When Hannah More met David Garrick on 27 May 1774, the famous actor and theatre manager was in the final years of his illustrious career. Eighteen months later Garrick had completed a series of farewell performances in his most famous roles, had sold his share of the patent of the Drury Lane theatre, which he had managed for thirty years, and had entered what would prove to be a tragically short retirement. However, for the last four years of Garrick's life, after all other theatrical commitments had been given up, he was tireless in cultivating More's nascent career as a London playwright. Garrick helped produce two of More's plays (The Inflexible Captive, Percy), helped write two (Percy, The Fatal Falsehood), and was active in promoting all three amongst his extremely wide circle of friends and acquaintances. In his many years as manager at Drury Lane, Garrick had nurtured the plays of numerous dramatists, male and female, but none of them received the level of attention that Garrick lavished on Hannah More.

What was so special about this provincial schoolteacher? More had secured some fame in Bristol as the author of several poems which proved popular as they circulated in manuscript form, but her first attempt to solicit Garrick's patronage had failed when he rejected The Inflexible Captive in 1773. More had a reasonable grounding in the theatre, having assisted with productions at the Bristol Royal Theatre, founded in 1766.