Read it through once

In the autumn, the play of _Charles I_ was at last finished and despatched to Kemble for his consideration. Having read it, he wrote informing the author that it was “admirable, though somewhat dangerous,” and that he had sent it for perusal to the licenser, George Colman, junior. This official took three weeks to consider the MS. and at length wrote to say “that, in consequence of the exceedingly delicate nature of the subject and incidents of _Charles the First_, he had received instructions to send the manuscript to the Lord Chamberlain” (The Duke of Montrose), “that he might himself judge, on perusal, of the safety of granting a licence.” The author had already suffered so much from the jealousies of rival actors that she viewed this new obstacle—the possibility of trouble with the Licenser of Plays—with the utmost apprehension. It was one thing to have her production delayed through the incompatibilities of actors—those could be overcome, in time—but to feel that her work bore within it matter for prohibition altogether was a totally different thing. It meant that she, to whom labour and time meant so much, just now, might labour for months, valuable months, only to find her offspring condemned and killed at birth. And, as she rightly argued, if she had offended in the case of _Charles_, she might offend with other plays. The problem was: how she was to avoid such a contingency in future? and so she wrote off to William Harness, asking whether he would advise her to write the Licenser on the point. “I have a good mind to write to Mr. Colman and ask. I would, if I knew any way of getting at him. Certainly I mean no harm—nor did I in _Charles_; and the not licensing that play will do great harm to my next, by making me timid and over careful.... You cannot imagine how perplexed I am. There are points in my domestic situation too long and too painful to write about. The terrible improvidence of one dear parent—the failure of memory and decay of faculty in that other who is still dearer, cast on me a weight of care and of fear that I can hardly bear up against. Give me your advice. Heaven knows, I would write a novel, as every one tells me to do, and as, I suppose, I must do at last, if I had not the feeling of inability and of failure so strong within me that it would be scarcely possible to succeed against such a presentiment. And to fail there would be so irremediable! But it will be my lot at last.”