To really get in touch with Nell's condition in the last scene, I wanted to research syphilis and how it would have spread in the body during the Restoration era. I did some initial research about Nell's life and death, which can be found here with some of the sources I used as well.
Nell Gwyn died of apoplexy, which is a word used in the Restoration era to describe a sort of a stroke, but nowadays the word is used in the cases of some sort of internal bleeding. Nell most likely died a sudden dead, a heart-attack from all the strain syphilis had put her heart under, or a stroke of another kind. Since it was such a long time ago, non of the sources I used in my research were completely certain, exactly what caused her death, but the combination of syphilis, caught from the King, which later caused half of Nell's body to be paralyzed, certainly had a impact on her ever lowering health.
Obviously, the treatments would have not been as good as today, since modern medicine was not invented, and so the symptoms of the disease would have been much stronger. There is four stages in syphilis:Primary, secondary, latent and tertiary. The first stage consist of getting infected and within 2-4 weeks sores to come up in the infected area. If left untreated, what they would most likely have done in those days, the sores disappear within 3-6 weeks, but the infection will stay in the body and move to the next stage. The secondary stage starts to appear seemingly random, symptoms including having a sore throat, losing hair, weight loss and feel of occasional headache or fever. At this point, if the symptoms are left untreated, the disease will start to spread to the entire body. The latent stage is a stage without any obvious symptoms, and might take up from a month to a persons entire life time to move to the next stage, At this stage, the disease will start to attach itself to an individuals vital organs, skin and bones. When the disease moves to the last stage, tertiary stage, it is nearly impossible to recover from the disease. The disease would have started to create painful tumour all over the person's body and vital organs, slowly eating away the bones. Also, neurosyphilis might develop, which means that the brain is affected. This might change the individuals personality completely, resulting in general paralysis of the insane.
In the last scene, Nell is obviously very sick, the disease spreading to her brain most likely, she is in a fragile state, but still functioning. She is in the early part of the tertiary stage. She has probably recently realized, that she will be dying soon, or at least getting to a state when she no longer cannot move so freely and so comes to the playhouse to bid her last goodbyes. To show her sickness, I have tried to make her feel quite fragile, moving slowly and speaking with as few words as possible. There are moments, when I think she is trying to seem stronger, like when she talk about how the tiring room they are in used to be hers, showing some of that old Nell, determined Nell, to make Doll finally recognize her. Still, Nell's sickness is very visible just before Doll start to tell her story. Doll mentions the death of Charles II, which makes the disease in Nell's brain make her uneasy, not being able to hide her emotions any longer, but having to rest on the floor, rocking back and forward like a maniac. And I guess, Nell has lost part of her sanity, slipping in and out of being in control of herself.
Sources
http://www.allsands.com/health/advice/syphilishisto_zkq_gn.htm
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