Maria Villiers, aspiring playwright and country girl, has spent a whole month in London without yet attending a play. She finally seats herself at a performance of Robert Jephson's Braganza at Drury Lane, securing a stage box that will show her to advantage. ‘Maria,’ we are told, ‘was absorbed in expectation; she forgot herself; she thought of nothing but the entertainment she was going to receive.’ Her special anticipation is reserved for the ‘admirable actress’ who is to play the principal character, the Duchess of Braganza, Louisa. In the final act of the tragedy, Louisa heroically resists the violent threats of Portuguese rebels:

Frances Brooke – playwright, theatre-manager and novelist – here describes that moment when a theatrical performance comes to life, its audience not simply spectating but inhabiting the same affective space as the actor. The collective shout of the audience speaks the danger ‘real’. Brooke's narrator describes a scene she admits she cannot match (the reader needs to have been there, she tells us, to realise the power of the moment). The shared experience of being there is not something that can be reproduced in print. It is necessary to hear the line pronounced to have that experience.