The terms
legitimate theatre and
legitimate drama date back to the English
Licensing Act 1737, which restricted "serious" theatre performances to the two
patent theatres licensed to perform "spoken drama" after the
English Restoration in 1662. Other theatres were permitted to show comedy,
pantomime, opera, dance,
music hall or melodrama, but were considered "illegitimate theatre". Everett Wilson speculates that the law may have arisen due to "the fear of theatrical producers that without legal protection both the money and the audience would flow away from the "legitimate theatres" to the lowest common denominator of entertainment in those days, the
music halls." The licensing restricted performances of classical authors and plays—
Shakespeare, most prominently—to the privileged houses. The logic behind the step was that the legitimate houses could be
censored more easily, whilst the illegitimate houses would sell plays of a less serious, less dangerous, primarily entertaining and commercialised format. Illegitimate theatres opened in all the major English cities and towns where they offered
pantomime and musical works, such as opera,
Victorian burlesque,
burletta,
extravaganza,
music hall, concerts, dance and
melodrama, which had musical underscoring played during the dialogue. This changed with the
Theatres Act 1843 that restricted the powers of the Lord Chamberlain and gave additional powers to
local authorities to license theatres, In the 19th century, the term
legitimate drama came to be "widely used by actors of the old school as a defence against the encroachments" of newer types of performance, ==See also==