An act of indecorum, but trivial compared with that of Parsons, happened when the young King of Denmark--who married the sister of George III.--was present in October 1768, at the tragedy of “Jane Shore,” during the performance of which he went fast asleep, and remained so to the amusement of the audience, but to the annoyance of Mrs. Bellamy, who played Alicia. She waited for her opportunity, and having to pronounce the words, “O thou false lord,” she approached the royal box, and uttered them “in such a piercing tone, that the King awoke in sudden amazement, but with perception enough to enable him to protest that he would not be married to a woman with such a voice though she had the whole world for a dowry.”[143] It was on 3rd December 1779, when the “Winter’s Tale” was being played by royal command at Drury Lane, that the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., was subdued by the beauty of the charming actress, Mary Robinson, in her character of Perdita. An intrigue ensued, and he corresponded with her under the name of “Florizel.” He provided for her a costly establishment, “and when after two years the connection terminated, she obtained from him a bond for £20,000, which she afterwards surrendered.” And although he had sworn to be “unalterable to my Perdita through life,” he abandoned her, and left her to want. But Charles Fox obtained for her an annuity of £300, and, when sojourning in France, Marie Antoinette gave a purse knitted by her own fingers to “la belle Anglaise.” Queen Victoria, too, not only patronised the drama, but she gave it every encouragement, the performance of a good play well acted being a source of recreation which she thoroughly enjoyed. But, as is well known, owing to the lamented death and irretrievable loss of the Prince Consort, her Majesty during her many years of mourning abandoned many of the former amusements of her Court as distasteful in her bereavement; and it was only in the later years of her life that dramatic representations were once more occasionally seen at Windsor, the memory of which is of too recent occurrence to need further notice. The prominence assigned to the drama in the diversions at the Court of Louis XIV. did much to encourage this department of literature in France,[144] for we are told that the stigma attaching to the stage had to a large extent been wiped away “by the homage of society, the elevation of the theatre to the level of a State institution,” and a remark by Louis XIV. that a gentleman did not cease to be one by going on the stage.