The Lord Chamberlain,
as Censor of the theatre, is a direct descendant of the King's
Master of the Revels, appointed in 1544 by Henry VIII. To keep
order among the players and musicians of that day when they
performed at Court. This first appearance of the theatrical
censor in politics as the whipper-in of the player, with its
conception of the player as a rich man's servant hired to amuse
him, and, outside his professional duties, as a gay, disorderly,
anarchic spoilt child, half privileged, half outlawed, probably
as much vagabond as actor, is the real foundation of the
subjection of the whole profession, actors, managers, authors
and all, to the despotic authority of an officer whose business
it is to preserve decorum among menials. It must be remembered
that it was not until a hundred years later, in the reaction
against the Puritans, that a woman could appear on the English
stage without being pelted off as the Italian actresses were. The
theatrical profession was regarded as a shameless one; and it is
only of late years that actresses have at last succeeded in
living down the assumption that actress and prostitute are
synonymous terms, and made good their position in respectable
society. This makes the survival of the old ostracism in the Act
of 1843 intolerably galling; and though it explains the
apparently unaccountable absurdity of choosing as Censor of
dramatic literature an official whose functions and
qualifications have nothing whatever to do with literature, it
also explains why the present arrangement is not only criticized
as an institution, but resented as an insult.
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