Censorship in the XVIII century British theatre.

It seems that censorship was common since the XVI century; way before the Licencing Act, and opposition to it was almost non-existing. However, this early auto-censorship disappeared gradually and plays became bawdier and more explicit until the imposition of the Act in 1737.

After the Restoration, theatre became a very important business controlled by a few, at first friends of the king who didn’t know anything about the management of theatre. Of the two existing companies, the Duke’s company was more innovative and had less difficulty in keeping actresses and young actors and paying the playwrights; finally it absorbed its rival, the King’s company.

Prior to the Act, self-censorship was enough for a time, but in the 1670s sex comedies became the fashion. Before that, political plays had been often performed but the audience was scarce. However, the government started to practice censorship against the pro-Whig ones, closing companies and banning scripts.

After the Glorious Revolution, the United Company produces mainly ‘operas’ with impressive stage effects that, though successful, were too expensive for the company. The United Company changed management which reignited the split and rivalry between the two companies.

The resulting chaos and the political changes made the two companies stage new bawdy comedies of manners, very popular among the public. The damaging competition, problems with patents of old plays and the lack of new public tried to be solved with additional attraction: young attractive actresses with sexy outfits and slutty characters were included in many plays, acrobats and ballerinas in the entre-acts, … in the midst of all this, some voices against the immorality of theatre began to raise again. Censorship by the Lord Chamberlain was mildly tried, but it was ineffective. Writers like Congreve and Vanbrugh were very successful and the monarchs were very much against the closing of any theatre, though not because they liked it especially. Something to do with some Puritans in the past century, I guess…

Anyway, by the turn of the next century the rivalry between the two companies was almost over and translated Italian operas were the new trend. The Lord Chamberlain was now simply mediating between the actors and the management. In 1714, theatre managers got complete control to decide what plays to stage. But this wasn’t going to last.

In the 30’s, political satire became fashionable, due in part to the success of the Beggar’s Opera in 1728. The Walpole ministry became a bitter enemy of theatre’s right of choosing what to represent, especially because the playwrights tended to kill the Walpole-like character. Walpole tried to pass a bill in 1735, denounced satires and probably secretly staged a play attacking the king, The Golden Rump. This play was never staged and is now lost, if ever existed. However a cartoon of it was showed by Robert Walpole in the House of Lords, after the bill had passed through the House of Commons. The Act closed all non-patent theatres and required all plays to be approved by the Lord Chamberlain before being staged.

And thus, British theatre was changed forever. It also had the consequence of leaving actors at the mercy of the two main companies and led some playwrights to become novelists in order to avoid censorship. Both companies became predictable and new plays were hardly encouraged. Melodramas and pantomimes became the main representations and English theatre was extremely mediocre for a long time.

It seems that His Majesty had a huge ass in real life too.