Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy (22 page)

into a single episode, the editor goes on, “Florizel jumped into his

sitetsbib

phaeton, and arrived in
statu quo
at B – – m [Buckingham] house

before six o’clock; in the evening he went to his dulcinea, whom

he entertained with a facetious account of the preceding night’s

merriment” (110).

In Walpole’s account, none of the injuries resulting from the night’s

partying happens to the Prince, but his drinking is nonetheless a lia-

bility. His refusal to abstain imperils his own health. Is his inability to

hold his liquor a function of his youth, the excessive amount he con-

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

sumes, or some more intractable frailty? The Prince and “St. L – –”

(Anthony St. Leger) both drink at least “a dozen bottles each,” but

.palgra

St. Leger remains “as sober as a Methodist Preacher” (
Effusions
20).

Worse, the Prince’s debauchery and the shocked reaction it produces

om www

bring on a recurrence of the family malady in his father. The King’s ten

nights of sleeplessness anticipate the chronic insomnia that plagued

him throughout the autumn and winter of 1788 and 1789, when

sleep was sometimes measured in quarter hours, and a good night

yright material fr

was when he slept for two hours without waking (Macalpine and

Cop

Hunter 63–64, 65). Even more suggestive is Walpole’s assurance that

“whenever he fretted the bile fell on his breast.” The migration of bile

upward engages in the same combined diagnosis, as a way to reconcile

the coexistence of disparate symptoms that characterized accounts of

the King’s illness in 1788.33 If father and son did suffer from porphy-

ria, the son’s attacks, which probably began at about this time, would

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 76

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 76

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

77

have been exacerbated by his drinking habits, private or otherwise.34

Walpole may have been right that the King’s “rigorous” system of

abstinence helped to keep his malady in check,35 but his gossipy dis-

approval also suggests that the son’s overindulgence exacerbated not

only his own but also his father’s symptoms. Such a system of trans-

mission by displacement, in which pathogens migrate from the mind

to the liver and from one member of a family to another, explodes the

distinction Walpole seems to be trying to draw between the prudent

and virtuous King and his madcap son. If the two royal bodies are

as permeable as this suggests, perhaps the real crisis, the real scandal

that till now has only been whispered, is not how much but how little

veConnect - 2011-04-02

a regency will change the governance of the nation. The son is the

algra

apparent, not the presumptive, copy of the father. They are the same

body, neither whole nor entire, at once king and not king.
Rex noster

insanit
; long live the King.

romso - PT

An anonymous engraving published on April 1, 1786, and titled

The April Fool, or, The Follies of a Night
(BM Satires 6937) antici-

lioteket i

pates the constitutional crisis the marriage had the capacity to precipi-

tate. The Prince dances with Mrs. Fitzherbert to the accompaniment

sitetsbib

of Burke, Hanger, and Louis Weltje on makeshift instruments (Weltje,

the celebrated cook, plays on a warming-pan, Hanger his cudgel).

Scattered on the floor are various texts that reference the secret or

illicit nature of the relationship: copies of Susan Centilivre’s
A Bold

Stroke for a Wife
and Colman’s
The Clandestine Marriage
, and a piece

of paper that reads “I’ll have a Wife of my own.” In the background

an open door reveals a curtained bed with what looks like a cross

or crucifix above the headboard. Behind the dancers on the far wall

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

are two engravings from
Hamlet
with speeches sketched in above the

frames. In one, the Lord Chamberlain as Polonius addresses George

.palgra

III with the words, “I will be brief / your noble Son is Mad.” In the

other, Laertes, wearing an elaborately plumed hat, lectures an Ophelia

om www

who resembles Mrs. Fitzherbert, saying, “He may not as Inferior per-

sons do / carve for himself for on his choice depends / the sanity and

health of the whole state.” The use of “sanity” instead of the more

common “sanctity” may be designed to echo the reference to madness

yright material fr

in the other picture. In the 1623 Folio
Hamlet
, the line reads, “the

Cop

sanctity and health of the whole state” (1. 3. 21), and Pope’s 1725 col-

lected edition retains this wording. In the 1765 collected works, the

line appears as “the sanity and health of the whole state” (1. 5. 24).

Johnson’s note quotes from William Warburton, who asks, “What has

the
Sanctity
of the state to do with the prince’s disproportioned mar-

riage? We should read with the old quarto SAFETY” (
Plays
151n3).36

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 77

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 77

10/22/2010 6:03:26 PM

10/22/2010 6:03:26 PM

78

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

What
has
the sanctity of the state to do with the prince’s dispropor-

tioned marriage? Inasmuch as sanctity can mean inviolability—whole-

ness as well as holiness; the English word carries the same associations

as the Latin—the answer is much.37 A prince who marries according

to the dictates of the monarch and who adheres to proportion and

to the royal prerogative keeps the line of succession—and, by a rea-

sonable extension, the state—inviolable.38 This is true of the English

Prince as well as the Dane. The latter is only “subject to his birth”

(1. 3. 18).39 The former is bound by specific Acts of Parliament that

constitute him as both royal heir and “only a subject.” In the engrav-

ing, however, the word is “sanity.” “Sanity” appears less often in eigh-

veConnect - 2011-04-02

teenth-century editions of
Hamlet
than either “sanctity” or “safety,”

algra

but the word meant soundness of body before it meant soundness of

mind, and it carried this as a secondary meaning through the mid-

dle of the nineteenth century.40 This rash marriage jeopardizes the

romso - PT

wholeness, the impermeability of the body politic. A prince would

have to be insane to render the state so unsound. This is the implicit,

lioteket i

if satirical, conclusion of the engraving. Polonius’s declaration “Your

noble Son is Mad,” like Warren’s blunt “
Rex noster insanit
” three

sitetsbib

years later, is a statement whose attendant horror makes it unspeak-

able as soon as it has been uttered. The logical explanation for either

the Prince’s or the King’s behavior is intolerable. Both diagnosticians

must therefore qualify their conclusions out of all meaning. Warren

may not say that the King is mad, but if he talks instead of his disorder

he is saying “the same thing.” It is the same thing because there is

no definition of madness in the eighteenth century that will answer

all questions about the King’s malady. Neither delirium nor original

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

madness, it is behavior that everyone recognizes as unfitting him for

the duties and responsibilities of a king.41 It defies both comprehen-

.palgra

sion and management. “Mad call I it,” says Polonius in his qualifica-

tion, “for to define true madness, / What is’t but to be nothing else

om www

but mad?” (2. 2. 93–94).

The engraver of
The April Fool
is not in fact depicting a mad prince,

any more than
Filial Piety
depicts a mad king. Madness in the first

picture is shorthand for excess, in this case an excess of selfishness.

yright material fr

It is a way to measure behavior that is off the scale of reasonableness,

Cop

a prince who wants what he wants and is willing to let the country

go hang. Madness is childishness: behavior that needs to be watched

carefully and corrected or even restrained.42 It is defined by the

responses of others: if the King throws tantrums and jumps up and

down on his bed, he needs to be swaddled in bedclothes or confined

in a straightjacket or a restraining chair. He needs to be disciplined

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 78

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 78

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

79

and coddled like a child: his sleeping and bowel movements anxiously

recorded, his diet controlled. Madness is to be nothing else but mad.

You must be mad to think you can get away with marrying a Catholic

behind the King’s back. You must be mad to think that London is

under deluge, an oak tree is the King of Prussia,43 a pillow your dead

infant son. And you must be
nothing else
; your behavior must be

explicable in no other terms than as madness. A king is not a child. If

he behaves like a child, he cannot continue to be king. Someone must

be appointed to take his place.

But what if the one in line to replace him also has a reputation

for behaving like a child? Both
The April Fool
and the later regency

veConnect - 2011-04-02

debates stress the link between irresponsibility and madness. To

algra

behave as the Prince was believed to have done in 1785, as the King

was rumored to have done in 1788, is to put the safety, sanctity, and

sanity of the nation at risk. Health and sanity are homologous; from

romso - PT

the perspective of the state they become indistinguishable. This was

the argument the Foxites made in 1788 for an unlimited regency.

lioteket i

Filial Piety
and
The April Fool
make the same claim, only about the

son, rather than the father. The argument for a regency is the same as

sitetsbib

the argument against it. The Prince’s incapacity both contrasts with

his father’s and augments it—makes it terrifying.

The Royal Legend and

the Condemnation of Memory

Shakespeare’s royalty provided especially useful models for commen-

tators on the royal family in the decades surrounding the turn of the

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

nineteenth century. To begin with, characters like Hamlet and Prince

Hal had malleable relationships to their own sources. The referents

.palgra

for these semi-fictional heirs apparent were either spread out among

a variety of source texts or deep within what amounted to the prehis-

om www

tory of English royalty. Like the Leontes of
The Winter’s Tale
, they

entered the public imagination as intertexts, adaptations reshaped

to fit altering cultural expectations—a melancholy-mad would-be

avenger or a Machiavellian pseudo-profligate. Moreover, sources and

yright material fr

adaptations had both been around long before the Revolution and

Cop

the Act of Settlement, the two events that defined English monar-

chy in the post-Stuart era. Part of history but safely beyond local

relevance, their use by contemporary writers is an example of what

Clare Simmons has called “the interaction of the creative and the

factual” (
Reversing the Conquest
3) in the interpretation of history.

Shakespeare’s royals could be used to offer ironic contrasts: the rulers

10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 79

9780230616301_04_ch02.indd 79

10/22/2010 6:03:26 PM

10/22/2010 6:03:26 PM

80

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

of the present degraded age versus the nobility of their literary/his-

torical forebears. Or they could provide sentimental or pathetic asso-

ciations.
Filial Piety
does both: the ailing King is an image of the

dying Henry IV, whose fears about the succession and the nation are