REMORSE[812:1]
PREFACE
This Tragedy was written in the summer and autumn of the year 1797; at Nether Stowey, in the county of Somerset. By whose recommendation, and of the manner in which both the Play and the Author were treated by the Recommender, let me be permitted to relate: that I knew of its having been received only by a third person; that I could procure neither answer nor the manuscript; and that but for an accident I should have had no copy of the Work itself. That such treatment would damp a young man's exertions may be easily conceived: there was no need of after-misrepresentation and calumny, as an additional sedative.
[812:2][As an amusing anecdote, and in the wish to prepare future Authors, as young as I then was and as ignorant of the world, of[812:3] the treatment they may meet with, I will add, that the Person[812:4] who by a twice conveyed recommendation (in the year 1797) had urged me to write a Tragedy[812:5]: who on my own objection that I was utterly ignorant of all Stage-tactics had promised that he would himself make the necessary alterations, if the Piece should be at all representable; who together with the copy of the Play (hastened by his means so as to prevent the full developement[812:6] of the characters) received a letter from the Author to this purport, 'that conscious of his inexperience, he had cherished no expectations, and should therefore feel no disappointment from the rejection of the Play; but that if beyond his hopes Mr. —— found in it any capability of being adapted to the Stage, it was delivered to him as if it had been his own Manuscript, to add, omit, or alter, as he saw occasion; and that (if it were rejected) the Author would deem himself amply remunerated by the addition to his Experience, which he should receive, if Mr. —— would point out[812:7] to him the nature of its unfitness for public Representation';—that this very Person returned[813:1] me no answer, and[813:2], spite of repeated applications, retained my Manuscript when I was not conscious of any other Copy being in existence (my duplicate having been destroyed by an accident); that he[813:3] suffered this Manuscript to wander about the Town from his house, so that but ten days ago I saw[813:4] the song in the third Act printed and set to music, without my name, by Mr. Carnaby, in the year 1802; likewise that the same person asserted[813:5] (as I have been assured) that the Play was rejected, because I would not submit to the alteration of one ludicrous line; and finally[813:6] in the year 1806 amused and delighted (as who was ever in his company, if I may trust the universal report, without being amused and delighted?) a large company at the house of a highly respectable Member of Parliament, with the ridicule of the[813:7] Tragedy, as 'a fair specimen', of the whole of which he adduced a line:
'Drip! drip! drip! there's nothing here but dripping.'
In the original copy of the Play, in the first Scene of the fourth Act, Isidore had commenced his Soliloquy in the Cavern with the words:
'Drip! drip! a ceaseless sound of water-drops,'[813:8],[813:9]