Where Laws do Reach: Public Opinion, the Theatres, and the 1737 Licensing Act
-
Romana Zacchi
Romana Zacchi , Former Professor of English Literature at the University of Bologna. She has published extensively on Shakespeare's plays and later adaptations, late seventeenth-century English drama and theatre (La società del teatro nell'Inghilterra della Restaurazione , Clueb, 1984) and contemporary English theatre (on T.S. Eliot and E.Bond). She is co-author (with Roberta Mullini) ofIntroduzione allo studio dell teatro inglese (2003) and editor and contributor of volumes on theatrical censorship (Forme della censura , 2006), on European theatrical documents (La scena contestata , 2006), and of the volumeRichard Rowlands Verstegan. A Versatile man on an Age of Turmoil (2012). She is currently working at a volume on James Joyce's only play,Exiles .
Abstract
The paper deals with one of the most fateful legislative events in the history of theatre and drama in Britain, namely the 1737 Licensing Act. In late seventeenth and early eighteenth century the debate on the freedom of artistic (namely, theatrical) expression was fiery in Britain. Public opinion had mixed feelings about such social abuses in the population as drunkenness, gambling, laziness, obscenity, and vagabondage, and civil authorities seemed to be unable to bring forms of social constraints into the legal fields thus prosecuting abuse through law and justice. With the help of some historical documents the paper aims at providing some cue to the study of the social and political processes developing in the decades immediately prior to the Licensing Act introduced in 1737, and its immediate aftermath.
About the author
Romana Zacchi, Former Professor of English Literature at the University of Bologna. She has published extensively on Shakespeare's plays and later adaptations, late seventeenth-century English drama and theatre (La società del teatro nell'Inghilterra della Restaurazione, Clueb, 1984) and contemporary English theatre (on T.S. Eliot and E.Bond). She is co-author (with Roberta Mullini) of Introduzione allo studio dell teatro inglese (2003) and editor and contributor of volumes on theatrical censorship (Forme della censura, 2006), on European theatrical documents (La scena contestata, 2006), and of the volume Richard Rowlands Verstegan. A Versatile man on an Age of Turmoil (2012). She is currently working at a volume on James Joyce's only play, Exiles.
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Gardens of Justice
- Voltaire's Garden
- A Bundle of Sticks in My Garden
- The Right to Free Movement as Temporal Deterritorialization in the Landscaped Garden
- The Other Otherwise: Law, Historical Trauma and the Severed Gardens of Justice
- “He Does Not Love Me, Nor I He!” The Critic's Love is of Critique, not of Law
- Research
- Renaissance Actors and Lawyers: Instability of Texts and of Social Trafficking: The Comedy of Errors
- Where Laws do Reach: Public Opinion, the Theatres, and the 1737 Licensing Act
- “The law is a wise serpent”: Subtextual Subversion in The Revenger's Tragedy
- The Voice of Martha Ray
- Western and Post-Western Mythologies of Law
- Book Reviews
- Book Review
- Book Review
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Gardens of Justice
- Voltaire's Garden
- A Bundle of Sticks in My Garden
- The Right to Free Movement as Temporal Deterritorialization in the Landscaped Garden
- The Other Otherwise: Law, Historical Trauma and the Severed Gardens of Justice
- “He Does Not Love Me, Nor I He!” The Critic's Love is of Critique, not of Law
- Research
- Renaissance Actors and Lawyers: Instability of Texts and of Social Trafficking: The Comedy of Errors
- Where Laws do Reach: Public Opinion, the Theatres, and the 1737 Licensing Act
- “The law is a wise serpent”: Subtextual Subversion in The Revenger's Tragedy
- The Voice of Martha Ray
- Western and Post-Western Mythologies of Law
- Book Reviews
- Book Review
- Book Review
