The Lord Chamberlain's plays are a collection of manuscripts held by the British Library comprising scripts of all new plays in Britain that needed to be approved for performance by the Lord Chamberlain, a senior official of the British royal household, between 1824 and 1968.[1] This was a requirement of both the Licensing Act 1737 and the Theatres Act 1843,[2] though his office was not legally entitled to retain the texts until 1912.[3]
The collection represents an extensive and unusual research resource curated through censorship of the theatrical medium and also includes letters and administrative documents that provide an insight to the censorship process.[1][2]