When she was just a child, Eleanor Gwyn lost her father, who likely died in a debtor's prison. The future great actress of the Restoration stage therefore grew up under the care of her mother, who ran a house of prostitution near Covent Garden, then in the western end of the city of London. In her childhood years she was a barmaid in her mother's establishment before becoming a fruit seller at the nearby Drury Lane Theater. She came to the attention of the theater's major actor, Charles Hart, and although only fifteen at the time.....
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