La Soeur de la reine
The comedy of the piece derives from its parody of the full-bloodedly Romantic style of Victor Hugo's prose plays, and from its portrayal of a profligate and tyrannical Queen Victoria whose numerous affairs with her prime ministers and with William Wordsworth are the scandal of the age.
Inside Buckingham House Sir Peel tells the Duchess of Kent how much he adores the queen and suffers at seeing her in the arms of Lord John Russell.
The Duchess, alarmed, warns him that in George IV's time one Lord Badger was hanged for merely embracing the prudish Queen Caroline.
The queen recalls how, when she was 16, Wordsworth had seduced her by reading from his intoxicating and sensual poems: one on his unbridled excursion through fields burning with love, and another his erotic song of Betty Foy.
The queen warns him that she has ordered Dr. Ballok, the Head Master of Eton, to be hanged simply for teaching his pupils the story of Messalina.
Sir Chump is indignant that more chastity is expected from poor women than from the reigning queen: England's hypocrisy makes her a laughing-stock!
[2] The earliest evidence for it appears in a letter Swinburne wrote to his friend William Bell Scott in January 1861 in which he described a tale which I have vaguely conceived already.
A twin sister of Queen Victoria, kidnapped on her birth by consent of the late Sir R. Peel and Lord Chancellor Eldon for political reasons – to remove a rival candidate for the throne – grows up a common prostitute – is discovered in The Haymarket by the Lor Maire on a profligate excursion – informed of her origin claims her rights – is confronted with queen – queen swoons – the proofs of her birth bought and destroyed – the Abp of Canterbury solemnly perjures himself to the effect that she is an imposter – finally consumed by an ill-requited attachment to Lord John Russell, the heroine charcoals herself to death.
[3]The play was intended largely as an amusement for his friends and was improvised at speed, as is demonstrated by the fact that, in spite of Swinburne's fluency in French, the text contains many errors of grammar and spelling.
[5] Rumours of the play's existence are known to have spread more widely at second hand, as from Edmund Gosse and others to A. E. Housman,[6] and from an unnamed friend of Swinburne's to John Bailey,[7][8] and indeed in 1875 a London newspaper, The Daily News, mentioned the character, "[l]a Princesse Kitty in an unacted French melodrama by a living English poet".
[7] Further memories of the plot of a burlesque Swinburne play about Queen Victoria can be found in the works of various early 20th century writers.
'"[14] In 1925 Julian Osgood Field, who had known Swinburne in his youth, wrote of his "unpublished, in fact unwritten, parody of Victor Hugo [called] La Princesse Katy, which the little bard used to recite to his intimates."
He, gentilhomme quand même [a gentleman for all that], refuses to do so vile a deed, but falls on his knees before the Sovereign as he murmurs that he cannot obey her.
But the glorious fellow rises proudly and puts aside the tempting honour – "Pardon, Madame: je ne suis que le bourreau de Londres!
Both plays, along with his novel La Fille du policeman and perhaps yet other "Victorian" jeux d'esprit, might have evolved over a long period of time, influencing each other in their plot-elements.
[18] Other influences have been suggested, such as Alexandre Dumas' Kean and similar French plays drawing on their authors' limited knowledge of English life.
[19] The quaint names of some of Swinburne's minor characters – the Duchess of Fuckingstone, the Marquis of Bumbelly, milady Quim and so on – perhaps draw on the tradition of Restoration comedy.
[25] John A. Cassidy linked Swinburne's hostility to 19th-century "prudery and pomposity" in this and his other burlesques with his adoption of Pre-Raphaelite and Baudelairean principles, seeing all as expressions of the same impulse.
