“My Dear Sir,—If it could be supposed that a Play of your writing resembled the Production of those unfortunate ‘Sempstresses, Hairdressers and Taylors’ you condescend to waste your contempt on, I should not wonder if after a reading of ‘three or four pages of it,’ it had been thrown aside out of despair of finding in it ‘a glimmering of Common Sense from one end to the other,’ and I fancy too that under such a Supposition there would be nothing outrageously reprehensible in the matter. If instead of ‘fifty or a hundred Manuscripts’ you talked of five or six hundred, you would go nearer the Truth, I assure you, and he must be prodigal of Patience indeed, who would persevere through a toil, when the mere entering on it had at once convinced him that it would be fruitless.
“Your Play, there is no room to doubt, has been read with the attention due to it, and I have all the reason in the world to believe that the answer you have received was dictated by an upright regard to the Interests of the Proprietors of the Theatre and yours.
“You love Frankness:—now give me leave to ask you
whether or not it is quite fair to seem to draw me into a difference with you,
by telling me that ‘I hint at
alterations.’ If I do, which is more than I own, you will be so
good as to remember that I only take a hint of your own offering. In the
Letter, which I had the honour of receiving with your Manuscript, you say,
‘The Play is too long, then are parts which
ought to be omitted, and Parts which might be improved’
Shorten it, exchange what you think objectionable, amend what seems to you
imperfect, if there are any ‘men whose Sense and
Experience’ you can rely on, take their opinions. In the
very note I have this moment opened from you you allow that your ‘principal Character’ is unfinished. When
you have completed it, I shall have the Honour of presenting your Piece for a
Re-perusal, and be assured that the Theatre will
| 70 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
