Godwin was disconsolate at the fate of Antonio but his determination to persist with writing plays is evident from the letter he wrote to Kemble announcing his new play Abbas, King of Persia:

Godwin's admission of failure is somewhat equivocal. He still strongly believed that Antonio was a drama of high quality as is testified by his minimal revision and rapid publication of the text. He had no qualms at pronouncing it a ‘literary composition’, spending four days working on it before it was published on 22 December. Indeed, he wrote in the same letter that ‘I regard the 13th of December last as a great era in my life, and I am not without hope that it ultimately may prove an auspicious one’, a telling echo of his declaration to Gerrald seven years previously: