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

Abstract

This book explains the effects of the Stage Licensing Act of 1737 on its target, satiric comedy. Contextualising the Licensing Act in terms of the Collier Controversy (1698-1728), this book shows that the Walpole ministry avocated a return to the sympathetic satire that developed during that earlier theatrical crisis.