Excerpt from Charles the First: An Historical Tragedy in Five Acts
In the following play I have, without any such praiseworthy intention on my own part, obeyed to the very letter the well-known Horation precept - "keep your piece nine years!"
The attempt to dramatize one of the most striking events in English History, and to delineate one of the most remarkable characters that ever figured on the great Theatre of Life, was originally suggested to me by Mr. Macready, whose earnest recommendation to try my hand on Cromwell, was at a subsequent period still more strongly enforced by Mr. Charles Kemble; neither of these gentlemen, whose judgment in dramatic affairs will hardly be disputed, having foreseen any objection to such an experiment on the part of the Licenser or the Lord Chamberlain. How indeed could they have anticipated any obstacle from that quarter, when an acted Tragedy on the same story and bearing the same title, written above sixty years ago by Mr. Havard, and frequently played in by John Kemble, was already in possession of the stage, and might have been performed without let or hindrance on any night at any Theatre whether in Town or Country?
Unforeseen as it was however, such an obstacle unfortunately arose. Mr. Colman did object not to the details or the execution of the piece but to the title and the subject, and as the Duke of Montrose, the then Lord Chamberlain, confirmed the decision of his "Reader of Plays," we submitted to the flat without complaint though not without remonstrance, and the Tragedy, instead of being produced at Covent Garden eight seasons ago, has remained unacted and unpublished, with little apparent chance of representation, until the spirited Managers of the Victoria Theatre applied to me for permission to bring it forward on a stage honourably distinguished in this age of opera and spectacle by its encouragement of the legitimate drama.
In acceding to their proposal I beg most earnestly and sincerely to disavow having been influenced by any thing like a spirit of defiance towards the Licenser or his office. To the present Lord Chamberlain the whole theatrical world, and I myself more particularly, owe nothing but respect and gratitude. Under his administration a similar case can hardly occur; since, however, a characteristic delicacy might have withheld him from rescinding a declared resolution or nullifying a positive decree of his noble predecessor, the Duke of Devonshire is too eminent for liberality and kindness, too tasteful and enlightened a patron of the acted Drama, to be led by the fear of an imaginary danger into placing fetters and shackles on an art which he loves. He is far more likely to foster and cherish an attempt to pursue at humble distance, the track of those master poets of all countries, who from the first Tragedy of Eschylus down to this very hour, have found the subjects of their noblest plays in the heart-stirring convulsions, the dark and dangerous conspiracies, the bold and daring usurpations, the parricides, and the Regicides of their national annals.
That Mr. Colman's scruples arose from no ill-will to the writer, but were the offspring of an honest timidity, an over-zealous fear, I do not for a moment question. A Licenser must needs be somewhat of an alarmist in virtue of his office. But he who apprehends danger to the Monarchy from the representation of this play, because it embodies the trial and condemnation of Charles the First, will do well to suppress, if he can, the striking narrative of Hume.
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