CHAPTER XIV

Fanny seemed nearer being right than Edmund had supposed. The business

of finding a play that would suit everybody proved to be no trifle; and

the carpenter had received his orders and taken his measurements, had

suggested and removed at least two sets of difficulties, and having

made the necessity of an enlargement of plan and expense fully evident,

was already at work, while a play was still to seek. Other preparations

were also in hand. An enormous roll of green baize had arrived from

Northampton, and been cut out by Mrs. Norris (with a saving by her good

management of full three-quarters of a yard), and was actually forming

into a curtain by the housemaids, and still the play was wanting; and

as two or three days passed away in this manner, Edmund began almost to

hope that none might ever be found.

There were, in fact, so many things to be attended to, so many people

to be pleased, so many best characters required, and, above all, such a

need that the play should be at once both tragedy and comedy, that

there did seem as little chance of a decision as anything pursued by

youth and zeal could hold out.

On the tragic side were the Miss Bertrams, Henry Crawford, and Mr.

Yates; on the comic, Tom Bertram, not _quite_ alone, because it was

evident that Mary Crawford’s wishes, though politely kept back,

inclined the same way: but his determinateness and his power seemed to

make allies unnecessary; and, independent of this great irreconcilable

difference, they wanted a piece containing very few characters in the

whole, but every character first-rate, and three principal women. All

the best plays were run over in vain. Neither Hamlet, nor Macbeth, nor

Othello, nor Douglas, nor The Gamester, presented anything that could

satisfy even the tragedians; and The Rivals, The School for Scandal,

Wheel of Fortune, Heir at Law, and a long et cetera, were successively

dismissed with yet warmer objections. No piece could be proposed that

did not supply somebody with a difficulty, and on one side or the other

it was a continual repetition of, “Oh no, _that_ will never do! Let us

have no ranting tragedies. Too many characters. Not a tolerable woman’s