On Thursday 28th June we are visited by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a theatre group modelled on and named after Shakespeare’s original troupe of travelling players. They will be performing ‘The Tempest’ on the garden lawn in front of Knebworth House, and – in this particularly lovely and special setting – we are assured “such stuff as dreams are made on”!
In 1963, my grandfather Cameron Cobbold became Lord Chamberlain and – as had been the case since Tudor times – it became his job to censor plays. The Lord Chamberlain’s ‘blue pencil’ was used to strike out words felt to be offensive. The ‘blue pencil’ was the object of much of the anger of the emerging generation of ‘angry young playwrights’ of the 1950s and 1960s. There was even a Peter Cook and Dudley Moore satirical sketch called ‘Lord Cobbold’, in which the Lord Chamberlain asks why he would want to see all that sex and violence at the theatre, when he can get all that at home. My grandfather, not surprisingly, was uncomfortable with this aspect of his role. Censorship in this form had, at last, become untenable. And so, I am proud to say, under his tenure it was brought to a stop as part of the 1968 Theatres Act.
Cameron Cobbold – Lord Chamberlain 1963-1971
So now the Lord Chamberlain’s Men can say what they will in Lord Cobbold’s garden… But “be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not”. ‘The Tempest’ is not an angry young play, it is one of the English language’s most beautifully poetic – and there are few more splendid places to see it performed than in the gardens of Knebworth House on a June evening!
Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH