SOURCE: Pascoe, Judith. “Embodying Marie Antoinette: The Theatricalized Female Subject.” In Romantic Theatricality: Gender, Poetry, and Spectatorship, pp. 117-29. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997.

In the following excerpt, Pascoe discusses Mary Robinson's encounter with Marie Antoinette, as recounted in her Memoirs, her tract Impartial Reflections on the Present Situation of The Queen of France, and her poetry.

The preoccupation with the body of Marie Antoinette … is matched in the work of Mary Robinson, whose interest in the French queen took several forms. Robinson, like Burke, met Marie Antoinette in person, although Robinson's encounter with her came a decade after Burke's 1773 meeting. Robinson's Memoirs, a text begun by Robinson but purportedly completed by a friend,¹ describes her interview with the queen in fascinating detail:

The grand couvert, at which the King acquitted himself with more alacrity than grace, afforded a magnificent display of epicurean luxury. The Queen ate nothing. The...