ABSTRACT
Theatre historically ‘enjoyed an anomalous standing in regard to censorship in Ireland’ (Dean 2001: 135). It escaped the British Lord Chamberlain’s writ before independence, and somehow eluded the new Irish state’s censorship assault on literature and lm in the 1920s and 1930s (Dean 2004). Then, following the outbreak of the Second World War and the declaration of Ireland’s ‘Emergency’ in 1939, when draconian restrictions were imposed on the media and general communications in the interests of defending Irish neutrality, theatre was overlooked. However, behind the scenes, indirect control was maintained, based upon the threat of revoking theatre licences, or even introducing an explicit censorship of the stage, something theatre people wanted to avoid at all costs as it would eliminate the precious ‘wriggle-room’ they enjoyed and ambiguity they could occasionally exploit, and bring the sort of ham-sted, heavy-handed interference that blighted Irish literature to bear directly upon them.
