Mistress Nell

Summary

In the honeyed hush of a Restoration dawn, a copper-maned guttersnipe with the gait of a startled fawn vaults from the bear-baiting pits of Drury Lane into the royal saddle of a fox-chasing monarch. Nell Gwynne—orange-girl, trickster, human spark—trades coins for quips, quips for caresses, caresses for a crown of sorts: the affections of Charles II, that libertine comet who burns through Versailles-on-Thames in a blur of spaniels, science, and satin. Yet the King’s bed is a chessboard; its sheets are inked with treaties, its pillows stuffed with espionage. Enter Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, a porcelain panther who purrs in French, spies for Louis XIV, and keeps her poisons in a snuffbox. Beside her, the Duke of Buckingham—silk-shod Lucifer—plots to yoke England to the Sun King’s orbit. Nell, smelling treason beneath the powdered wigs, dons doublet, peruke, and a swagger borrowed from Rochester’s rhymes to infiltrate the Duchess’s gilded menagerie. Smiling like a dagger, she intercepts the treasonous dispatch, flips the courier’s satchel toward Whitehall, and watches the parchment wings of destiny beat toward London instead of Versailles. The final curtain falls on a tavern roar: the Duchess checkmated, Charles chastened, and Nell—still laughing—hoisting a tankard to the rabble who will someday call her England’s darling.

Synopsis

Nell Gwynne ( Mary Pickford ) and King Charles II ( Owen Moore ) fall in love after meeting at a fox hunt. Nell soon learns the jealous Duchess of Portsmouth ( Ruby Hoffman ) is a spy and conspiring with the Duke of Buckingham to place Charles at the mercy of the King of France. Nell boldly disguises herself as a fashionable young blade and wins the confidence of the Duchess. Now entrusted with the delivery of important documents, she makes sure they go to the King of England rather than the King of France. Now, Nell has the last laugh on the traitorous Duchess.