e of Walpole's wrath was filled by the
knowledge that a piece was in preparation in which he was to be held up
to public ridicule in the rudest and most uncompromising way. Walpole
acted with a certain boldness and cunning. The play was brought to
him, was offered for sale to him. This was an audacious attempt at
black-mailing; and at first it appeared to be successful. Walpole
agreed to the terms, bought the play, paid the money, and then
proceeded at once to make the fact that such a piece had been written,
and but for his payment might have been played, an excuse for the
introduction of a measure to put the whole English stage under
restriction, and to brand it with terms of shame. He picked out
carefully all the worst passages, {96} and had them copied, and sent
round in private to the leading members of all parties in the House of
Commons, and appealed to them to support him in passing a measure which
he justified in advance by the illustrations of dramatic licentiousness
thus brought under their own eyes. By this mode of action he secured
beforehand an amount of support which made the passing of his Bill a
matter of almost absolute certainty. Under these favorable conditions
he introduced his Playhouse Bill.

[Sidenote: 1737--The Press and the Theatre]

The Playhouse Bill was a measure that attracted much attention, and
provoked a very fierce controversy. It was a Bill to explain and amend
so much of an Act made in the twelfth year of the reign of Queen Anne,
entitled "An Act for reducing the laws relating to rogues, vagabonds,
sturdy beggars, and vagrants, and sending them whither they ought to be
sent," as relates to the common players of interludes. One clause
empowered the Lord Chamberlain to prohibit the representation of any
theatric performance, and compelled all persons to send copies of new
plays, or new parts or prologues or epilogues added to old plays,
fourteen days before performance, in order that they might be submitted
to the Lord Chamberlain for his permission or prohibition. Every
person who set up a theatre, or gave a theatrical exhibition, without
having a legal settlement in the place where the exhibition was given,
or authority by letters-patent from the Crown, or a license from the
Lord Chamberlain, was to be deemed a rogue and vagabond, and subject to
the penalties liberally doled out to such homeless offenders. The
system of license thus virtually established by Walpole is the