32 The Deputy Moralist. 



but our tongues are under the jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain. The 

 ingenious, and, we must say, ill-used Colley Gibber, a clever, mercurial 

 coxcomb, has endeavoured, in his remarks on the establishment of the 

 licencership, to answer this objection. He asks, " is not that law of a 

 milder nature which prevents a crime, than that which punishes it, after 

 it is committed ?" It was this mildness that tripped up the heels of Charles 

 X. He, good man, rather than punish libels " committed," endeavoured to 

 " prevent the crime" of printing ; he was a philanthropist by anticipation. 

 We contend, and common sense is on our side, that it would be no greater 

 violation of that freedom, whichevery Englishman professes to claim as his 

 birth-right, for the editors of the Times, the True Sun, or The Examiner, 

 to send proofs of their newspapers for the revision of a state officer, who 

 might, in the fullest latitude of opinion or caprice, return them for publica- 

 tion with " twenty mortal gashes" in their pages, than is that law which 

 compels the dramatist to submit his labours to the approbation t of the 

 hireling of government. 



In the earlier stage of the drama, the Master of the Revels held a dis- 

 cretionary power as to the fitness of stage representations. This office 

 emanated from the royal will ; and curious instances are recorded of the 

 pertinacity with which the embryo licenser held to his damnatory opinions. 

 Mr. Collier, in his History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of 

 Shakspeare a most interesting and valuable work gives the following 

 anecdote of a Master of the Revels, the veritable prototype of a more 

 modern saint. He relates : 



" When Davenant presented his comedy of the Wits for license, to Sir Henry 

 Herbert, Master of the Revels to Charles the First, Sir Henry Herbert " crossed out 

 many exclamations that struck him in the light of oaths!" Through Endymion 

 Porter, Davenant complained to the king of this exercise of authority, and on the 

 9th of January, the king called the Master of the Revels before him, and desired that 

 he should allow such words zsjaith, death, and slight, to stand, "as asseverations only, 

 and no oaths." Davenant was in considerable favour at this date, which might 

 induce the king to take especial interest about his play. Notwithstanding this 

 royal decision against him, Sir Henry Herbert made the following memorandum 

 in his office book, shewing that he was " convinced against his will." 



" The king is pleased to take faith, death, slight, for asseverations and no oaths, 

 to which I do humbly submit, as my master's judgment, but, under favour, conceive 

 them to be oaths, and enter them here to declare my opinion and submission." 



Cibber tells us that the Master of the Revels refused to license the first 

 act of his version of Shakspeare's Richard III. " He had an objection to 

 the whole act, and the reason he gave for it was, that the distresses of 

 King Henry the Sixth, who is killed by Richard in the first act, would put 

 weak people too much in mind of King James, then living in France !" 



It would be idle to quote these instances of official caprice, did not the 

 present existence of the licensership continually threaten every writer with 

 a repetition of the absurd tyranny. It was but a few months since that 

 Mr. Colman refused to license a drama, because it contained a scene 

 wherein a king masqueraded as a clergyman ! The bench of bishops had, 

 at the period, rendered themselves odious by their votes on the Reform 

 Bill, and it was doubtless thought that the most indirect allusion to the 

 Church, would awake aught but respectful feelings towards its pious 

 pillars ! Among other curious evidences of this age of cant, we have seen 

 the official mandates returned with dramas from the Chamberlain's office, 

 and make no apology for quoting a specimen of the sensitive morality of 

 Brompton-square. 



