The power of the Chamberlain and the Master of the
Revels had been derided. Playhouses were opened and plays produced
without any kind of license. At the Haymarket, under the management of
Fielding, who styled his actors "The Great Mogul's Comedians," the
bills announcing that they had "dropped from the clouds" (in mockery,
probably, of "His Majesty's Servants" at Drury Lane, or of another
troop describing themselves as "The Comedians of His Majesty's
Revels"), the plays produced had been in the nature of political
lampoons. Walpole and his arts of government were openly satirised,
Fielding having no particular desire to spare the prime minister,
whose patronage he had vainly solicited. In the play entitled
"Pasquin, a Dramatic Satire on the Times; being the rehearsal of two
plays, viz., a Comedy, called The Election, and a Tragedy, called the
Life and Death of Common Sense," the satire was chiefly aimed at the
electoral corruptions of the age, the abuses prevailing in the learned
professions, and the servility of place-men who derided public virtue,
and denied the existence of political honesty.
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