ABSTRACT
It was not until 1968 that theatre censorship, inaugurated in the mid- sixteenth century under Elizabeth I, was abolished in England. The subsequent celebration of freedom of expression ensuing from the removal of the Lord Chamberlain’s powers over play production has tended to colour the interpretation of censorship in general. From the perspective of liberated expression, censorship was critiqued as oppressive, coercive and exclusive. As we have become more distant from official, pre-performance censorship of plays, however, we have come to see censorship as less monolithic, to view it in less absolute terms and as more insidious in operation. Even when censorship is not institutionalised, artistic representation can be circumscribed by implicit taboo, eliciting self-censorship. Certain subjects may be recognised as out of bounds even before the writing process begins. When authorities institutionalise censorship or make prohibition explicit, writers, dramatists and theatre personnel may anticipate censorship and censor a work before it is submitted for approval. Further, in many cultures, it is axiomatic that the existence of censorship elicits imaginative modes of representation to elude its strictures. Such deconstruction of the ways and byways of censorship feeds into this discussion of early modern censorship, enabling a shift away from what I see as a false dichotomy in some arguments about early modern censorship as either wholly pervasive or negligible. The perspective of this chapter is that early modern censorship was a dynamic, multilayered process and, as such, had a more formative effect on early modern drama than is acknowledged by scholars who tend to view it as occasional in operation.
