In the center of the stage, the Overseer threw off his cloak to reveal a monarch’s regalia. The crowd jeered. He was playing Edward in his days as heir apparent to Queen Victoria, decked in furs and jewels.

The first scene seemed to take place in his bedchamber, where a garish calliope piped out “Daisy Bell.” The harlie actor nearest the audience introduced himself as Frederick Ponsonby, 1st Baron Sysonby—Edward’s private secretary. It was through his eyes that the play would be seen. “Your Highness,” he said to the Overseer, “shall we take a turn outside?”

“Do you have your short jacket, Ponsonby?”

“Only a tailcoat, Your Highness.”

“I thought everyone must know,” the Overseer boomed, with a risibly aristocratic English accent, “that a short jacket is always worn with a silk hat at a private view in the morning. And those trousers are quite the ugliest pair I have ever seen in my life!”

Jeering. Hissing. That licentious beast had dared to call himself Victoria’s heir. Ponsonby turned back to the audience. “It was after a long awakening of afflictions—for example, with my tailcoat, and my poor trousers”—laughs—“that the prince grew tired of his finery. On that very afternoon, he asked me to accompany him on an excursion. Oh, my friends! Human suffering has never surpassed that of the queen, watching her son tread the path toward evil.” I glanced over my shoulder to see Warden’s reaction, but he wasn’t there.

The repartee between Edward and Ponsonby went on for a while. Each scene was engineered to show Edward as a cruel, lustful idiot and a failure to his mother. I found myself watching, fascinated. They exaggerated his role in Prince Albert’s death to a ridiculous degree, even introducing a duel. The widowed Queen Victoria made an appearance, wearing her small diamond crown and veil. “I never can, or shall, look at him without a shudder,” she admitted to the audience. “He is as unnatural to me as a changeling.” They cheered. She was a bastion of goodness, the last unsullied monarch before the plague. As the emissaries were charmed by the actress, I kept a sharp eye on the clock. Nearly half an hour had elapsed, and I still didn’t know what time the train left.