Political Censorship of the Theatre

Abstract

Censorship of the stage, like censorship of the printed word, was a widespread and well-established European tradition by 1815. However, while prior censorship of the press was eliminated throughout Europe by 1914, European countries almost universally retained prior censorship of the stage until (and sometimes well after) the First World War. Thus, in 1695 Britain became the first major European country to abolish censorship of the press, yet forty years later, in 1737, parliament systematised a formerly haphazard theatre censorship, and controls were not finally abolished until 1968. Most other European countries did not eliminate press censorship until about the middle of the nineteenth century, while maintaining theatre censorship throughout the century. Furthermore, they typically exercised much harsher controls over the stage than had been exercised over the printed word. Thus, the 1822 drama-censorship rules of the Italian state of Tuscany declared, The general rules for the censorship of [printed] works in which are disseminated religious principles or principles that are politically subversive, or of works based on a malicious plan threatening to weaken or destroy veneration for Religion or for the Throne and which awaken in people’s minds emotions hostile to either of these, will be applied more strictly to theatrical performances.1 KeywordsFree TheatreGerman StateParliamentary InquiryDress RehearsalPrivate ClubThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.