“If you do not understand it so, it is my fault in not explaining my meaning.”]

Manning seems to have begged for a copy—­or reconsideration, perhaps—­for Lamb, on February 13, 1800, promised him a copy “of my play and the Falstaff Letters in a day or two.”  There is no trace of the former having been sent, but the latter certainly was, for on March 1 he presses Manning for his opinion of it—­hopes he is “prepared to call it a bundle of the sharpest, queerest, profoundest humours,” etc., as he was accustomed to hope when that book was in question.  The next mention of the play occurs in an undated letter to Coleridge [accompanying a MS. copy of the play for the Wordsworths], dated by Talfourd and other editors “end of 1800,” which must have been written in March or April, 1800 [since Coleridge was then staying with Wordsworth, engaged in completing the translation of Wallenstein, the last of the MS. being sent to the printer in April].  Talfourd’s mistake in dating it perhaps led him to suppose that the copy sent through Coleridge to Wordsworth was a printed copy, and that Lamb had printed John Woodvil a year before he published it.  If any other proof were needed that Talfourd guessed wrongly, it is supplied by this sentence in the letter to Manning of February 15, 1801:—­“I lately received from Wordsworth a copy of the second volume [of the Lyrical Ballads] accompanied by an acknowledgment of having received from me many months since a copy of a certain Tragedy, with excuses for not having made any acknowledgment sooner.”

Lamb’s reply to Wordsworth (January 30, 1801) is so very dry—­“Thank you for Liking my Play!!”—­that we may suppose that Wordsworth’s expression of “liking” was not very enthusiastic.

Things become clearer when we reach November 3, 1800, on which day Lamb thus addressed Manning (I quote verbatim from the original letter):—­“At last I have written to Kemble to know the event of my play, which was presented last Christmas.  As I suspected, came an answer back that the copy was lost ... with a courteous (reasonable!) request of another copy (if I had one by me), and a promise of a definite answer in a week.  I could not resist so facile and moderate demand:  so scribbled out another, omitting sundry things, such as the witch story, about half the forest scene (which is too leisurely for story), and transposing that damn’d soliloquy about England getting drunk, which like its reciter stupidly stood alone nothing prevenient, or antevenient, and cleared away a good deal besides ...  I sent it last night, and am in weekly expectation of the Tolling Bell and death warrant.”

It will be observed that that second copy sent to Kemble must have differed essentially from the one sent to Manning, for the latter includes the witch story, and retains in its original place the soliloquy about England getting drunk.