ABSTRACT
In 1697 the Lord Chamberlain had demanded that the Master of the Revels be much more vigilant in censuring immorality in plays, and in February 1698, just before Jeremy Collier’s Short View was published, the House of Commons had moved to suppress ‘immorality and profaneness’ on the stage. Collier believed that ‘it was upon account of the disorders that Plato banished poets his commonwealth’, and he urged poets to aim platonically for ideal truth rather than historical truth. He wished to apply Rymer’s view of tragedy to all drama, and having defined the theatre’s aims to his own satisfaction, he then berated those playwrights who fulfilled their own aims rather than his. Inspired by Collier’s diatribes, the reformers set out to destabilise the theatre and its audiences. Collier’s supporters took courage to prosecute the published text of Congreve’s The Double Dealer, compelling the author to make alterations to it.
