Hello everyone and welcome to the History of England episode 345 theatre the second playwrights.

Last time we heard about the growth of public theatre and I left you hanging on the edge of a cliff.

How we wondered how were the poor old privy council faced with such examples of scour publicity.

How would they reestablish proper, right and meat control as was their bounding duty?

Well censorship now was a well-established tradition of course in early modern Europe

and it was due censorship that they duly turned. Very often it has to be said censorship was not

very effective in print because just organisationally it was often impossible to track down the type of

people that you know pinned libel to gentry gates in the middle of the night or book Catholic bills

up on the doors of St Paul's or those tinkers in the low countries, bunch of radicals would get

round English laws by printing a legal material over there and then shipping it over.

But here in this theatre situation, well censorship had a real chance because here there were

theatres and companies they could get hold of with the dresses, organisations that could be

inspected and put out a business if they put on the wrong performance. So as private theatre grew

through established theatres and travelling companies the privy council was able to extend its

control. In 1572 the master of the rebels and then the equivalent of a student union

Ents Committee for the Royal Court became responsible for the licensing and censoring of all plays.

Every theatre of course must have a noble patron and must be licensed with the additional benefit

of raising a bit of cash for the government if you can't beat them, tax them principle. But

the privy council were also a good deal, sneaky other than that I'm ashamed to report.

In addition to the job of the master of the rebels to carefully censor anything scarulous

they tried to subvert the agenda to skew the market through the innovation of setting up their very

own theatre company in 1581, the Queen's Men. Since the match herself, you know,

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