Edward Cowell’s return to England [62a] set him and me talking of old Studies together, left off since he went to India. And I took up three sketched out Dramas, two of Calderon, [62b] and have licked the two Calderons into some sort of shape of my own, without referring to the Original. One of them goes by this Post to your Grace; and when I tell you the other is no other than your own ‘Life’s a Dream,’ you won’t wonder at my sending the present one on Trial, both done as they are in the same lawless, perhaps impudent, way. I know you would not care who did these things, so long as they were well done; but one doesn’t wish to meddle, and in so free-and-easy a way, with a Great Man’s Masterpieces, and utterly fail: especially when two much better men have been before one. One excuse is, that Shelley and Dr. Trench only took parts of these plays, not caring surely—who can?—for the underplot and buffoonery which stands most in the way of the tragic Dramas. Yet I think it is as a whole, that is, the whole main Story, that these Plays are capital; and therefore I have tried to present that whole, leaving out the rest, or nearly so; and altogether the
Thing has become so altered one way or another that I am afraid of it now it’s done, and only send you one Play (the other indeed is not done printing: neither to be published), which will be enough if it is an absurd Attempt. For the Vida is not so good even, I doubt: dealing more in the Heroics, etc.
I tell Donne he is too partial a Friend; so is Cowell: Spedding, I think, wouldn’t care. So, as you were very kind about the other Plays, and love Calderon (which I doubt argues against me), I send you my Magician.
You will not mind if I blunder in addressing you; in which I steered a middle course between the modes Donne told me; and so, probably, come to the Ground!
To John Allen.
Market hill: Ipswich. [63]
April 10/65.
My dear Allen,
I was much obliged to you for your former Letters; and now send you the second Play. This I don’t suppose you’ll like as well as the first: perhaps not at all; it is rather ‘Ercles vein’ I doubt. I wish to know however from you what you do think of it; because if it seem to you at all preposterous, I shall not send it to some others: but leave them with the first, which really does
please those I wished it to please, with its fine Story and Moral. If you like what I now send, I will send you a Copy of Both stitched together, and another copy to your Cousin: and indeed to any one else you think might be pleased with it.
I am indulging in the expensive amusement of Building, though not on a very large scale. It is very pleasant, certainly, to see one’s little Gables and Chimnies mount into Air and occupy a Place in the Landscape.