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.
CHAPTER III.
THE LICENSER OF PLAYHOUSES.
The Act of 1737 for licensing plays, playhouses, and players, and legalising the power the Lord Chamberlain had long been accustomed to exercise, although readily passed by both Houses of Parliament, gave great offence to the public. The Abbé Le Blanc, who was visiting England at this period, describes the new law as provoking a "universal murmur in the nation." It was openly complained of in the newspapers; at the coffee-houses it was denounced as unjust and "contrary to the liberties of the people of England." Fear prevailed that the freedom of the press would next be invaded. In the House of Lords Chesterfield had stigmatised the measure both as an encroachment on liberty and an attack on property. "Wit, my lords," he said, "is a sort of property. It is the property of those that have it, and too often the only property they have to depend on. It is, indeed; but a precarious dependence. Thank God, we, my lords, have a dependence of another kind. We have a much less precarious support, and, therefore, cannot feel the inconveniences of the bill now before us; but it is our duty to encourage and protect wit, whosoever's property it may be. … I must own I cannot easily agree to the laying of a tax upon wit; but by this bill it is to be heavily taxed—it is to be excised; for if this bill passes, it cannot be retailed in a proper way without a permit; and the Lord Chamberlain is to have the honour of being chief gauger, supervisor, commissioner, judge and jury." At this time, however, it is to be noted that parliamentary reporting was forbidden by both Houses. The general public, therefore, knew little of Lord Chesterfield's eloquent defence of the liberty of the stage.
The Act was passed in June, when the patent theatres, according to custom, were closed for the summer. Some two months after their reopening in the autumn all dramatic representations were suspended for six weeks, in consequence of the death of Queen Caroline. In January was presented at Covent Garden "A Nest of Plays," as the author, one Hildebrand Jacob, described his production: a combination of three short plays, each consisting of one act only, entitled respectively, "The Prodigal Reformed," "Happy Constancy," and "The Trial of Conjugal Love." The performance met with a very unfavourable reception. The author attributed the ill success of his work to its being the first play licensed by the authority of the Lord Chamberlain under the new bill, many spectators having predetermined to silence, under any circumstances, "the first fruits of that Act of Parliament." And this seems, indeed, to have been the case. The Abbé Le Blanc, who was present on the occasion, writes: "The best play in the world would not have succeeded that night. There was a disposition to damn whatever might appear. The farce in question was damned, indeed, without the least compassion. Nor was that all, for the actors were driven off the stage, and happy was it for the author that he did not fall into the hands of this furious assembly." And the Abbé proceeds to explain that the originators of this disturbance were not "schoolboys, apprentices, clerks, or mechanics," but lawyers, "a body of gentlemen perhaps less honoured, but certainly more feared here than they are in France," who, "from living in colleges (Inns of Court), and from conversing always with one another, mutually preserve a spirit of independency through the body, and with great ease form cabals. … At Paris the cabals of the pit are only among young fellows, whose years may excuse their folly, or persons of the meanest education and stamp; here they are the fruit of deliberation in a very grave body of people, who are not less formidable to the minister in place than to the theatrical writers." But the Abbé relates that on a subsequent occasion, when another new play having been announced, he had looked for further disturbance, the judicious dramatist of the night succeeded in calming the pit by administering in his prologue a double dose of incense to their vanity. "Half-an-hour before the play was to begin the spectators gave notice of their dispositions by frightful hisses and outcries, equal, perhaps, to what were ever heard at a Roman amphitheatre." The author, however, having in part tamed this wild audience by his flattery, secured ultimately its absolute favour by humouring its prejudices after the grossest fashion. He brought upon the stage a figure "with black eyebrows, a ribbon of an ell long under his chin, a bag-peruke immoderately powdered, and his nose all bedaubed with snuff. What Englishman could not know a Frenchman by this ridiculous figure?" The Frenchman was presently shown to be, for all the lace down every seam of his coat, nothing but a cook, and then followed severe satire and criticism upon the manners and customs of France. "The excellence and virtues of English beef were extolled, and the author maintained that it was owing to the qualities of its juice that the English were so courageous and had such a solidity of understanding, which raised them above all the nations in Europe; he preferred the noble old English pudding beyond all the finest ragouts that ever were invented by the greatest geniuses that France ever produced." These "ingenious strokes" were loudly applauded by the audience, it seems, who, in their delight at the abuse lavished upon the French, forgot that they came to condemn the play and to uphold the ancient liberties of the stage. From that time forward, the Abbé states, "the law was executed without the least trouble; all the plays since have been quietly heard, and either succeeded or not according to their merits."
When Garrick visited Paris he declined to be introduced to the Abbé Le Blanc, "on account of the irreverence with which he had treated Shakespeare." There can, indeed, be no doubt that the Abbé, although he wrote amusing letters, was a very prejudiced person, and his evidence and opinions touching the English stage must be received with caution. So far as can be ascertained, especially by study of the "History of the Stage" (compiled by that industrious clergyman, Mr. Genest, from the playbills in the British Museum), but few new plays were produced in the course of the season immediately following the passing of the Licensing Act; certainly no new play can be found answering the description furnished by the Abbé with due regard to the period he has fixed for its production. Possibly he referred to the "Beaux' Stratagem," in which appear a French officer and an Irish-French priest, and which was certainly represented some few nights after the condemnation of Mr. Jacob's "Nest of Plays." Farquhar's comedy was then thirty years old, however. Nor has the Abbé done full justice to the public opposition offered to the Licensing Act. At the Haymarket Theatre a serious riot occurred in October, 1738, fifteen months