King's College Maughan Library

Today we visited the Maughan Library at King's College!

King's College is a large research-led university, founded in 1829. The library supports 25,000 students with an emphasis on medicine, history, literature, travel, and theology. Within this structure, the Archives and Special Collections host regular free exhibitions. The current exhibition is The Printed Page: The Work of the Printer over the Past 500 Years.

At the library's exhibition in the Weston Room, I was delighted to discover material relevant to my own research. My (current) topic is censorship in the 18th century, with a focus on the life and works of Samuel Foote. In particular, Case 7: Printing Against the State touched on the relationship between printing and censorship.

The Beggar's Opera, Case 3

In Case 3: Local Imprints, I was excited to spot The Beggar's Opera (1728) by John Gay. This work is contemporary to Foote and, like Foote's comedies, The Beggar's Opera is crass and full of crude humour. Despite moral outrage from certain classes, Gay's play was tremendously successful. Written in 1728, this play predated the Licensing Act of 1737; the piece of legislation that allowed the state to censor Foote's comedies. Following this law, a royal license was required to perform a play for money. In addition, any new works to be spoken or sung on stage had to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for approval. Companies failing to do so could be fined and, ominously, "silenced" (Kelly, 2012, p. 98). Since The Beggar's Opera was continuously performed on the London stage throughout the 18th century, it was subject to this potential censorship. The juxtaposition between plays that were censored and plays that were not reveals a great deal about the nature and purpose of censorship.

For more information about the Maughan Library, see the full website at https://www.kcl.ac.uk/library/index.aspx 

References
Kelly, I. (2012). Mr. Foote's other leg: Comedy, tragedy, and murder in Georgian London. Oxford: Picador.