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Lords of Misrule and Abbots of Unreason had long presided over the Yuletide festivities of Old England; in addition to these functionaries King Henry VIII. nominated a Master and Yeoman of the Revels to act as the subordinates of his Lord Chamberlain, and expressly to provide and supervise the general entertainments and pastimes of the court. These had already been ordered and established after a manner that seemed extravagant by contrast with the economical tastes of the preceding sovereign, who yet had not shown indifference to the attractions of poetry, music, and the stage. But Henry VIII., according to the testimony of Hall, was a proficient, not less in arms than in arts; he exercised himself daily in shooting, singing, dancing, wrestling, "casting of the bar, playing at the recorders, flute, virginals, and in setting of songs, making of ballettes; and did set two goodly masses, every in them five parts, which were sung oftentimes in his chapel, and afterwards in divers other places." Early in his reign he appointed Richard Gibson, one of his father's company of players, to be "yeoman tailor to the king," and subsequently "serjeant-at-arms and of the tents and revels;" and in 1546 he granted a patent to Sir Thomas Cawarden, conferring upon him the office of "Magistri Jocorum, Revellorum et Mascorum, omnium et singulorum nostrorum, vulgariter nuncupatorum Revells et Masks," with a salary of £10 sterling—a very modest stipend; but then Sir Thomas enjoyed other emoluments from his situation as one of the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber. The Yeoman of the Revels, who assisted the Master and probably discharged the chief duties of his office, received an annual allowance of £9 2s. 6d., and eight players of interludes were awarded incomes, of £3 6s. 8d. To these remote appointments of "yeoman tailor," and "Master of the Revels," is due that office of "Licenser of Plays," which, strange to say, is extant and even flourishing in the present year of grace.

As Chalmers has pointed out, however, in his "Apology for the Believers in the Shakespearean Papers," the King's Chamberlain, or, as he was styled in all formal proceedings of the time, Camerarius Hospitii, had the government and superintendence of the king's hunting and revels, of the comedians, musicians, and other royal servants; and was, by virtue of the original constitution of his office, the real Master of the Revels, "the great director of the sports of the court by night as well as of the sports of the field by day." Still the odium of his office, especially in its relation to plays and players, could not but attach to his subordinates and deputies the Masters of the Revels; "tasteless and officious tyrants," as Gifford describes them in a note to Ben Jonson's "Alchemist," "who acted with little discrimination, and were always more ready to prove their authority than their judgment, the most hateful of them all being Sir Henry Herbert," appointed by Charles I. to an office which naturally expired when the Puritans suppressed the stage and did their utmost to exterminate the players. At the Restoration, however, Herbert resumed his duties; but he found, as Chalmers relates, "that the recent times had given men new habits of reasoning, notions of privileges, and propensities to resistance. He applied to the courts of justice for redress; but the verdicts of judges were contradictory; he appealed to the ruler of the state, but without receiving redress or exciting sympathy: like other disputed jurisdictions, the authority of the Master of the Revels continued to be oppressive till the Revolution taught new lessons to all parties."

It is to be observed, however, that the early severities and arbitrary caprices to which the players were subjected, were not attributable solely to the action of the Masters of the Revels. The Privy Council was constant in its interference with the affairs of the theatre. A suspicion was for a long time rife that the dramatic representations of the sixteenth century touched upon matters of religion or points of doctrine, and oftentimes contained matters "tending to sedition and to the contempt of sundry good orders and laws." Proclamations were from time to time issued inhibiting the players and forbidding the representation of plays and interludes. In 1551 even the actors attached to the households of noblemen were not allowed to perform without special leave from the Privy Council; and the authorities of Gray's Inn, once famous for its dramatic representations, expressly ordered that there should be "no comedies called interludes in this house out of term time, but when the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord is solemnly observed." Upon the accession of Queen Mary, in 1553, dramatic representations, whether or not touching upon points of religious doctrine, appear to have been forbidden for a period of two years. In 1556 the Star Chamber issued orders, addressed to the justices of the peace in every county in the kingdom, with instructions that they should be rigorously enforced, forbidding the representation of dramatic productions of all kinds. Still, in Mary's reign, certain miracle plays, designed to inculcate and enforce the tenets of the Roman Catholic religion, were now and then encouraged by the public authorities; and in 1557 the Queen sanctioned various sports and pageants of a dramatic kind, apparently for the entertainment of King Philip, then arrived from Flanders, and of the Russian ambassador, who had reached England a short time before.

The players had for a long while few temptations to resist authority, whether rightfully or wrongfully exercised. Sufferance was the badge of their tribe. They felt constrained to submit without question or repining, when loud-toned commands were addressed to them, dreading lest worse things should come about. It was a sort of satisfaction to them, at last, to find themselves governed by so distinguished a personage as the Lord Chamberlain, or even by his inferior officer the Master of the Revels. It was true that he might, as he often did, deal with them absurdly and severely; but even in this abuse of his power there was valuable recognition of their profession—it became invested with a measure of lawfulness, otherwise often denied it by common opinion. How it chanced that a member of the royal household ruled not only the dramatic representations of the court, but controlled arbitrarily enough, plays and players generally, no one appeared to know, or thought it worth while to inquire. As Colley Cibber writes: "Though in all the letters patent for acting plays, &c., since King Charles I.'s 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." In vain did Cibber petition the Master of the Revels "for the small indulgence of a speech or two, that the other four acts might limp on with a little less absurdity. No! He had not leisure to consider what might be separately inoffensive!" So, too, some eight years before the passing of the Licensing Act, Gay's ballad opera of "Polly," designed as a sequel to "The Beggar's Opera," incurred the displeasure of the Chamberlain, and was denied the honours of representation.

Nor was it only on political grounds that the Lord Chamberlain or the Master of the Revels exercised his power. The "View of the Stage," published by the nonjuring clergyman, Jeremy Collier, in 1697, first drew public attention to the immorality and profanity of the dramatic writers of that period. The diatribes and rebukes of Collier, if here and there a trifle overstrained, were certainly, for the most part, provoked by the nature of the case, and were justified by the result. Even Cibber, who had been cited as one of the offenders, admits that "his calling our dramatic writers to this strict account had a very wholesome effect upon those who wrote after this time. They were now a great deal more upon their guard … and, by degrees, the fair sex came again to fill the boxes on the first day of a new comedy, without fear of censure." For some time, it seems, the ladies had been afraid of venturing "bare-faced" to a new comedy, till they had been assured that they could do it without risk of affront; "or if," as Cibber says, "their curiosity was too strong for their patience, they took care, at least, to save appearances, and rarely came upon the first days of acting but in masks, then daily worn and admitted in the pit, the side-boxes, and gallery." This reform of the drama, it is to be observed, was really effected, not by the agency of the Chamberlain or any other court official, but by force of the just criticism, strenuously delivered, of a private individual. But now, following the example of Collier, the Master of the Revels, in his turn, insisted upon amendment in this matter, and oftentimes forbade the performance of whole scenes that he judged to be vicious or immoral. He had constituted himself a Censor Morum; a character in which the modern Licenser of Plays still commends himself to our notice.

Moreover, the Chamberlain had arrogated to himself the right of interfering in dramatic affairs upon all occasions that he judged fitting. Upon his authority the theatres were closed at any moment, even for a period of six weeks, in the case of the death of the sovereign. If any disputes occurred between managers and actors, even in relation to so small a matter as the privileges of the latter, the Chamberlain interfered to arrange the difficulty according to his own notion of justice. No actor could quit the company of one patent theatre, to join the forces of the other, without the permission of the Chamberlain, in addition to the formal discharge of his manager. Powell, the actor, even suffered imprisonment on this account, although it was thought as well, after a day or two, to abandon the proceedings that had been taken against him. "Upon this occasion," says Cibber, with a mysterious air, and in very involved terms, "behind the scenes at Drury Lane, a person of great quality, in my hearing, inquiring of Powell into the nature of his offence … told him, that if he had patience, or spirit enough to have stayed in his confinement till he had given him notice of it, he would have found him a handsomer way of coming out of it!" Of the same actor, Powell, it is recorded that he once, at Will's Coffee House, "in a dispute about playhouse affairs, struck a gentleman whose family had been some time masters of it." A complaint of the actor's violence was lodged at the Chamberlain's office, and Powell having a part in the play announced for performance upon the following day, an order was sent to silence the whole company, and to close the theatre, although it was admitted that the managers had been without cognisance of their actor's misconduct! "However," Cibber narrates, "this order was obeyed, and remained in force for two or three days, till the same authority was pleased, or advised, to revoke it. From the measures this injured gentleman took for his redress, it may be judged how far it was taken for granted that a Lord Chamberlain had an absolute power over the theatre." An attempt, however, upon the authority of the Chamberlain to imprison Dogget, the actor, for breach of his engagement with the patentees of Drury Lane Theatre, met with signal discomfiture. Dogget forthwith applied to the Lord Chief Justice Holt for his discharge under the Habeas Corpus Act, and readily obtained it, with, it may be gathered, liberal compensation for the violence to which he had been subjected.

The proceedings of the Lord Chamberlain had, indeed, become most oppressive. Early in 1720, the Duke of Newcastle, then Lord Chamberlain, took upon himself to close Drury Lane Theatre. Steele, then one of the patentees, addressed the public upon the subject. He had lived in friendship with the duke; he owed his seat in Parliament to the duke's influence. He commenced with saying: "The injury which I have received, great as it is, has nothing in it so painful as that it comes from whence it does. When I complained of it in a private letter to the Chamberlain, he was pleased to send his secretary to me with a message to forbid me writing, speaking, corresponding, or applying to him in any manner whatsoever. Since he has been pleased to send an English gentleman a banishment from his person and counsels in a style thus royal, I doubt not but that the reader will justify me in the method I take to explain this matter to the town." Steele could obtain no redress, however. He was virtually dispossessed of his rights as patentee. He estimated his loss at nine thousand eight hundred pounds, and concluded his statement of the case with the words: "But it is apparent the King is grossly and shamelessly injured … I never did one act to provoke this attempt, nor does the Chamberlain pretend to assign any direct reason of forfeiture, but openly and wittingly declares that he will ruin Steele. … The Lord Chamberlain and many others may, perhaps, have done more for the House of Hanover than I have, but I am the only man in his majesty's dominions, who did all he could." For some months Steele was replaced by other patentees, of whom Cibber was one, more submissive to "the lawful monarch of the stage," as Dennis designated the Chamberlain; but in 1721, upon the intervention of Walpole, Steele was restored to his privileges. It is not clear, however, that he took any legal measures to obtain compensation for the wrong done him. Cibber is silent upon the subject; because, it has been suggested, the Chamberlain had been instrumental in obtaining him the appointment of poet laureate, which could hardly have devolved upon him in right of his poetic qualifications.

Nevertheless, Cibber had been active in organising a form of opposition to the authority of the Chamberlain and the Master of the Revels, which, although it seemed of a trifling kind, had yet its importance. For it turned upon the question of fees. The holders of the patents considered themselves sole judges of the plays proper to be acted in their theatres. The Master of the Revels claimed his fee of forty shillings for each play produced. The managers, it seems, were at liberty to represent new plays without consulting him, and to spare him the trouble of reading the same—provided always they paid him his fees. But these they now thought it expedient to withhold from him. Cibber was deputed to attend the Master of the Revels, and to inquire into the justice of his demand, with full powers to settle the dispute amicably. Charles Killigrew at this time filled the office, having succeeded his father Thomas, who had obtained the appointment of Master of the Revels upon the death of Sir Henry Herbert in 1673. Killigrew could produce no warrant for his demand. Cibber concluded with telling him that "as his pretensions were not backed with any visible instrument of right, and as his strongest plea was custom, the managers could not so far extend their complaisance as to continue the payment of fees upon so slender a claim to them." From that time neither their plays nor his fees gave either party any further trouble. In 1725 Killigrew was succeeded as Master of the Revels by Charles Henry Lea, who for some years continued to exercise "such authority as was not opposed, and received such fees as he could find the managers willing to pay."

The first step towards legislation in regard to the theatres and the licensing of plays was made in 1734, when Sir John Barnard moved the House of Commons "for leave to bring in a bill for restraining the number of houses for playing of interludes and for the better regulating common players of interludes." It was represented that great mischief had been done in the city of London by the playhouses: youth had been corrupted, vice encouraged, trade and industry prejudiced. Already the number of theatres in London was double that of Paris. In addition to the opera-house, the French playhouse in the Haymarket, and the theatres in Covent Garden, Drury Lane, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and Goodman's Fields, there was now a project to erect a new playhouse in St. Martin's-le-Grand. It was no less surprising than shameful to see so great a change in the temper and inclination of the British people; "we now exceeded in levity even the French themselves, from whom we learned these and many other ridiculous customs, as much unsuitable to the mien and manners of an Englishman or a Scot, as they were agreeable to the air and levity of a Monsieur." Moreover, it was remarked that, to the amazement and indignation of all Europe, Italian singers received here "set salaries equal to those of the Lords of the Treasury and Judges of England!" The bill was duly brought in, but was afterwards dropped, "on account of a clause offered to be inserted … for enlarging the power of the Lord Chamberlain with respect to the licensing of plays." It is curious to find that Tony Aston, a popular comedian of the time, who had been bred an attorney, was, upon his own petition, permitted to deliver a speech in the House of Commons against Sir John Barnard's bill.

But two years later the measure was substantially passed into law. The theatres had certainly given in the meantime serious provocation to the authorities. The power of the Chamberlain and the Master of the Revels had been derided. Playhouses were opened and plays produced without any kind of license. At the Haymarket, under the management of Fielding, who styled his actors "The Great Mogul's Comedians," the bills announcing that they had "dropped from the clouds" (in mockery, probably, of "His Majesty's Servants" at Drury Lane, or of another troop describing themselves as "The Comedians of His Majesty's Revels"), the plays produced had been in the nature of political lampoons. Walpole and his arts of government were openly satirised, Fielding having no particular desire to spare the prime minister, whose patronage he had vainly solicited. In the play entitled "Pasquin, a Dramatic Satire on the Times; being the rehearsal of two plays, viz., a Comedy, called The Election, and a Tragedy, called the Life and Death of Common Sense," the satire was chiefly aimed at the electoral corruptions of the age, the abuses prevailing in the learned professions, and the servility of place-men who derided public virtue, and denied the existence of political honesty. "Pasquin," it may be noted, was received with extraordinary favour, enjoyed a run of fifty nights, and proved a source of both fame and profit to its author. But the play of "The Historical Register of 1736," produced in the spring of 1737, contained allusions of a more pointed and personal kind, and gravely offended the government. Indeed, the result could hardly have been otherwise. Walpole himself was brought upon the stage, and under the name of Quidam violently caricatured. He was exhibited silencing noisy patriots with bribes, and then joining with them in a dance—the proceedings being explained by Medley, another of the characters, supposed to be an author: "Sir, every one of these patriots has a hole in his pocket, as Mr. Quidam the fiddler there knows; so that he intends to make them dance till all the money has fallen through, which he will pick up again, and so not lose a halfpenny by his generosity!" The play, indeed, abounded in satire of the boldest kind, in witty and unsparing invective; as the biographer of Fielding acknowledges, there was much in the work "well calculated both to offend and alarm a wary minister of state." Soon both "Pasquin" and "The Historical Register" were brought under the notice of the Cabinet. Walpole felt "that it would be inexpedient to allow the stage to become the vehicle of anti-ministerial abuse." The Licensing Act was resolved upon.

The new measure was not avowedly aimed at Fielding, however. It was preceded by incidents of rather a suspicious kind. Gifford, the manager of Goodman's Fields Theatre, professing to have received from some anonymous writer a play of singular scurrility, carried the work to the prime minister. The obsequious manager was rewarded with one thousand pounds for his patriotic conduct, and the libellous nature of the play he had surrendered was made the excuse for the legislation that ensued. It was freely observed at the time, however, that Gifford had profited more by suppressing the play than he could possibly have gained by representing it, and that there was something more than natural in the appositeness of his receipt of it. If honest, it was suggested that he had been trapped by a government spy, who had sent him the play, solely that he might deal with it as he did; but it was rather assumed that he had disingenuously curried favour with the authorities, and sold himself for treasury gold. The play in question was never acted or printed; nor was the name of the author, or of the person from whom the manager professed to have received it, ever disclosed. Horace Walpole, indeed, boldly ascribed it to Fielding, and asserted that he had discovered among his father's papers an imperfect copy of the play. But the statement has not obtained much acceptance.

The ministry hurried on their Licensing Bill. It was entitled "An Act to explain and amend so much of an Act made in the twelfth year of Queen Anne, entitled 'An Act for reducing the laws relating to rogues, vagabonds, sturdy beggars, and vagrants, into one Act of Parliament; and for a more effectual punishing such rogues, vagabonds, sturdy beggars, and vagrants, and sending them whither they ought to be sent,' as relates to common players of interludes." But its chief object—undisclosed by its title, was the enactment that, for the future, every dramatic piece, including prologues and epilogues, should, previous to performance, receive the license of the Lord Chamberlain, and that, without his permission, no London theatre, unprotected by a patent, should open its doors. Read a first time on the 24th of May, 1737, the bill was passed through both Houses with such despatch that it received the royal assent on the 8th of June following. It was opposed in the House of Commons by Mr. Pulteney, and in the House of Lords by the Earl of Chesterfield, whose impressive speech on the occasion is one of the few specimens that survive of the parliamentary eloquence of the period. With the passing of the Licensing Act, Fielding's career as manager and dramatist was brought to a close. He was constrained to devote himself to the study of the law, and subsequently to the production of novels. And with the passing of the Licensing Act terminated the existence of the Master of the Revels; the Act, indeed, made no mention of him, ignored him altogether. He survived, however, under another name—still as the Chamberlain's subordinate and deputy. Thence forward he was known as the Licenser of Playhouses and Examiner of Plays.