time, there has been no mention of the Lord Chamberlain, or of any subordination to his command or authority, yet it was still taken for granted that no letters patent, by the bare omission of such a great officer’s name, could have superseded or taken out of his hands that power which time out of mind he always had exercised over the theatre.  But as the truth of the question seemed to be wrapt in a great deal of obscurity in the old laws, made in former reigns, relating to players, &c., it may be no wonder that the best companies of actors should be desirous of taking shelter under the visible power of a Lord Chamberlain, who, they knew, had at his pleasure favoured and protected, or borne hard upon them; but be all this as it may, a Lord Chamberlain, from whencesoever his power might be derived, had, till of later years, had always an implicit obedience paid to it.”

Among the duties undertaken by the Lord Chamberlain was the licensing or refusing new plays, with the suppression of such portions of them as he might deem objectionable; which province was assigned to his inferior, the Master of the Revels.  This, be it understood, was long before the passing of the Licensing Act of 1737, which indeed, although it gave legal sanction to the power of the Lord Chamberlain, did not really invest him with much more power than he had often before exercised.  Even in Charles II.’s time, the representation of “The Maid’s Tragedy,” of Beaumont and Fletcher, had been forbidden by an order from the Lord Chamberlain.  It was conjectured that “the killing of the king in that play, while the tragical death of King Charles I. was then so fresh in people’s memory, was an object too horribly impious for a public entertainment;” and, accordingly, the courtly poet Waller occupied himself in altering the catastrophe of the story, so as to save the life of the king.  Another opinion prevailed, to the effect that the murder accomplished by the heroine Evadne offered “a dangerous example to other Evadnes then shining at court in the same rank of royal distinction.”  In the same reign also, Nat Lee’s tragedy of “Lucius Junius Brutus,” “was silenced after three performances;” it being objected that the plan and sentiments of it had too boldly vindicated, and might inflame, Republican principles.  A prologue, by Dryden, to “The Prophetess,” was prohibited, on account of certain “familiar metaphorical sneers at the Revolution” it was supposed to contain, at a time when King William was prosecuting the war in Ireland.  Bank’s tragedy of “Mary, Queen of Scotland,” was withheld from the stage for twenty years, owing to “the profound penetration of the Master of the Revels, who saw political spectres in it that never appeared in the presentation.”  From Cibber’s version of “Richard III.,” the first act was wholly expunged, lest “the distresses of King Henry VI., who is killed by Richard in the first act, should put weak people too much in mind of King James, then living in France.”