Charles the Second

Charles the Second; or, The Merry Monarch (1824), a comedy by John Howard Payne and Washington Irving (uncredited). [ Park Theatre, in repertory.] When his mistress, Lady Clara (Mrs. Clarke), accuses the Earl of Rochester (Mr. Stanley) of being “the chief cause of the king's irregularities,” the Earl agrees to help reform Charles II (Edmund Simpson). He takes the King to a seaman's tavern run by old Captain Copp (Thomas Hilson). There he deserts the King, leaving him to fend for himself without any money. Copp threatens to have the King arrested, but the King escapes through a window. Realizing the Earl and the lady have had his best interests at heart, the King is forgiving and promises to mend his ways. He pays his debt to Copp and gives him a fine watch as well. Written during Payne's long London sojourn, it was first mounted at Covent Garden in May 1824. Payne based his play on Alexandre Duval's La Jeunesse de Henri V, itself taken from earlier works. Much of Payne's original draft was hardly more than a literal translation. The main attraction of the Simpson–Stephen Price production, Captain Copp, was Irving's invention, as was the comic device of having Copp repeatedly start a risqué song that he was never permitted to finish.