I was reading up on Restoration and Augustan theatre, 'cause I'm utterly unfamiliar with theatre between the Elizabethan/Jacobean era and the 20th Century, and have discovered the
Licensing Act of 1737. Summary: the act gave the British Lord Chamberlain the power to censor any play or stop it from being staged entirely. The act created a massive chilling effect on English language drama that wouldn't be broken for decades, forcing playwrights to avoid serious, political, or controversial topics and instead encouraged them to write relatively frivolous comedies and melodrama at the
exact moment they'd started producing serious literature again.
Amongst the effects of this?
1. Many playwrights abandoned the stage for a relatively new artform, the Novel. While there had been notable novelists before 1737, it only developed into the preeminent form of English literature afterward thanks to the sudden flood of talent.
2. With the public generally suspicious of any new plays, assuming they must be propaganda pieces since they were government-approved, the playhouses turned to their library of pre-1737 plays (which didn't need government approval) and staged those instead. Who dominated those libraries? William Shakespeare. While Shakespeare was respected, he wasn't elevated to the level of "Greatest Poet/Playwright/Writer of the English Language" until the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, and
that was thanks to the sudden flood of Shakespeare productions post 1737.
Butterflying away either of these could have major, and rather interesting, effects on the development of the English language, English literature, and Anglo-American culture overall. Instead of relatively vanishing, English theatre in the Augustan and Georgian eras could have been as important and studied, if not moreso, than the Elizabethan era. The novel, assuming it developed in at all the same way, may have never grown to become as important and popular a medium as it is today. Shakespeare may be a relatively respected but, like Chaucer, relatively obscure writer and perhaps someone else would be considered the best English language playwright. So many butterflies...!
I'd love to do a timeline on this idea, but I don't think I have the time. What do you guys think of this POD? Does it have potential?