Read it through once

Before proceeding to alter her play, Miss Mitford took the precaution to secure and read Byron’s _Two Foscari_, and was delighted to find that he had dealt with the subject at a point subsequent to her own, so that the plays were not likely to clash. Furthermore, she found little in Byron’s work to commend, and thought it could scarcely meet with any success from representation. “Altogether, it seems to me that Lord Byron must be by this time pretty well convinced that the drama is not his forte. He has no spirit of dialogue—no beauty in his groupings—none of that fine mixture of the probable with the unexpected which constitutes stage effect in the best sense of the word. And a long series of laboured speeches and set antitheses will very ill compensate for the want of that excellence which we find in Sophocles and in Shakespeare, and which some will call Nature, and I shall call Art.” And as proof that her judgment was not warped by petty jealousy—jealousy of Byron, on her part, would indeed have been stupid—it is interesting to recall the criticism which Macready made in his “Diaries” some years after, when seriously reading Byron’s _Foscari_ with a view to its adoption. Under date April 24, 1834, he wrote:—“Looked into the _Foscari_ of Byron. I am of opinion that it is not dramatic—the slow, almost imperceptible progress of the action... will prevent, I think, its success in representation.” In June, 1835, he wrote:—“Read over Lord Byron’s _Foscari_, which does not seem to me to contain the power, or rather the variety and intensity of passion which many of his other plays do.”