MAGISTER JOCORUM:

BEING A PLEA FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE OFFICE OF MASTER OF THE REVELS, STILL EXISTING AS A DEPARTMENT UNDER THE CONTROL OF THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN.

THERE exists in London, in this year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventy-two, a court official who has control over the Queen's wardrobe, over the chaplains, physicians, &c., employed in the royal household, and who will be known to a considerable portion of the public as the individual who issues tickets to view Mr. Maclise's cartoons at Westminster. Now this august official, whose authority though not founded in, is protected by law, is as irresponsible to the public as it is possible for an officer to be; notwithstanding which, he is (in addition to the dignified functions which devolve upon him at court) vested with a power over the managers, authors, and actors of the London theatres, which is, in a word, unlimited. To-morrow morning, for instance, this nobleman may, if so minded, issue an arbitrary notice closing every playhouse in London. Appeal against such an order would be vain and hopeless. He may, if he chooses, silence for a term or for ever any particular player. He may give directions as to the cut of an actor's dress, or the curling of an actor's wig; he can cut an inch off a lady's petticoat, or an act off an author's drama. That the continuance of an office of the kind is possible in days like our own argues an amount of apathy and indifference on the part of the public rarely witnessed, save on a question of art. If the public ever give a passing thought to the matter, the reality of the grievance is not recognised-or if recognised at all, only as pressing on a class numerically contemptible and socially undistinguished. The public does not suffer therefrom in mind, body, or estate, and therefore any attempt to obtain redress would possibly be regarded as an exploit of the most infatuated Quixotism. The question is admittedly an interesting one, but not of a nature to excite to action in these days of larger disestablishments and more radical reforms.

In reviving the subject at this time I am not aware that there are any special circumstances which invite to its discussion, but so long as the office exists and exercises its functions, so long should an iterated protest be made, in the hope that pertinacity of appeal effect what other means have failed to bring about.

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I shall not base my argument on history or on law, but rather Oct.-VOL. II. NO. X.

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on the absurdity of the institution per se, and without relation to these. If a thing be ridiculous, and devoid of a reason to be, then it matters not whether it be founded in law, or can point to history for the sanction of custom. If it can be shown that its authority is a usurped authority, having no foundation in law, that will indeed form an additional reason for its suppression, but will be a reason not absolutely necessary to make good the case.

In the year 1546 Sir Thomas Cawarden, one of the gentlemen of the privy chamber, was appointed under letters patent, granted by Henry VIII., master of the revels; or, as the patent hath it, "Magister Jocorum Revellorum et Mascorum."* The excesses of the writers of mysteries and moralities had indeed caused the establishment of a court official before the institution of the Magister Jocorum, whose business was to put a check on the overflowings of the inventive and humorous morality-wrights, and who was entitled-with that charming contempt of common sense so characteristic of the time-the Lord of Misrule. This Lord of Misrule must be regarded as the real forefather of the most objectionable officer under the Lord Chamberlain, namely, the Reader of Plays, or Licenser of Plays, or-whatever he calls himself. It was his duty to see to the literature of the mysteries or moralities or interludes presented to the court at Christmas, while the Magister Jocorum looked after the dresses of the performers, superintended the production of the "revels and masks," and when it was all over paid the piper; for which services he received the annual salary of ten pounds sterling. Doubtless the Magister Jocorum had some valuable perquisites in addition to this somewhat meagre allowance.

It will be readily admitted that from these two offices is derived the censorship of the theatre, as at present existing under the Lord Chamberlain. And it will scarcely be denied that the state -not of the theatre, for the theatre had at that time no existencebut the state of the peripatetic mummers, the travelling players of interludes, then wandering about from place to place, was a reason sufficient to justify the establishment of a system of royal restraint, such as was embodied in the person of the Lord of Misrule. It will be borne in mind also that these two personages exercised their functions independently, and in different spheres. The Magister Jocorum was distinctly an officer of the court, whose duty it was to inaugurate and superintend the court amusements, while the Lord of Misrule had a jurisdiction extending to

*For interesting and complete particulars consult Collier's "Annals of the Stage."

the players of interludes generally. Absurd as they were in that age, it never occurred to any of them to join in one person the offices of a superior court domestic attached to the service of the king, and of a legal-literary censor appointed to look after the amusements of the people. It was reserved for the after-time to commit, and sanction, and perpetuate that folly.

Actors at that time were, to a great extent, what they are described as being in 39 of Elizabeth, cap. 4, sec. 2, namely, "vagabonds." Disreputable, dissolute, and shiftless creatures, against whom every man's hand was raised, who were constantly having their liberties encroached upon by acts of suppression passed by the parliament, or by the common council, and who not unfrequently committed acts which seemed to justify the extreme rigour with which they were treated. Moreover, the miracles or moralities which they performed were generally indecent, often blasphemous, and always calculated to call forth anything but feelings of respect for the players. Such were the circumstances that gave rise to an office which, under another name, is still permitted to exist by Englishmen whose invariable custom it is upon all public occasions to talk a great deal about their national freedom.

The object sought to be accomplished by the office, as originally founded by Henry VIII., was not the suppression of art, but the suppression of vice. The individuals affected by the operation of the office were not men of genius, intelligence, and education, but unlettered, ignorant, and unruly vagabonds. When the class died away, and was superseded by another, the office should have been allowed to die away too. But offices with salaries attached to them-particularly offices at court-are proverbially long-lived institutions, and courtiers are proverbially the most tenacious of mortals. No limpet sticks more vigorously to the coppers of a ship than a courtier to the coppers of office. The post was permitted to remain; but with what effect on the morality which it was appointed to subserve? In Elizabeth's time the Lord Chamberlain permitted Beaumont and Fletcher's incestuous play "The Captain," but declined to license the "Maid's Tragedy," because in the latter work a king is killed, an act so horribly impious, even in artistic representation, that no loyally disposed citizen should be allowed to witness it. But come down to the time of the Restoration, and observe how the censorship answered the end of its maker at that lively period. Never was the Lord Chamberlain so busy and so vigorous as then. We have him issuing an edict that no actor employed at one theatre shall migrate to another. We have an entire company silenced for three days because a member of that company had the unblushing

effrontery to strike a gentleman who had insulted him in Will's Coffee House. These, and such as these, were the acts by which the Lord Chamberlain rendered his office illustrious. And meantime, how about the morality which he was appointed to inculcate and encourage? "While our Authors," says Colley Cibber, "took these extraordinary Liberties with their Wit, I remember the Ladies were observed to be decently afraid of venturing barefac'd to a new Comedy till they had been assured they might do it without the Risque of an Insult to their Modesty. Or if their Curiosity were too strong for their Patience they took care at least to save Appearances, and rarely came upon the first Days of Acting but in Masks (then daily worn and admitted in the Pit, the Side Boxes, and Gallery), which Custom, however, had so many ill Consequences attending it, that it has been abolished these many Years. These Immoralities of the Stage had, by an avow'd Indulgence, been creeping into it ever since King Charles his Time; nothing that was loose could then be too low for it: The London Cuckolds,' the most rank play that ever succeeded, was then in the highest Court Favour." But the stage literature of that period is more or less known to every student of the drama. Ribaldry and blasphemy are the accompaniments of its wit. Intrigue characterises every plot, and indecency flavours every intrigue. Of all the writers of that time-and there never was a greater galaxy of great wits than that which illuminated the Restoration period-not one has produced a comedy fit to be presented to a modern audience.

I have now indicated the manner in which an official censorship of stage plays took rise, the circumstances that suggested it, and the reasons for its establishment. I have pointed out briefly that the circumstances connected with its inauguration passed away with the rise of the drama proper, as distinguished from the mysteries, moralities, and interludes in vogue in 1546. And I have stated that the object which the office was appointed to promote, was not promoted at a time when that office was exceptionally vigorous in its action.

Without attempting to trace the stages through which the Lord Chamberlain has grown into his present privileges-as much through the fear of falling into an inaccuracy as from a belief that such a sketch would be irrelevant to the question-I propose to assert the injustice implied in the existence of his power as affecting the Public, the Player, and the Author.

It is to be hoped that a time will arrive to England when quite a different sort of relation shall exist between artist and public from that at present existing, when the public will regard the artist less in the light of a tradesman and more in the light of a teacher,

when insults, or pains, or penalties put upon him will be resented by a nation, and when the popular voice will be strong enough and willing enough to demand for him peace and protection.

Evidently that day has not dawned yet-the dawn of it being indeed as far off as ever it was. Degrade an artist, and you imperil the art he practises. Degrade a whole profession, and you endanger art itself. As Englishmen, however, we are not apt to take so gloomy a view of things. We go to a playhouse to be amused. We are amused. We come away and think no more of the people who diverted us. The grievance, however, under which actors labour is essentially a public grievance. It may possibly bear more heavily and more immediately upon the acting profession, but it is really and distinctly a question in which the liberty of the subject is concerned as any that can be named.

It is an office not founded in law. True there exist, and always must exist, officers of state unappointed by Act of Parliament, exercising certain rights and performing certain duties-officials whose office is hereditary, and permitted by custom-officials who exist by royal warrant. But there is no official authorised by royal warrant, or otherwise appointed, who can come to me-a cabinet-maker, say—and order me, under penalties, to make my chair according to his pattern, who, on refusal, can shut up my shop and deprive me of my maintenance. Who can compel me, a sculptor, to drape or undrape a statue; who can oblige me, a preacher, to make my sermon longer or shorter. If such officials existed it could only be by Act of Parliament. No such interference would be tolerated for a moment from an individual holding a warrant of less authority than that granted by an Act of Parliament duly passed by the Commons, the Lords, and the Queen. But, be it observed, the interference of the Lord Chamberlain is of a character as harassing as any of the annoyances I have supposed, and it is impossible to conceive of its existence in a free country like this, except on the hypothesis that the public does not regard it as a matter affecting its own body.

What does it mean, this continuance of an office which owes its origin to the most debauched sovereign and the most insensate period in English history? It means this: "You, the British public, are irreligious, blasphemous, indecent. It is quite impossible to allow you to exercise your own discretion in the matter of the drama. Besides this, you are the most disloyal set of dogs in existence, only for our paternal intervention every theatre in London would become a hotbed of treason. Added to this, you are utterly without taste in the matter of dramatic productions. If a bad thing were presented to you you'd mistake it for a good thing, so we'll read your plays, and alter them, and touch them up, and, in fine,