Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821) was an actress, playwright, and novelist. In the early 19th century, she also became one of the era’s most important critics of drama through her introductions to The British Theatre (1806–09), a twenty-five volume collection of popular plays. The author of more than twenty plays herself, most of which were staged at London’s most prominent theatres, she is perhaps best characterized by her incisive understanding of audiences and her experimentations with a variety of popular genres. Inchbald’s interest in the theatre was lifelong. While she was only a mediocre success as a performer, she absorbed important lessons through her onstage experiences that she used in both her personal dramaturgy, and in her later critical writings. In her arrangement of incidents, dialogue, and ability to tailor her characters to the particular strengths of an acting company, she achieved remarkable success across more than two decades of writing for the stage. This chapter celebrates Inchbald’s dramaturgical experiments in her first full-length success, Such Things Are (1787), which blends a comedic plot centering British expatriates on the island of Sumatra with a sentimental plot concerning the Sultan and his long-lost wife. Connecting the two plots is the play’s hero, Haswell, based on the real-life prison reformer John Howard. The play is extant in two manuscript versions and an array of printed editions which demonstrate a variety of interventions and changes made throughout the play’s history. These alterations show that even as Inchbald wrote for commercial success, she did not shy away from critiques of social problems, including political, imperial, and legal realities, instead often finding ways to embed these critiques within the bounds of contemporary dramatic convention.