|
The Licensing Act or Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737 was a landmark act of censorship of the British stage. The terms of the Act were that from that point forward, the Lord Chamberlain had the power to approve any play before it was acted. Although many plays and playwrights have been supposed the cause of the act (including Henry Fielding), the play the Act debates mentioned was A Vision of the Golden Rump, a raucous attack on the current Parliament whose author is unknown.
Specifically, the Licensing Act arose out of the political control of the House of Commons held by Robert Walpole. 1736-1737 was the height of Walpole's power as "prime minister" (a title which did not exist in letter at the time), and Walpole was under incessant attack by the Tory satirists and the radical Whig theorists alike. John Gay's Beggar's Opera had linked Walpole with the notorious mobster Jonathan Wild, and Walpole had banned prior to acting the sequel play, Polly. Henry Fielding's plays also were taking aim at Walpole. Further, political plays with the theme of "liberty" were often coded attacks on domination by great men. The great man in question was as often Walpole as the king.
The first play to be banned by the Licensing Act was Gustavus Vasa by Henry Brooke. Samuel Johnson wrote an attack on the Licensing Act as his first political writing.
The effects of the Licensing Act were profound. The public mistrusted plays that passed the censors. One effect was that the plays that were passed were more domestically oriented, more sentimental, and, aside from Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Oliver Goldsmith, who both wrote old-style plays, authors of melodrama enjoyed greatest success. Arguably, the Licensing Act created an immediate vaccuum of new plays to perform, and this left theaters with little option but to stage revivals. The number of productions of Shakespeare plays staged in the 1740's was far higher than previously (one fourth of all plays performed in the decade).
Additionally, the Licensing Act diverted politically interested authors away from the stage and into writing novels. Fielding and Brooke are only two of the authors who turned their energies to novel writing. Many other novelists, such as Tobias Smollett and Laurence Sterne, never approached the stage. Prior to the Licensing Act, theater was the first choice for most wits. After it, the novel was.
|
