948. RB to William Charles Macready
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 322–323.
Forster’s Rooms. [London]
Tuesday Mg [26 April 1842] [1]
My dear Macready,
I have forborne troubling you about my Play [2] from a conviction that you would do the very best possible for us both in that matter: but as the Season is drawing (I suppose) to an end, and no piece is at present announced in the Bills, it has struck me that in all likelihood the failure of “Plighted Troth” [3] may render it inexpedient in your opinion to venture on a fresh Trial this Campaign; [4] and I stand, if I remember rightly, next in succession on your List. I need not say that I would not for the world be the cause of any considerable anxiety to you .. much less of loss in any shape—and that I shall therefore most entirely acquiesce in whatever you consider expedient to be done or left undone. —But, here is my case .. that quiet, generally-intelligible, and (for me!) popular sort of thing, was to have been my second Number of Plays [5] —on your being gracious to it, I delayed issuing any farther attempts for nearly a year—and now have published a very indifferent substitute, whose success will be problematical enough. [6] I have nothing by me at all fit to be substituted for the work in your hands. Will you have the kindness to say if I am mistaken in my conjecture as to your intentions?—and if you will at all object to my withdrawing it, in that case, and printing it at once—the booksellers’ season being now in the prime? [7] I write this in haste, and without much consideration, but you will interpret for the best.
Ever yours faithfully,
R Browning.
Publication: NL, pp. 25–26.
Manuscript: Yale University.
1. Dated by RB’s reference to the failure of Plighted Troth, which had its one and only performance on 20 April; the 26th was the first Tuesday after this.
2. RB had left the manuscript of A Blot in the ’Scutcheon with Macready in September 1841; Macready, however, feeling the need for another opinion, had asked Dickens to read it and was still waiting for his comments (see letter 850, note 2).
3. Macready had thought that Darley’s play had “rare qualities of intense passion and happy imagination”; when it failed, he wrote in his diary: “I cannot imagine how I could have been so mistaken” (Macready, II, 139, 162–165). See letter 947, notes 1 and 2, for excerpts from the reviews.
4. Macready brought the season at Drury Lane to a close on 23 May; a month earlier than intended, RB told Domett in letter 964.
5. After Pippa Passes, published in April 1841.
6. Lacking Macready’s assessment of A Blot in the ’Scutcheon, RB had made King Victor and King Charles the second number of Bells and Pomegranates (see letter 883, note 6).
7. Perhaps RB hoped this proposal might spur Macready to action, but the text of the play was not published until 11 February 1843, the day of its première at Drury Lane.
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