This introduction dicusses the imposition of the 1737 Stage Licensing Act and offers a historical account of its effects. It shows how the legislation was poorly conceived and understood leading to a widespread haziness about its precise powers and a large amount of authority being invested in teh office of the Examiner of Plays. It suggests three possible avenues for future work: the chronology of emendation, contextualizing censorship across the repertory, and understanding theatre archives as a resource for social history.