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 part in the play. Anything but that, my dear Tom. It would
be impossible to fill it up. One could not expect anybody to take such
a part. Nothing but buffoonery from beginning to end. That might
do, perhaps, but for the low parts. If I must give my opinion, I
have always thought it the most insipid play in the English language.
I do not wish to make objections; I shall be happy to be of any use,
but I think we could not chuse worse."