“ As an actress Nell Gwyn was largely indebted to Dryden, who seems to have made a special study of her airy, irresponsible personality, and who kept her supplied with parts which suited her. She excelled in the delivery of the risky prologues and epilogues which were the fashion, and the poet wrote for her some specially daring examples. ”

“ But her frank recklessness, her generosity, her invariable good temper, her ready wit, her infectious high spirits and amazing indiscretions appealed irresistibly to a generation which welcomed in her the living antithesis of Puritanism. “A true child of the London streets,” she never pretended to be superior to what she was, nor to interfere in matters outside the special sphere assigned her ”

“ Nell Gwyn, who sold oranges in the precincts of Drury Lane Theatre, passed, at the age of fifteen, to the boards, through the influence of the actor Charles Hart and of Robert Duncan or Dungan, an officer of the guards who had interest with the management. Her first recorded appearance on the stage was in 1665 as Cydaria, Montezuma’s daughter, in Dryden’s Indian Emperor, a serious part ill-suited to her. ”