Disciplining Satire: The Censorship of Satiric Comedy on the Eighteenth-Century London Stage (review)

In Disciplining Satire, Matthew J. Kinservik describes the effects of the 1737 Licensing Act on the writing of satiric comedy, contrasting significant playwrights who preceded and followed the Act. Kinservik begins by finding that the eighteenth century conceived satire more broadly than is done today. The modern mind visualizes satire primarily as attack upon vice or folly. The eighteenth century added to this instances of exemplary characters that served as social models. Thus the audience might not only respond to the roles with ridicule, but also with sentiment. Colley Cibber is quoted as saying that satire relies "as heavily on eliciting sympathy for the positive characters . . . as it does on urging rejection of the negative characters" (41).

Chapter 2 covers the career of Henry Fielding from his first play in 1728 to his last one before the Licensing Act. Kinservik has grouped Fielding's plays into three periods to show clearly the progress of his satiric intent. Fielding's first four plays were domestic Cibberesque corrective satires but were only moderate successes. Subsequently, Fielding turned to the model provided by John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728) and scored an instant success with The Author's Farce (1730), which satirized London entertainers. From then on (1730-35), Fielding used topical subjects but employed metaphoric characters in which a role represented a generalized vice, rather than metonymic characters, which portray specific living people. In Rape Upon Rape (1730), Fielding began to see the stage as a "medium for serious discussion of social issues" (73), but the characters are still abstractions. Justice Squeezum is a metaphor for all corrupt judges. In the fourteen-month period before the advent of the Licensing Act, Fielding had taken a stand against the administration of Prime Minister Robert Walpole. As manager of the Little Haymarket, Fielding wrote and produced plays that opposed the Tory government and the two patent houses, becoming ever more daring and partisan in his viewpoints. "The specificity with which Fielding attacked figures in the theatrical and political establishment in these plays was virtually unprecedented" (89).

Chapter 3 concerns the Licensing Act, whose obvious effects are well known: non-patent theatres were outlawed, and all new plays had to be approved by the Lord Chamberlain. I was interested to discover that the Licensing Act was followed by articles in the Daily Gazetteer, an official government newspaper, providing "an explicit prescription" (96) for satiric plays, recommending a return to the sympathetic satire of the early eighteenth century, and endorsing metaphoric over metonymic satire. Kinservik finds that the Lord Chamberlain's office did not wish to exclude plays from the stage; rather, it wished to provide a paradigm for playwrights to follow and to alter submitted texts to make them acceptable. "The emphasis was clearly on correcting texts, not punishing violators" (98); a prohibited play would indicate failure of the censorship process.

Kinservik finds that the Licensing Act had several unforeseen results. One was that the presentation of new plays declined by two-thirds in the next decade, and the revival of old plays (which did not have to be licensed) grew. This may have been one of the factors leading to a Shakespeare revival. In closing non-patent theatres, the Licensing Act caused the immediate unemployment of actors and other theatre personnel. This made competition for jobs greater and may have been a factor in the growth of a more "natural" acting style in the mid-eighteenth century. As there was a drastic reduction in new roles, actors now looked to new interpretations of old roles: hence Macklin's innovative interpretation of Shylock. I found Kinservik's discussion of the far-reaching effects of the Licensing Act to be thought provoking.

Consider the case of Samuel Foote, who both wrote and performed. Foote took care that his plays were on the right...