The Surrey, the
Coburg (afterwards the Victoria), Astley's, &c., were, therefore, out
of his jurisdiction. There seemed, indeed, to be no law in existence
under which they could be licensed. They affected to be open under a
magistrate's license for "music, dancing, and public entertainments."
But this, in truth, afforded them no protection when it was thought
worth while to prosecute the managers for presenting dramatic
exhibitions. For although an Act, passed in the 28th year of George
III., enabled justices of the peace, under certain restrictions, to
grant licenses for dramatic entertainments, their powers did not
extend to within twenty miles of London. Lambeth was thus neutral
ground, over which neither the Lord Chamberlain nor the country
justices had any real authority, with this difficulty about the
case--performances that could not be licensed could not be legalised.
The law continued in this unsatisfactory state till the passing, in
1843, of the Act for Regulating Theatres. This deprived the patent
theatres of their monopoly of the "regular drama," in that it extended
the Lord Chamberlain's power to grant licenses for the performance of
stage plays to all theatres within the parliamentary boundaries of the
City of London and Westminster, and of the Boroughs of Finsbury and
Marylebone, the Tower Hamlets, Lambeth, and Southwark, and also
"within those places where Her Majesty, her heirs and successors,
shall, in their royal persons, occasionally reside;" it being fully
understood that all the theatres then existing in London would receive
forthwith the Chamberlain's license "to give stage plays in the
fullest sense of the word;" to be taken to include, according to the
terms of the Act, "every tragedy, comedy, farce, opera, burletta,
interlude, melodrama, pantomime, or other entertainment of the stage,
or any part thereof.
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