Read it through once

Nothing daunted by the failure of _Fiesco_, and notwithstanding the pressure of work for the magazines, Miss Mitford was devoting all the time she could spare to a fresh tragedy, the subject this time being the Venetian Doge Foscari. The project was submitted to Talfourd’s judgment and approved, and by October the finished play was in his hands for presentation to the managers. As ill luck would have it, Byron had been working quietly at a play on the identical subject, and his was announced on the very day that Miss Mitford’s _Foscari_ was to be handed to a manager for his perusal. “I am so distressed at the idea of a competition,” she wrote; “not merely with his lordship’s talents, but with his great name; and the strange awe in which he holds people; and the terrible scoffs and sneers in which he indulges himself; that I have written to Mr. Talfourd requesting him to consult another friend on the propriety of entirely suppressing my play—and I heartily wish he may. If it be sent back to me unoffered, I shall immediately begin another play on some German story.”