Nell Gwyn's 367th Birthday

Today is Nell Gwyn's 367th birthday - huzzah! To celebrate, I've taken an epilogue which John Dryden gave her at the end of his tragic play Tyrannic Love and tweaked it to sound as if she were addressing a modern audience. Note: the "Authors who made Nelly weep for shame" are the Victorian authors who wrote fictional tales with her as a character; they always put in a sentimental scene of her in tears for her sinful life, and the real Nell was much more pragmatic, according to accounts I've read. While those writers tried to whitewash her, more recent ones, especially novelists and playwrights, have focused on her sex appeal to the exclusion of her better qualities - her wit is downplayed, and she's shown as simply a pea-brained trollop. In reality, she was quite clever. Here's a link to the original epilogue: Tyrannic Love - Prologue and Epilogue.
And here's my version!

Nell:

I come, kind Audience, strange news to tell ye;
I am the ghost of dear departed Nelly. To tell you true, I walk, because I'm played Quite in the wrong, as a stupid maid. O Authors, curs'd dull Authors, who're to blame For rewrites, and made Nelly weep for shame! Nay, what's yet worse, to write me as a fool, Who lacked a wit and lived to make men drool! You playwrights: I'll not one word say To praise your nasty, in-the-fashion plays
Pieces which, when audiences do see, They all split their sides, but don't spy the real me. But farewell, everyone, 'tis been a treat, Remember me when'er an orange you eat. As for my epitaph, now I am gone, No need to Google it, I've writ my own: Here Nelly lies, who, though she lived by her looks, Was smarter than shown in those nonsense-filled books.