While I haven't tested it your answer should look about this:
<%= text_area :page, :content, :readonly => 'true', :size => '250x10', :value => render_to_string("/sign_up/content") %>
You may need to apply html_safe
on the returned string from render_to_string
UPDATE:
After trying myself I got an error so I came up with a workaround:
1 - set @val in your controller the following way:
@val = render_to_string(:file => "/sign_up/content.html.erb", :layout => false)
2 - Then in your view:
<%= text_area :page, :content, :readonly => 'true', :size => '250x10', :value => @val %>
Works as charm.
If you don't want to use the value attribute of textarea you can assign the value in step 1 to the @page.content
and it will automatically be inserted as a default value to the form input.