n your note upon
that "obnoxious word" in my play. Let me entreat you to put aside
conventional regards of age and sex, which have nothing to do with
works of art or literature, and view the subject without any of
those considerations, which have their own proper domain,
doubtless--although I think you have in this instance admitted
their jurisdiction out of it.... I hope as long as I live that I
shall never write anything offensive to decency or morality, or
their pure source, religion; and I hope in my own manners and
conversation always to preserve the decorum prescribed by society,
good taste, and good feeling; but as a dramatic writer, supposing I
am ever to be one, I shall have to depict men as well as women,
coarse and common men as well as refined and courtly ones, and all
and each, if I fulfill my task, must speak the language that their
nature under their several circumstances points out as individually
appropriate. But I forget that I am addressing one far better able
than I am to say what belongs to all questions of poetry and art.
Forgive me, my dear Lady Dacre, and allow me to add that, as when I
put my play into your hands I told you that should you find it too
intolerably dull and bad I would release you from your kind promise
of accepting its dedication to yourself, I can only repeat my
readiness to do so if upon any other ground whatever you feel
reluctant to grace my title-page with your name. Pray tell me so
without hesitation, as I had rather forego that honor than owe it
to your courtesy without your entire good-will.

In any event pray accept my best acknowledgments for your kindness,
and believe me always

Your very truly obliged
F. A. K.

This letter was written in answer to some strictures of Lady Dacre's on
what appeared to her coarseness of language in my play of "The Star of
Seville," which she thought unbecoming a "young lady." If I remember
rightly, too, she said that the introduction of a scene in a bedchamber
might be deemed objectionable. I had asked her permission to dedicate
the play to her, which she had granted; and though she failed to
convince me that a young-lady element had any business whatever in a
play, she very kindly allowed her name to adorn the title-page of