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William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. X. 1819-1824
William Godwin to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 27 February 1824
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
GO TO PAGE NUMBER:
Preface
Contents Vol. I
Ch. I. 1756-1785
Ch. II. 1785-1788
Ch. III. 1788-1792
Ch. IV. 1793
Ch. V. 1783-1794
Ch. VI. 1794-1796
Ch. VII. 1759-1791
Ch. VII. 1791-1796
Ch. IX. 1797
Ch. X. 1797
Ch. XI. 1798
Ch. XII. 1799
Ch. XIII. 1800
Contents Vol. II
Ch. I. 1800
Ch. II. 1800
Ch. III. 1800
Ch. IV. 1801-1803
Ch. V. 1802-1803
Ch. VI. 1804-1806
Ch. VII. 1806-1811
Ch. VIII. 1811-1814
Ch. IX. 1812-1819
Ch. X. 1819-1824
Ch. XI. 1824-1832
Ch. XII. 1832-1836
Index
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“Feb. 27, 1824.

“. . . . Is it not strange that so many people admire and relish Shakespeare, and that nobody writes, or even attempts to write like him? To read your specimens I should suppose that you had read no tragedies but such as have been written since the date of your birth. Your personages are mere abstractions, the lines and points of a Mathematical Diagram, and not men and women. If A crosses B, and C falls upon D, who can weep for that? . . .

“For myself, I am almost glad that you have not (if you have not) a dramatic talent. How many mortifications and heart-aches
290 WILLIAM GODWIN
would that entail on you. Managers to be consulted, players to be humoured, the best pieces that were ever written negatived and returned on the author’s hands. If these are all got over, then you have to encounter the caprice of a noisy, insolent, and vulgar-minded audience, whose senseless non-fiat shall in a moment turn the labour of a year into nothing.”