Pretty, witty Nell

Eleanor ‘Nell’ Gwyn, born 375 years ago, is England’s most famous royal mistress, who made her name on the stage and was known for her bawdy high spirits

NEIL JONES

One March day in 1667, a 17-year-old actress took to the London stage as the heroine Florimell in John Dryden’s new tragicomedy, Secret Love. It was a ‘breeches role’, in which for plot purposes she appeared disguised as a man in trousers, allowing audiences to gawp at her shapely legs. The description of Florimell’s “Ovall face, clear skin, hazle eyes, thick brown Eye-browes, and Hair” is a true-life portrait of the actress, who stole the show and moved diarist Samuel Pepys to rave that he had never seen “so great performance of a comical part”. The actress was Nell Gwyn, called by Pepys “pretty, witty Nell” and known to history as the most popular of Charles II’s numerous mistresses. As England threw off the restraining puritanical shackles of the Interregnum…

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Britain (Digital) - 1 Issue, Mar/Apr 2025

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