[4] In 1737, responding to satirical performances critical of his government, Robert Walpole introduced statutory censorship through the Licensing Act 1737, which appointed the Lord Chamberlain as the official theatrical censor.
[6] Under the new act, the Lord Chamberlain retained the role of censor albeit with slightly restricted powers to only prohibit the performance of plays that were likely 'to do violence to the sentiment of religious reverence', to be indecent, or 'to be calculated to conduce to crime or vice'.
[2] As such, the archive provides a valuable research resource that highlights contemporary social mores and attitudes to race or homosexuality, and the conviction that performance can have a contagious effect.
[9] The archive also curates early Black theatre in Britain[2] including the only known manuscript copy of At What a Price by Una Marson[10] which explores themes of women's desire, interracial relations and sexual harassment in the workplace.
[2] Now relatively obscure, Marson had moved from Jamaica to London in the 1930s and was well known at the time as a BBC broadcaster, poet, playwright and anti-racist activist.