references to its progress and give various extracts from
it--extracts which by themselves might suggest that the play would be
a notable one, but the event turned out otherwise. At the end of 1799
the piece was submitted under the title of "John Woodvil" to Kemble,
and a year later it was rejected. "John Woodvil" is poor indeed as a
play; it has some capital scenes, it has some beautiful passages, but
of dramatic story or characterization there is nothing. The play is
concerned with the fortunes of the Woodvils, a Devonshire family, at
the time of the Restoration. Sir Walter Woodvil is a Cromwellian,
living in hiding with his younger son, Simon, while John holds high
revel with boon companions. Sir Walter's ward, Margaret, who is
beloved by John, finds that young man's affection cooling, and thus
leaves him and goes (disguised as a boy) to join her guardian in
Sherwood Forest. Then John, in a moment of intoxication, blabs to one
of his companions of his proscribed father's whereabouts, and follows
it up by quarrelling with that companion, who forthwith sets off with
another to arrest Sir Walter. The old man believes that his son has
betrayed him and promptly dies of a broken heart. The play ends with
the reconciliation of John and Margaret. A ridiculously slight story
for a five-act play. Much in the writing of it shows the author's
loving study of seventeenth-century models, as may be seen from this
speech of Simon's on being asked what are the sports he and his father
use in the forest:

Not many; some few, as thus:--
To see the sun to bed, and to arise,
Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes,
Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him,
With all his fires and travelling glories round him.
Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest,