The Winter’s Tale
, particularly in Garrick’s adaptation,

provided him with an ideal pair of names and the chance to draw his

lovers from the same story. The play in which Robinson appeared on

December 3 was a revival of his 1756
Florizel and Perdita: A Dramatic

Pastoral
. Garrick had based his adaptation on Macnamara Morgan’s

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1754 afterpiece, titled
The Sheepshearing
, which omitted the first

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three acts of Shakespeare’s play. Garrick’s version was play-length,

but both adaptations responded to what Lori Humphrey Newcomb

calls “a revitalized taste for pastoral” (180) in the mid-eighteenth

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century. In almost eliminating the Leontes / Hermione tragicomedy,

the plays “fetishize the royal shepherdess, her pastoral beauty, and her

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reversals of fortune” (Newcomb 185). All of these elements could be

mined for romantic (or satiric) associations. Perdita’s description of

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herself as a “poor lowly maid, / Most goddess-like prank’d up”4 plays

to Robinson’s modest confusion at the Prince’s attentions and hints

at the family romance that legitimizes his desire and her capitulation.

An actress (who might be the secret daughter of a nobleman) playing

a shepherdess who is temporarily dressed above her station but who is