Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy (23 page)

realized in the riotous figure of his heir. Characters could be used

selectively, as with the quotes from
Hamlet
in
The April Fool
or as in

references to Prince Hal minus the calculated pragmatism with which

Shakespeare invests his character.

Of course, Shakespeare is to some extent hemmed in by history.

Historical context, as Simmons points out, “does not provide an escape

into the imagination, but rather a constraint upon it. . . . Interpretations

veConnect - 2011-04-02

of actions, and particularly of characters, may vary, but the ultimate

algra

outcome . . . is preestablished” (9). Shakespeare’s character does become

king and does lead a successful campaign in France. Comparisons

between Prince George and Prince Hal tended to ignore the plan-

romso - PT

ning behind the latter’s assumed loose behavior, but there remains an

element of hope to them. This prince didn’t stay a demi-criminal all

lioteket i

his days; things got better. The satire of the comparison is potentially

tempered by its history. This hopeful subtext comes to the forefront in

sitetsbib

a text—part satire, part sentimental romance—written roughly twenty

years after the regency crisis.
The Royal Legend: A Tale
(1808) employs

the quasi-historical context of Shakespeare in order fantastically to rec-

reate contemporary events. The anonymous author uses the first and

second parts of
Henry IV
and a bit of
Henry V
sometimes as source

material, sometimes as allusive epigraph, and sometimes as narrative

content. Where the earlier satires froze Shakespeare’s character as the

madcap prince of the first play, a primary worry of the anti-regency

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

camp in 1788,
The Royal Legend
offers a complete narrative of error

and recovery.

.palgra

The premise of this work, described variously as “legend” and as

“private history” (8), is that the future Henry V wrote a memoir of

om www

his life. The manuscript was suppressed and only recently unearthed,

some 400 years later. It chronicles the young Prince’s misspent youth

and later conversion, when, sickening of “depravity” (89) and his

“dissolute companions” (94, 100), he withdraws from the world and

yright material fr

devotes his time to “literary studies” (103). The remainder of the text

Cop

is made up of two embedded “ancient manuscripts” that the Prince

reads and that complete his reformation. These “had been the labori-

ous employ of the fathers of Westminster Abbey” (104), although

whether the fathers were employed in composing or transcribing

is unclear. Contemporary readers would recognize the two tales as

being about the current royal family. The first, called “The Loves

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 80

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 80

10/22/2010 6:03:26 PM

10/22/2010 6:03:26 PM

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

81

of Eliza and Rodolph,” fictionalizes the story of Princess Sophia,

one of George III’s younger daughters, who was rumored to have

had an affair with her father’s equerry and to have given birth to

an illegitimate child in 1800.44 The second and longer tale, “The

Chapel of St. Clothair,” narrates the Prince of Wales’s life from his

marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert to the present moment, as the story

of a “Cavalier” whose past misdeeds and present unhappiness all

stem from an ill-considered and secret marriage to a scheming older

woman. Prince Henry apparently recognizes the stories as well, par-

ticularly the latter—although the text is cagey as to whether he knows

he is reading his own life or is merely stung to reformation by a pain-

veConnect - 2011-04-02

ful resemblance.45

algra

The Royal Legend
is thus only partly about Prince Hal, as the

memoir takes up only about half the narrative. It is all about Prince

George, however. This is a conversion narrative, not an instance of

romso - PT

calculated profligacy as novitiate monarchy. This prince is a sentimen-

tal hero rather than a Machiavellian exemplar. Responsibility for his

lioteket i

vices belongs to a collection of unscrupulous advisors and wily seduc-

tresses, who use him as a pawn in their self-interested schemes. This

sitetsbib

prince is also a scholar. He draws conclusions and makes decisions

concerning his own life (and therefore the life of the nation) from his

perusal of books. The heir apparent to his father’s antiquarianism, he

redeems royal scholarship from the irrelevance of “collecting curiosi-

ties” that it had been in
Poetic Epistle
. In the earlier work, knowledge

was the reverse of intellect and the companion to tyranny. Scholarship

directed the monarch’s attention away from the state—“no science

unversed in, unless it were that of governing” —and deflected the

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

nation’s attention from the abuses of a monarch who “would rather

take up with the character of an idiot than a tyrant.” In
The Royal

.palgra

Legend
scholarship
is
kingship, because kingship depends on the self-

exploration that leads to repentance and restoration.

om www

Although structurally this is a tale within a tale, contemporary

readers would have recognized the two stories—the memoir of the

Prince and the legend of the Cavalier—as continuous and cotermi-

nous. The memoir contains the familiar scandals of the Prince’s com-

yright material fr

ing of age: the affair with Robinson; a later affair with an actress

Cop

named “Eliza Willington” (Elizabeth Armistead); gambling debts,

and parliamentary bailouts. The legend picks up where the mem-

oir leaves off and continues the narrative virtually to the moment of

reception, from the Fitzherbert marriage to the Prince’s first attempt

to divorce his legitimate wife in 1806.46 There is even a brief reference

to the regency crisis, although it is not much of a crisis here. Because

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 81

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 81

10/22/2010 6:03:26 PM

10/22/2010 6:03:26 PM

82

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

of a “dreadful distemper” that has rendered him temporarily “unable

to hold the reins of government,” the King is persuaded by “officious

parasites” to believe that his son harbors “an evil design upon his

crown and authority” (96–97). The difficulty is easily resolved when

the Prince goes down on his knees, swears fidelity, and demands an

inquiry into his conduct. The King forgives him and conveniently

refuses to make the inquiry. Then, more like George III than Henry

IV, he recovers his health and his government so that the tale can

continue to be about a prince rather than a prince turned king.

It needs to be a tale about a prince, not only because its contempo-

rary subject
was
a prince, but also because it is a tale of conversion. In

veConnect - 2011-04-02

Shakespeare the Prince’s reformation is projected and predetermined:

algra

when
I throw off my loose behavior,
when
I pay the debt I never prom-

ised,
then
I shall falsify men’s hopes.
The Royal Legend
chronicles this

reformation as a retrospective narrative that constitutes an alternative

romso - PT

reality. The text ends with Prince Henry casting aside “The Chapel

of St. Clothair” and exclaiming, “I shall read no more!” (193). His

lioteket i

reformation is complete, but it depends on a deliberate dissociation

that simultaneously declares the strangeness of the text he has been

sitetsbib

reading and its exact resemblance to his own life: “These monks, in

the seclusion of their cells, frame instances of human depravity which

have only existence in their distempered ideas: never could a man be

so blind to the villainy of his interested advisers, as the cavalier is rep-

resented! at least, I will be of that opinion—FOR THE HONOUR

OF HUMAN NATURE” (193–94). The text concludes with a para-

phrase of Prince Hal’s speech from Act 1, scene 2 of
1 Henry IV
, with

the verb tenses changed from future to past, and with fears, instead

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

of hopes, falsified:

.palgra

To conclude.—The prince, now no longer the dupe of his enemies,

no longer blind to his own defects, falsified the fears of the people:—

“And, like bright metals [sic] on a sullen ground,

om www

His reformation, glitt’ring o’er his fault,

Did shew more goodly, and attract more eyes,

Than that which hath no foil to set it off.” (195)

yright material fr

In order to become the ideal monarch he was always meant (but did

Cop

not always intend) to be, the Prince must enter fantastic space where

he reads his own life in order to reform it.

The first collector of antiquities, however, is the modern reader,

lucky enough to have a reproduction of this ancient manuscript, which

was preserved in “a stone coffin beneath the ruins of Barham Abbey”

(7). The editors speculate in the introduction that the unknown

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 82

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 82

10/22/2010 6:03:27 PM

10/22/2010 6:03:27 PM

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

83

Abbot buried in the coffin decided that this account of the Prince’s

“secret transactions” was “improper to be divulged, as he probably

might, at that time, be the sovereign of England; and, therefore,

determined that the knowledge of them should perish with him” (8).

This is the discovery narrative of the Florizel and Perdita satires, with

the gothicism purged of irony. Although these fragments too contain

potentially sexy secrets, their tantalizing indecipherability is a func-

tion of age—and of the age—not of commerce. Archaic language

and the “decayed state” of the manuscript—not a housemaid’s avarice

or a cheesemonger’s necessity—have rendered its original meaning

“obscure.” In their effort to “supply the deficiency” (9) the “compil-

veConnect - 2011-04-02

ers” (3) have constructed a novel out of scraps of ancient parchment

algra

(or they have revealed the novel buried within). In the process they

have elevated their own status above the common run of editors: “The

reader will hardly be able to conceive the difficulty of arranging, for

romso - PT

modern perusal, an almost unintelligible manuscript, the production

of an era so far distant, and, consequently, abounding with many

lioteket i

words and expressions now unknown: we have had the temerity, how-

ever, to attempt the gigantic task” (15–16).

sitetsbib

The archaism of this text is thorough: the difficulty of the editors’

job lies equally in its physical condition and in its language. They

must supply text for sections that have been “entirely defaced,” and

they must seek the aid of “modern writers, in order to give strength

to the author’s ideas, as well as to embellish the work; which, though

it descends, in some places, to the concise style of a novel, yet, in oth-

ers, it abounds with the figurative expressions of romance” (16). This

is a handy way of explaining the text’s readability and marketability

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

as a novel.
The Royal Legend
is a coherent narrative in modern (early

nineteenth-century) English because that is the only way the editors

.palgra

could make it available to their readers.47 Because their talents are

for revision and emendation, these editors position themselves more

om www

as critics than as scholars. Their discernment lies in their ability to

recognize not the historical value but the literary value of the found

text. Proto-formalists, they illuminate the text’s internal unity. This

sets them apart from those critics who they imagine will review their