[12] In Restoration England, Judge Jeffries tries to persuade his ward, Lady Olivia Vernon to marry Lord Rochester, but she refuses because she is in love with Sir Robert Fairfax.
Rochester calls guards to arrest Fairfax and he runs away, meeting with Nell Gwynne, the orange seller, who helps him escape.
[22] Shooting began in October 1911 in Sydney, in and around Elizabeth Bay and Potts Point, and at Spencer's Wonderland City studio in Bondi.
"[26] Prior to release the Sunday Times reported that "we are informed that Miss Stewart and Mr. George Musgrove had no words save those of praise when Mr. Spencer's artists 'completed their work.
The critic for the Sydney Morning Herald reported that: The audience found it hard to express sufficient appreciation of the film... All the scenes of the life of the flower girl that ruled a king... were wonderfully reproduced in the picture, the whole being a great triumph of the Australian artificers that produced it.
The music throughout the afternoon and evening performance was excellent, and the variety of scenic, comic and dramatic pictures... tastefully chosen and admirable.
So as to introduce outdoor effects a number of scenes have been added [from the play], illustrating episodes of the story that were not included in the stage version.
The Australian garden scenes are remarkably good, but the glimpses of the military barracks at Paddington spoil the illusion of far off days in England when Charles the Second was King.
The events are, for the most part, recognised in history, illuminated with touches of romantic license such as are necessary to make the play something more than episodal, and justification for the author's methods is shown by the fact that Miss Nellie Stewart in her presentation of the stage version in this and other continents, has scored in it one of the most remarkable of her successes of her long career.
The picture personation of the story is very realistic and dramatic, and has certainly lost none of its charm and interest from the fact that the characters merely move through the historic scenes, and do not talk, for the camera 'has caught the spirit intention' of the actors with a fidelity akin to nature.
[29]The Bulletin called it: a creditable production which keeps close enough to the stage version, and runs in some outdoor extras, wherein the real scenery gives the play a startling touch of reality.
The approach of Nellie Stewart down a narrow bush track wrings cheers from the audience; and when she offers the house an orange, the welkin suffers the usual damage.
At the end, Charles yearningly pursues the retreating Nell through a fine garden, where he is met and comforted by a page, who brings him two spaniels.