Among the expenses of the royal Wardrobe in 1347, there was provision for tunicae and viseres (shirts and hats) for the Christmas ludi (plays) of Edward III.
To support the increased demand for theatrical entertainment, an officer of the Wardrobe was permanently employed to act under the Master of the Revels.
When Sir Thomas Cawarden received a 1544 patent as Master of the Revels and Tents he became the first to head an independent office.
The office of the Revels had been previously housed at Warwick Inn in the city, the London Charterhouse, and then at the priory of St. John of Jerusalem in Clerkenwell, to which a return was made after Cawarden's death in 1559.
Under Tylney, the functions of Master of the Revels gradually became extended and the office acquired the legal power to censor and control playing across the entire country.
With the legal authority to censor came the power to punish dramatists, actors and companies that published or performed subversive material.
In 1640 William Beeston was imprisoned for supporting the performance of a play without the approval and censor of Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels.
[6] Buck was granted the reversion of the mastership in 1597,[1] which led to much repining on the part of the dramatist John Lyly, who had expected to be appointed to the post.
[7] Sir John Astley followed Buck in the office, but he soon sold his right to license plays to his deputy, Henry Herbert, who became Master in 1641.
For the study of English Renaissance theatre, the accounts of the Revels Office provide one of the two crucial sources of reliable and specific information from the Tudor and Stuart eras (the other being the Register of the Stationers Company).
A catalogue of the Folger Shakespeare Library collection based on the majority of surviving papers of Thomas Cawarden is available on-line.