Monthly Archives: June 2018

Review – A Servant to Two Masters, Final Year Actors at the University of Northampton, Jacksons Lane Theatre, Highgate, 7th June 2018

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From a play held in such high reverence that one dare not tinker with it at all (The Crucible), to the complete opposite! Carlo Goldoni’s A Servant to Two Masters was written in 1746 and keeps coming back in different guises, most notably recently in Richard Bean’s hilarious and amazingly successful adaptation, One Man Two Guvnors. Its characters are largely taken straight from the Italian tradition of commedia dell’arte, with Trufaldino the servant as the Harlequin character, the aged merchant Pantaloon, the pompous Doctor Lombardi, Brighella the keeper of the tavern, and the high-class lovers (here as Clarice and Silvio). The tradition involved a great deal of jokey asides, plenty of interaction with the audience, music and dance.

This Final Year Students production was directed by the creative and brilliant Mr Frank Wurzinger, whom I still remember as the superb Doctor Zee in Flathampton. I still have his prescription for a vodka shot. I can think of few people more suited to bringing this kind of play to life. There are, however, two aspects of the direction that I think didn’t help the presentation of the show. In the centre of the large acting space of the Jacksons Lane Theatre they created a smaller space – a raised platform where 95% of the activity took place. This was in front of an equally small, closed, proscenium arch curtain. Whilst this may have given absolutely the right impression of a theatrical staging, it also reduced the acting space and made it feel really cramped and claustrophobic. There were also two small trampolines either side of the stage, which the characters/actors had either to bounce on, or bounce off, to enter or leave the acting space. Whilst this initially was an amusing quirk, and I understand it can be a way of creating additional energy with the characters’ entrances, it actually did nothing to serve the purpose of the play other than to reduce the acting space even further. I didn’t sense that the trampolines gave our cast any additional energy. Only Robert Barnes, as the drunken Florindo waiting for his food, used the trampoline entry/exit to additional comic effect with a drunken bounce.

In retrospect, this was always going to be a very difficult play to get right, requiring massively strong ensemble playing and split-second choreographic precision. I had high hopes for this, but I’m sorry to say that didn’t happen. For this to work it needed to be as slick as a tub of Brylcreem, but regrettably much of it was quite slapdash, sacrificing accuracy for madcap. And while half the cast nailed it, the other half spent the evening pulling out those aforementioned nails.

The one person who was absolutely supreme on that stage, and gave the best performance I’d seen him give, was Terrell Oswald, who invested the Pantaloon with just the right amount of dignity and pomposity so that when his world turns upside down it’s genuinely funny. A superb stage presence, perfect timing, and, as always with Mr Oswald, an unexpectedly agile physical performance. First rate. My other “personal best performance” award would go to Emilia Owen as Clarice; brilliant facial expressions, an excellent balance of portraying the character’s true emotions as well as fulfilling the commedia dell’arte stock role, and terrific vocal command. A really enjoyable performance.

Robert Barnes never fails to provide a polished performance and his Florindo was accomplished and technically strong, as he persisted with the serious nature of the role whether he was screaming drunk or made to look ridiculous, covered in a face-pack with accompanying cucumber. And Jac Burbidge played the otherwise dullish character of Silvio with a well-balanced mixture of courtliness and cheekiness that never strayed into self-indulgence. I enjoyed Bryony Ditchburn’s performance as Beatrice but I did get heartily sick of the sock and two apples down the front of the pants. To quote Stephen Sondheim’s I Never Do Anything Twice: “once, yes, once for a lark; twice, though, loses the spark”.

There was a lot of good in this production, but at the end it felt like it had been bogged down by a ragged end-of-term mentality that I didn’t share. Still, there were plenty of laughs and it went down very well with the audience, so what do I know?

Review – The Crucible, Final Year Actors at the University of Northampton, Jacksons Lane Theatre, Highgate, 7th June 2018

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For the second production of our day seeing all three of the Acting Students’ final plays in London, they gave us their performance of Arthur Miller’s 1952 play, The Crucible. This piece is one of the defining moments in the history of 20th century drama. Perceptive, shrewd, and enormously powerful, it took the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s and presented them to its 1950s audience as a reflection of the Macarthyism that was decimating American society at the time. In these current days where, once again, society is being tested on both sides of the pond, there couldn’t be a more appropriate time to revive it.

As it is such a significant play, and almost uniquely amongst the best drama created in the last 100 years, I think there is a tendency to treat The Crucible with great reverence. I’ve seen it a few times now, both on stage and on TV, and it always comes across exactly the same; dark, portentous, gloomy, – a true recreation of the 1690s in all its desolate desperation. There’s a huge temptation to concentrate on the supernatural spookiness of witchcraft as a force for evil and the triumph of darkness over light; to be honest, I’m not sure if it is possible to do it any other way. Certainly, Nadia Papachronopoulou’s production is as traditional as ever.

Sadly it also felt very static; which is no way to describe the escalation of events that happen during the four acts of this play. We go from childish pranks and secret relationships, through the questioning, distrust and imprisonment of various innocent bystanders, to individual acts of heroism and unjustified instances of capital punishment; that hardly sounds like a static play. But I got very little sense of plot progression and I must confess at times I found it very hard to stay focussed.True, it wasn’t helped by the noisy chattering and giggling of a group of students in the audience. It may well have been their first experience of live theatre; no better time then, to learn how to behave when you’re out. But I just felt that the production was a little risk-averse and very predictable; it might have benefited from some big, bold, unexpected statement that never quite happened.

Nevertheless, there were some good performances; I very much enjoyed Farrah Dark’s portrayal of Abigail Williams, a defiant woman although still little more than a child herself, concealing past indiscretions by employing the old tactic that attack as the best form of defence. Oliver Franks also gave a strong performance as the grim Reverend Parris, a man driven by self-interest, way in excess of any Christian love. The main role of John Proctor was given a determined and powerful performance by Alexander Forrester-Coles, bringing out both the character’s nobility and fallibility. His wife, Elizabeth, was played with immaculate sensitivity by Ceara Coveney;D B Gallagher gave a truly menacing performance as the wicked Judge Danforth; and there was a nicely understated performance by Naomi Ell as Ezekiel Cheever, the diligent but essentially kindly court clerk. Surprisingly, a few cast members seemed a little imprisoned by their roles rather than liberated by them – which was unfortunate because I know they’re great actors from their previous performances! There were also a few instances where some lines were garbled and just weren’t delivered in the assured manner that I would have expected.

Not an outright triumph, but nevertheless enjoyable, and it told its story clearly and with some memorable scenes.

Review – DNA, Final Year Actors at the University of Northampton, Jacksons Lane Theatre, Highgate, 7th June 2018

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For the first time, the Final Year Actors at Northampton University have been invited to present their plays in London, at the Jacksons Lane Theatre in Highgate, which is an exciting opportunity to be seen in the Capital City with all its obvious attractions (although performing on the stage of the Royal in Northampton is not to be sneezed at either).

The first of these plays is DNA, a one-act play by Dennis Kelly, that originally saw light of day as part of a National Theatres Connections season. It’s a smart, surprising and rather disturbing play where a group of teenagers commit an act of atrocity on another teenager, with apparently disastrous consequences. How far will they go to cover up their crime, and, after multiple lies and deceits, does there come a time simply to stop digging?

I must be honest, gentle reader; at first, I didn’t think I was going to enjoy this. The play started with some artistic movement where all the cast loomed and merged together from different parts of the stage for some significant meaning that totally passed me by. Whilst I appreciate the skill, it didn’t (for me) add to the story-telling or character-understanding in any way. The older I get, the more I feel that life is too precious to waste. Just get on with the play!

And then the early parts of the play itself seemed rather difficult for the audience to get a grip on what was going on, and I was feeling a little frustrated at the rather stagey, unnatural speech patterns. But then, after a short time, everything just clicked into place. The play, through this eloquent and revealing production, offers an alarming insight into pack mentality and the abuse that can exist between friends – both physical and mental.

Running throughout the play is a central storyline of the needy relationship between Leah and Phyl, who’s clearly the boss of the outfit. Leah constantly seeks Phyl’s approval, her input, her recognition; and Phyl delights in refusing to acknowledge her at all. In the end, Leah cannot take this any more and so packs her bags and escapes; and the final scene shows Phyl, sans Leah, still tight-lipped, but no longer through dominance, but through a sad emptiness. Tiffany Mae Rivers gives a stunning performance as the garrulous Leah, burbling and murfling her way through life, filling every silence with needy drivel; and Maddy Ogedengbe is excellent as the stony-faced, insolent Phyl, buttering her waffles with controlling cruelty. The whole play balances on this relationship and it works superbly well.

The whole cast put in a great ensemble effort, but I particularly enjoyed the upstart rivalry to the Phyl regime offered by Zoe Elizabeth as Rikki, the “good girl” frustration of Amelia Renard’s Danni who sees her prospect of dental training going up in smoke, and Georgi McKie’s belligerent Lou. Big credit to Katie Lawson for taking over the role of Bryony at short notice and making the character chillingly unhinged.

This is a play where the characters’ thoughts run away with themselves before their mouths have the chance to catch up with them; as a result there are lots of half-formulated sentences, and phrases left hanging in the air. It’s a tough job to make them sound convincing and natural but the cast did an excellent job of conveying the flow of concentration whilst still making it sound sense.

I thoroughly enjoyed this production and thought everyone did sterling work! Congratulations to all.

Theatre Censorship – 4: Examiners and a quick look at the Restoration

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By the twentieth century, the post of Examiner of Plays had been the subject of some disrepute; a fine example of it’s not what you know it’s who you know. George Redford (Examiner of Plays 1895 – 1911), for example, was only awarded the job because he was a personal friend of his predecessor E F Smythe-Pigott (Examiner of Plays 1874 – 1895), and it was Charles Brookfield, previously a writer of scurrilous plays (poacher turned gamekeeper indeed) and a friend of Redford, who took over when the latter retired. Brookfield died shortly after taking up his appointment in 1913, and after this date the Lord Chamberlain himself became more personally involved in the licensing of plays. The last official Examiner was George Street, and on his retirement in 1936, the work which the Lord Chamberlain chose not to do was passed on to more junior officers known as the Comptrollers, although the Lord Chamberlain himself usually attended to the more controversial material.

To submit a new play for licensing – that is, a play first presented after 22nd August 1843 – the producer had to follow a procedure which was to remain virtually unchanged from 1843 to 1968. A copy of the text, accompanied by a fee of two guineas, had to be sent to St James’ Palace to be read by the Lord Chamberlain, or, more likely, one of his officers, before rehearsals were due to commence. It should be noted that the fee was considered as a payment for reading the play only. If a licence was refused, the two guineas were not returned. However, with any luck, the licence would be sent back quickly. It would have read:

“I, the Lord Chamberlain of the (King’s /Queen’s) Household for the time being, do by virtue of my Office and in pursuance of powers given to me by the Act of Parliament for regulating Theatres, 6 & 7 Victoria, Cap 68, Section 12, Allow the Performance of a new Stage Play of which a copy has been submitted to me by you, being a …….. in ……Acts, entitled…….. with the exception of all Words and Passages which are specified in the endorsement of the Licence and without any further variation whatsoever.

“Given under my hand this…..day of …..19…..

Lord Chamberlain”.

As well as the ‘specified Words and Passages’, the licence also bore a list of five regulations, which largely followed the guidelines set down in 1909, “the strict observance” of which, it read, “is to be considered as the condition upon which the Licence is signed.” By the way, if you can’t remember the 1909 guidelines, don’t worry, that’s because I haven’t told you about them yet! Patience, gentle reader. The regulations forbade the appearance of use on stage of “profanity or impropriety of language”, “indecency of dress, dance or gesture”, “objectionable personalities”, “anything calculated to produce a riot or breach of the peace” and “offensive representation of living persons”. It also instructed that “any change of title must be submitted for the Lord Chamberlain’s approval”.

If there was a delay getting a response from the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, this normally meant that, instead of the licence, a letter would eventually arrive headed “The Lord Chamberlain disallows the following parts of the stage-play:…” This would mean that the director and a representative of the management would have to go to St James’ Palace and argue their case. In later years the author would get involved as well, although the Lord Chamberlain’s Office was never keen to recognise authors – the censor once wrote to the playwright Sydney Grundy who had dared to question why his play May and December had not received a licence, only to be informed that “he could take no official notice of (his) existence”.

Sometimes managements had to chase up the Lord Chamberlain’s Office because they took so long to come to a decision. Frank Marcus’ The Killing of Sister George (1965) was granted a licence only after the producer Michael Codron sent a note in panic to the censor reminding him that there were only ten days before the play was due to open. The onus was always on the management to secure the obtaining of the licence.

If a play was considered to be so offensive that even drastic changes would not alter its tone, the text would be sent back and no licence issued. The decision would be unequivocal and final. For example, on 8th November 1967 the copy of Edward Bond’s Early Morning, a play which featured Queen Victoria as a lesbian and with her two sons as conjoined twins, was returned to the Royal Court marked “His Lordship would not allow it”, with no other comment. This was the last play to be banned, but no one knows exactly how many potentially marvellous manuscripts had previously been returned with similar disgust, and which have never seen the light of day since.

However novel the shift of drama in the mid-1950s and 60s might appear in retrospect – bearing in mind the critic John Russell Taylor’s great quote “some of the new dramatists were naturally novel, some caught novelty, and some had novelty thrust upon them”, a similar situation had already arisen at the time of the Restoration period. Before the Cromwellian era playwrights had been keen to satirise puritans; Ben Jonson’s Zeal-of-the-Land Busy in Bartholomew Fair (1614) is a typical example. Angelo, the “precise” character who creates all the misery in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1603), is a typical puritan, invoking an ancient law that makes all forms of fornication a crime punishable by death. Under Cromwell, plays were banned, most theatres destroyed and no other entertainments such as Morris Dancing permitted. But on the restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, theatre again returned to London, and, not surprisingly, audiences wanted as much satire and bawdy in a play as could reasonably be crammed into two hours’ performance time. Courtall, in George Etherege’s She Would If She Could (1668) appreciates how the theatre reflects Restoration life: “a single intrigue in love is as dull as a single plot in a play, and will tire a lover worse than t’other does an audience.” Fortunately for the Restoration patrons, Walpole’s Theatre Act was not to arrive for 70 years or so.

Whilst we’re in the Restoration era, a word or two about Sodom (or the Quintessence of Debauchery), allegedly written by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester and privately performed at the Court of King Charles II in or around 1678. It’s a satire, dealing with the corruption and vice of the monarch, and, unsurprisingly, Charles II didn’t appreciate it. Published copies (it was published in Antwerp, no one in England dared touch it) were seized, book dealers who sold it were prosecuted, and when it finally made its way to the Examiner of Plays in 1737, it was summarily dismissed. I’ve only read a synopsis, and it seems there’s little doubt that Rochester allowed his fantasies to run riot. Any play that promotes anal sex between gentlemen, and features characters by the names Bolloxinion, Buggeranthos, Clytoris, Cunticula, Fuckadilla and Prince Pricket, would probably only ever appeal to a niche audience! It’s only once been performed in public in the UK – in 2011 at the Edinburgh Fringe, perhaps unsurprisingly.

It is possible to draw a parallel between the puritan era of Cromwell and the mid-20th century when, as a reaction to the stress of the Second World War, early post-war drama avoided any great emotional content and most plays dealt with ‘safe’ subjects and situations. Naturally, this also avoided playwrights conflicting with the Lord Chamberlain. The Restoration period, with its determination to express itself at all costs, may be equated with the 1950s and 1960s, particularly since sex and personal satire figure so acutely in the works of both periods, and playwrights such as Etherege, Wycherley and Vanbrugh were able to deal with matters that would have been censored in the 1950s.

Thanks for reading this far. In my next post I’m going to be looking at the reactions to the abolition of censorship and will be looking in some detail at Peter Handke’s play Offending the Audience. No real need to do any research – and I don’t suppose anyone will actually have seen it (I certainly haven’t!) See you soon!

Theatre Censorship – 3: Prime Ministers and Parliament

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It wasn’t until 1737 that Robert Walpole, the first statesman to be regarded as Prime Minister of Great Britain, introduced the Licensing Act to make the censoring of plays one of the Lord Chamberlain’s official and compulsory duties. Up till then it had simply been a matter of practice, and obeying the whims of the monarch of the time, but Walpole firmed it up in law. I rather like the wording of the Licensing Act 1737:

“From and after the twenty fourth day of June, one thousand seven hundred and thirty seven, every person who shall, for hire, gain, or reward, act, represent, or perform, or cause to be acted, represented, or performed, any interlude, tragedy, comedy, opera, play, farce, or other entertainment of the stage, or any part or parts therein, in case such person shall not have any legal settlement in the place where the same shall be acted, represented, or performed, without authority by virtue of letters patent from his Majesty, his heirs, successors or predecessors, or without licence from the Lord Chamberlain of his Majesty’s household for the time being, shall be deemed to be a rogue and a vagabond within the intent and meaning of the said recited act, and shall be liable and subject to all such penalties and punishments, and by such methods of conviction, as are inflicted on or appointed by the said act for the punishment of rogues and vagabonds who shall be found wandering, begging, and misordering themselves, within the intent and meaning of the said recited act.” If you were found to be a rogue and a vagabond because you didn’t get a licence for your play you would be fined the sum of £50 – which in 1737 was a very big sum indeed.

Walpole and his government had been the subjects of a series of satirical jibes in the plays of both John Gay and, more particularly, Henry Fielding, whose “Historical Register for the year 1736” was considered by Walpole to be the ultimate insult. Among the satirical observations and the devious characters, it included a corrupt fiddler called Quidam (translated in my old Cassell’s compact Latin dictionary as a certain person or thing (known, but not necessarily named), who was clearly a caricature of Walpole himself. The main intention behind the new Act was to secure a basis from which the country could be governed without fear of ridicule generated by rogues and vagabonds on stage. The Act required the Lord Chamberlain to appoint an examiner who would read all new plays at least fourteen days before the first performance, any which he did not see fit to license being subsequently prohibited from the stage. Fielding, knowing the game was up, turned to novels.

The only voice of dissent in Parliament, whose protest has survived today, came from Lord Chesterfield who denounced Walpole’s Act, not only because it offended against freedom of expression and would involve more bureaucracy, but chiefly because the laws of the country, when applied to dramatists, were adequate protection against possible offence. “Our laws are sufficient”, he maintained, “for punishing any man that shall dare to represent upon the stage what may appear, either by words or the representation, to be blasphemous, seditious or immoral…If the stage becomes at any time licentious, if a play appears to be a libel upon the Government or upon any particular man, the King’s courts are open.” This last argument was frequently cited in the meetings of the 1967 Committee. He was also concerned at giving so much power to one, unelected, man: “A power lodged in the hands of one single man, to judge and determine, without any limitation, without any control or appeal, is a sort of power unknown to our laws, inconsistent with our constitution. It is a higher, a more absolute power than we trust even to the King himself.”

Holding the honour of being the first play to be banned under the Licensing Act is Gustavus Vasa, by Henry Brooke. Ostensibly it’s a story of Swedish patriots defending themselves against invasion by Danish and Norwegian troops; but in reality it’s a thinly disguised satire criticising Walpole for his tyrannical control over Parliament. The Lord Chamberlain at the time, the Duke of Grafton, awarded the play an outright ban from being performed anywhere in England, giving no reason other than “there was a good deal of liberty in it.” In the short term, Brooke did well from the debacle, as he arranged for a private publication of the play which created a lot of attention and he earned about £1000 from the sales – Lord Chesterfield bought ten copies. However, with his reputation at court in tatters, he found it difficult to get new plays performed. He wrote a couple of novels, but lived most of his life in penury.

The 1737 Act brought to an end the usefulness of the Revels’ Office; the Master’s judgements had usually been ignored in any case. There remained, nevertheless, a Master of the Revels until 1755; the last man to hold this post was Solomon Dayrolle, but there was no work for him to carry out. That’s because all the licensing had been delegated to the new Examiner of Plays, a role created by the 1737 Act – even though the ultimate responsibility still remained with the Lord Chamberlain. Whilst it was useful for an Examiner of Plays to be interested in the theatre – high on the “person specification” for the job interview, one would imagine – the Lord Chamberlain, with all his other Royal Household duties to perform, needn’t have been a theatre buff. As a result, the Examiner of Plays held real power over the censorship procedure, and usually the Lord Chamberlain would simply rubber-stamp the Examiner’s judgment. Not always though; in 1777, Edward Capell, the Deputy Examiner of Plays and puritanical Shakespeare fan, disapproved of Richard Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, and wanted it banned. But the Lord Chamberlain at the time, Lord Hertford, overruled him – just as well; how much poorer our lives would have been without the escapades of Sir Peter Teazle and the gossip of Lady Sneerwell.

Despite a review of the Act in 1832, a new Theatres Act in 1843, and Select Committees in 1853, 1866, and 1892, the position remained largely unchanged throughout the 19th century. It was not until the Joint Select Committee on Stage Plays (Censorship), 1909, that any new criticism against the censorship procedure was officially voiced. For the first time, a set of guidelines was suggested for the Examiner of Plays to follow; some of them were unofficially accepted, although none was legally enforced. The other main contention of the 1909 Committee was that the submission of new plays to the Lord Chamberlain should be optional, and therefore that the production of an unlicensed play should not be illegal.

However, the consequences of producing an unlicensed play that was found to offend public decency, would have been considerable. From the 1909 Committee Report: “If the Director of Public Prosecutions is of opinion that any unlicensed play which has been performed is open to objection on the ground of indecency, he should prefer an indictment against the manager of the theatre where the play has been produced, and against the author of the play. When notice has been given to the manager of the theatre by the Director of Public Prosecutions of his intention to take proceedings, it should be illegal for any further performances of the play to take place until the case has been heard and decided. The Court before which an indictment is preferred should be empowered to make one or more of the following orders according to the merits of the case:

(a) Prohibiting the performance of the play for such period as they may think fit, but for not more than ten years.
(b) Imposing penalties on the manager of the theatre.
(c) Imposing penalties on the author of the play.
(d) Endorsing a conviction on the licence of the theatre.”

But the findings of the 1909 Committee were largely ignored (apart from the suggested guidelines for the Examiner of Plays) and the Theatres Act 1843 remained unmodified.

In my next post, I’ll be looking at the Examiners of Plays and also a quick look back at the Restoration Era. See you soon!

Theatre Censorship – 2: Shakespeare and Censorship

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In my previous blog post I mentioned how Shakespeare used the character of Philostrate to poke fun at the censor. In Hamlet, the bumbling Polonius also gave Shakespeare the opportunity to ridicule those who interfere with dramatic freedom. Unlike Philostrate, who holds the position of Master of the Revels, Polonius actually is the Lord Chamberlain himself; he is more senior and therefore, maybe, he ought to command greater respect. Theseus treats Philostrate as a mere hurdle whereas Claudius and Gertrude at least pretend to consider what Polonius has to say.

Polonius is so full of spirit when he tells Hamlet of the actors’ arrival that he tries to convince him of his extensive familiarity with the dramatic art with his ludicrous assembly of stage conventions: “Pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral”. Again, it’s fairly obvious that Shakespeare is exposing the Lord Chamberlain as a fool.

Later Polonius is quick to point out that the First Player’s speech is “too long”; no doubt he would have insisted on (in Philostrate’s words) an “abridgement” here. He approves of the phrase “mobled queen” because of the use of the rare and possibly incomprehensible word “mobled” where “veiled” would have been understood by everyone. Moreover, he describes Hamlet’s recital as being of “good discretion”; no doubt the Lord Chamberlain then, as in the 1960s, hoped for compliance with “good discretion” and an awareness of tasteful maturity on the part of the author or performer in order to make his life easier.

Is there any particular reason why Shakespeare might have been so opposed to the censorship of the Lord Chamberlain? Had they crossed swords over the content of any of his plays? It was Queen Elizabeth I, then aged around 63, who furiously objected to the portrayal of the weak Richard II (in Shakespeare’s play that bears his name) as an analogy to her Royal Goodliness. In fact, she ordered the scene where the king was deposed to be removed from all copies of the text. Apparently, conspirators who supported the Earl of Essex’s plan to overthrow the Queen paid the Chamberlain’s men actors £2 above the going rate (in other words, a bribe) to perform the censored scene the day before the planned rebellion. The rebellion failed, and so did the bribe – although the scene that the Queen objected to remained expurgated for two centuries.

The Merchant of Venice has attracted its fair share of censorship, in response to what many have considered to be the anti-Semitism of the character of Shylock. However, that didn’t really become an issue until the 18th century, so wouldn’t have been a problem for Shakespeare. As for Hamlet, the biggest problem was that King James ruled England with his consort – the Danish born Queen Anne. There’s quite a lot of criticism about Denmark in Hamlet – and manuscript copies of the 1605 quarto edition show that the lines where Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that Denmark is a prison, “in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ the worst” were removed. After all, mustn’t upset the Queen Consort, must we! King Lear, too, required some rewriting to remove veiled references to King James, his method of government and military affairs; and lines that referred to a French invasion of Britain were cut and modified.

However, it was King Henry IV, Part II that caused Shakespeare major problems, and considering it was written just a few years before Hamlet, this might have affected how Shakespeare considered the character of Polonius. Firstly, Sir John Falstaff was originally called Sir John Oldcastle, but that noble knight’s descendants were offended by this and took their objection directly to Queen Elizabeth, who instructed Shakespeare to change the name – even though she enjoyed the characterisation. More troublesome were all the speeches made by the rebel leaders, which appear in the Folio edition of the plays but are strangely absent from the Quarto. The effect of the censorship was to diminish the importance of the character of Scroop, Archbishop of York and to remove all comments that expressed approval of the rebellion. Obviously, that’s going to seriously detract from the play as a whole. Here’s an extract from the introduction to King Henry IV Part II by A. R. Humphreys in the Arden Shakespeare published in 1966. It’s quite long but it explains a lot about why this play was such a problem.

“Passages innocent in 1597 would sound dangerous in 1600. By then, two dangers were at their climaxes – the Irish insurrection, which Essex failed to crush in 1599, and Essex’s own disaster. As Hart points out, “early in 1600 Oviedo, a Franciscan monk, had come from Spain to Ireland with the title of Bishop of Dublin; in April he conferred with the native chieftains, gave them £6,000 in money, and promised them Spanish military aid”. A text which showed an archbishop rising against an established monarch, proclaiming the good of the nation, religiously blessing insurrection, and citing Richard II’s death under Bolingbroke, might well seem an allegory for Oviedo and the Irish leaders fighting Elizabeth, and pleading the cause of Ireland and the Roman Church against the Queen under whom the symbol of their faith, Mary Queen of Scots, had been executed.”

What with that, and the Queen’s reaction to Richard II, this was a difficult time for Shakespeare to be writing history plays!

Of course, in the Victorian era, that great idiot Thomas Bowdler re-wrote many of the plays and published them in his Family Shakespeare, removing all the licentious issues, scurrilous name-calling, suggestions of infidelity and incest, and giving the tragedies a happy ending – much as Dickens satirised with the Vincent Crummles acting troupe in Nicholas Nickleby. He was a fashion, a fad; and I’m not going to give him any more publicity!

In my next post, I’m going to look at how future laws firmed up the legal position on theatre censorship. Thanks for reading!

The Agatha Christie Challenge – And Then There Were None (1939)

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STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which ten strangers receive a summon to visit a rocky island off the coast of Devon, expecting either a holiday, a reunion or an offer of work; and then one by one each of them is murdered by the mysterious U. N. Owen. As usual, if you haven’t read the book yet, don’t worry, I promise not to tell you whodunit!

Firstly, a warning. Acceptable words in the English language change over the decades, and when this was published in 1939, Agatha Christie’s original title referred to no more than a 19th century minstrel song. There was no sense of racism or offence. I’ve photographed my original copy of the story, which bears the original British name, simply because that’s the book that’s on my bookshelves. However, I’m not going to use that word in this blog post. Interestingly, even back in 1939, the N word was not acceptable in the US, where it has always been known as And Then There Were None.

The book bears no dedication. It was first serialised in the UK in the Daily Express in June and July 1939; and in the US in The Saturday Evening Post over the same period; significantly the last chapter, which contains the explanation for the puzzle, was published on exactly the same day in both the UK and the US – July 1st, 1939. The full book was first published in the UK on 6th November 1939 by Collins Crime Club and then subsequently in the US by Dodd, Mead & Co in December 1939. Over the years, the British title has changed to Ten Little Indians, (which was also the name of a 1946 play adaptation), then Ten Little Soldiers, and since 1985 it has been called And Then There Were None.

My first comment has to be that if you haven’t picked it up yet, please PLEASE PLEASE do not do that silly thing and read the last page first. That’s what the ten-year-old me did and in doing so I deprived myself of the excitement of finding out whodunit in what must be one of the most fascinating and gripping mystery stories ever written. If you read the last page first you will very clearly and instantly see the name of the murderer, and it isn’t worth it!

As far as whodunits go, this is a stunner. Re-reading it now, you appreciate how beautifully it is written (racist language aside). The crime is so carefully planned and immaculately carried out and, although the clues are there, it would be a major achievement for the general reader to solve it. It’s written as purely third-person narrative, completely sticking to the facts apart from one short catastrophe-laden comment near the beginning of the book. When Mr Blore arrives by train and meets an old man with Old Testament leanings, “he looked up at Mr Blore and said with immense dignity: “I’m talking to you, young man. The day of judgment is very close at hand.” Subsiding on to his seat Mr Blore thought to himself: “He’s nearer the day of judgment than I am!” But there, as it happens, he was wrong…” That’s Christie’s only personal aside to the reader in the whole book.

Christie’s own observations about this book in her autobiography are worth mentioning here. I quote: “I had written the book […] because it was so difficult to do that the idea fascinated me. Ten people had to die without it becoming ridiculous or the murderer being obvious. I wrote the book after a tremendous amount of planning, and I was pleased with what I had made of it. It was clear, straightforward, baffling and yet had a perfectly reasonable explanation; in fact it had to have an epilogue to explain it. It was well received and reviewed, but the person who was really pleased with it was myself, for I knew better than any critic how difficult it had been.”

Stylistically, it’s an exciting read; take the second chapter, for example. It’s divided into twelve parts, each one getting shorter and shorter as the chapter progresses. It’s almost like a fugue of thoughts; each character involved in the story is given their chance to express their feelings about the forthcoming stay on the island, so that they overlay each other, creating a cacophony of unspoken anxieties. The continued use of short divisions within each chapter add urgency to the narration; no sooner have we observed one character absorbed in one activity, we move on to another, piling up the considerations for the reader to deal with. The device of the constant discovery that each of the china figures is smashed one by one as each death is discovered, adds to the sense of inevitability that they’re all going to get murdered, and also to an almost mystic or supernatural feeling that an invisible hand is doing the killing. I don’t know about you, but if I’d found myself on that island, after a few deaths I’d simply go looking for the rest of the china figures and smash the lot of them. At least that way you’d ruin part of the murderer’s fun. Of course, the powers of psychology end up playing a very big part in this story – if Poirot had read about it afterwards he would have been so jealous not to have been there, to apply his little grey cells to it. As the numbers of survivors dwindle to five, then four, then three, then finally two, the surviving suspects simply know that the only person who could have done it, is/are the other one(s). It’s then a straightforward battle to survive.

Because everyone is cut off on the island, there’s a tremendous sense of claustrophobia permeating every aspect of the book. There’s also a rather intense and stagey drama to the whole thing; a nice example of this is when the pre-recorded message on a record is played from a side room, accusing all the inmates of former crimes. It’s very much a story of its era; the crime could not have been committed in this way today, with the availability of mobile phones and the Internet. For the story to come true, it’s essential that there is no way that the inhabitants of the island can be in contact with anyone on the mainland. Today, all you’d need to do is dial 999 from your mobile. Or at least get the local fisherman to come on over with his boat.

OK, so we’ll have to deal with the language in the book now. At some point, I think in the 1980s, someone, probably an editor, had to go through this book with a fine tooth-comb and eliminate all the N words, and similarly offensive phrases. In almost every case, the N word has been replaced by the word Soldier; so for example, the poem reads Ten Little Soldiers, it takes place on Soldier Island, the smashed ornaments are china soldiers, and so on. A few other changes that were seen fit to make were: “Soldier Island […] had got its name from its resemblance to a man’s head – a man with negroid lips”; in the current version, that final phrase has simply been removed. A later reference to the strange shape of the rock formation of the island also simply describes it as “the boldly silhouetted rock with its faint resemblance to a giant head”, whereas the original described it as a “giant negro’s head”. There are only two other, now unacceptable, references in Christie’s original, both times using the phrase “N in the woodpile”. On the first occasion that has been changed to “fly in the ointment” and in the second, “the unknown soldier”.

Let’s have a look at the locations that the book mentions. Soldier Island is meant to be a nod to Burgh Island off the south coast of Devon, which is also, apparently, the inspiration for the location of Christie’s 1941 book Evil Under The Sun. Therefore, Bigbury-on-Sea, which is the nearest town to Burgh Island must be the real life version of Sticklehaven. The nearest train station for Soldier Island is at Oakbridge, and it’s no great leap of the imagination to think of this as real life Okehampton. I see that not far from Okehampton lies the village of Sticklepath (which again suggests the fictional Sticklehaven) and Belstone (which perhaps suggests the Belhaven Guest House, where Emily Brent had stayed with Mrs Oliver). There’s also the village of South Brent which might be where Emily gets her name! Mere, where Tony Marston drives recklessly, is the name of a real place in Wiltshire, but maybe there is also the suggestion of Bere Alston or Bere Ferrars, both near Plymouth. There is no such place as St Tredennick, the seaside spot where Vera recollects her tragic memories with Hugo and Cyril, but there is a Tredinnick, not far from Wadebridge. For once, Christie has made it easy for us to identify the sources of her place names!

Let’s also have a look at a few other references. All the gossip about the ownership of Soldier Island was found in the salacious articles in Busy Bee and Merryweather magazines. Busy Bee appears to be an American journal relating to the antiques industry, and Merryweather seems to bear no resemblance to any kind of publication, so I presume these are both fictitious, as is the Regina Agency in Plymouth, who supplied the services of Mr and Mrs Rogers. Tony Marston drives a Super-Sports Dalmain; I can’t find out too much about that particular vehicle but, if it existed, I think it was made by Alfa Romeo, so it sounds pretty sporty.

Ever come across a person with the first name Ulick? That’s the first name of U. N. Owen. It’s a fairly antiquated name nowadays, probably of Irish extraction, and rather noble. Talking of old-fashioned terminology, Lombard tries to work out the possibility of heliographing the mainland. Heliographing? It’s a form of communication, a little like Morse code, using the flash of the sun against a mirrored device. “Echo answers where” says Lombard on another occasion – this is a quote from Lord Byron that refers to the Latin myth of Echo, the nymph tricked by Juno and lover of Narcissus.

And of course, there’s the famous rhyme. Ten Little Soldiers – or originally, Ten Little Injuns, a song written by Septimus Winner for a minstrel show in 1868. It was then adapted and rewritten by Frank J Green the following year, who renamed it using the same title that Christie did for the book in Britain. Christie’s words for the rhyme are pretty similar to Green’s, with just a little modernising. Today, the structure of the poem is still used throughout the world for satirical purposes: Ten little Country-boys, and Ten little Banker Boys, for instance.

There are a few names mentioned that also crop up in other Christie books, both before and after. Miss Brent is convinced that Mrs Oliver had invited her to Soldier Island, having met her at the Belhaven Guest House, as mentioned earlier. Mrs Oliver is of course the name of one of the assistants in Parker Pyne Investigates, and would go on to play a much greater role in the Christie’s later books as an associate of Poirot. Marston has a friend called Badger, just like Bobby has in Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? I suppose at a pinch it could be the same chap. The pub in Sticklehaven where the guests assemble before crossing to the island is The Seven Stars, which was also the name of the rather nefarious establishment in Murder is Easy where Harry Carter was the proprietor. I also thought the story of Emily Brent’s maid was reminiscent of the plot of J B Priestley’s An Inspector Calls – although Christie’s work predates Priestley’s by six years.

You’ll recollect, gentle reader, that I like to research the present-day value of any significant sums of money mentioned in Christie’s books, just to get a more realistic feel for the amounts in question. There’s only one instance of money being mentioned in this book; the fee offered by Morris to Lombard for his attendance on the Island – one hundred guineas. In today’s values that translates to about £4800, not bad for a few days’ work… if he were to get out alive, that is.

Now it’s time for my usual at-a-glance summary, for And Then There Were None:

Publication Details: 1939. Fontana paperback, 16th impression, published in January 1973, priced 30p. The cover illustration by (presumably) Tom Adams shows a hanged golly in the foreground, representing the death of the final little soldier boy left in the rhyme. There’s an abstract display of the sea and coastline, with a rather large and, frankly irrelevant, iguana. Nevertheless, it’s a disturbing and eerie image, and one I remember I had to keep face down under the bed when I was a kid so I couldn’t accidentally see it.

How many pages until the first death: 45. There’s a sensible amount of scene-setting before the bloodbath ensues; and it’s full of intrigue and suspense even before the first death.

Funny lines out of context: “One fancied things sometimes – fancied a fellow was looking at you queerly”. “That fellow Lombard now, he was a queer chap. Not straight. He’d swear the man wasn’t straight.”

Memorable characters:

I’m not sure it’s in the characters themselves that the strength of this book is to be found; it’s more in the growing suspense and the inevitability that the mysterious U. N. Owen will work his way inexorably through the entire cast. The characters of the pompous old lawyer and the puritanical old maid are rather “stock”; that said, there is an interesting relationship growing between Vera and Lombard.

Christie the Poison expert:

Potassium Cyanide is the cause of two of the deaths; but Veronal and Trional are also discussed during the course of the book, and the role of amyl nitrite in preventing a cardiac arrest is also considered.

Class/social issues of the time:

Maybe because this book is totally plot-driven rather than character-driven, Christie’s usual themes take more of a back seat – providing you ignore the constant use of the N word. There is of course some racism: the character of Morris is described as a “little Jew”, with “thick Semitic lips”. Lombard reflects on Morris that “that was the damnable part about Jews, you couldn’t deceive them about money – they knew!”

Lombard is also the source of another thread of racism. When all the guests are assembled and the recorded voice announces its accusations against each one, Lombard’s alleged crime was that he was “guilty of the death of twenty-one men, members of an East Africa tribe”. Lombard doesn’t deny it: “self-preservation’s a man’s first duty. And natives don’t mind dying, you know. They don’t feel about it as Europeans do.” He clearly values the life of a white Englishman more highly over an African tribesman. When recollecting this account, in a later conversation with Miss Brent, Vera makes an excuse for Lombard’s behaviour: “they were only natives…” That’s a thoroughly unpleasant attitude to take. Lombard has obviously been a bad influence on her.

I’m not sure how current a theme it was at the time – particularly just before the start of the Second World War – but I enjoyed observing how Rogers, the manservant, carries on with his duties, with hardly a thought to his own predicament. He’s been accused of a crime too, plus his wife has died, and yet he’s splendidly making up breakfasts, fetching coffees and chopping up firewood. Christie – or, perhaps more accurately, Miss Marple – always had an appreciative eye for a domestic servant who knew her place and carried on through thick and thin. I think Rogers is a marvel, frankly. Miss Brent had already held a brief conversation with Vera where they wondered how anyone could live on the island during the winter months. “I’ve no doubt the house is shut up in winter,” she said. “You’d never get servants to stay here for one thing.” Vera murmured: “It must be difficult to get servants anyway.”

Classic denouement: In one sense, yes, in another no. No, because the very structure of the book means there are no detectives on the island in a position to point the finger of accusation at the guilty party. Yes, because it’s a complete one-off. When the police do arrive, they are left to piece together whatever they can, but it’s totally inconclusive and they’ve no idea who the perpetrator was. However, the murderer wrote a confession which was sealed in a bottle and chucked into the ocean, in that time-honoured traditional fashion. And the denouement is simply the reader digesting all the ins and outs of the confession, without any professional or police input. Don’t worry, if you like the old-fashioned denouements, you won’t be disappointed with this one!

Happy ending? No. It’s an apocalyptic wipe-out.

Did the story ring true? There are two aspects of the story that, to me, don’t ring true, but it will be hard for me to describe them to you without giving the game away. The final death – that is, the one before the confession was written – strikes me as possible but not probable, and I have a sense that it is included to keep the perfection of the structure of the story. As for the other one… no, I can’t tell you!

Overall satisfaction rating: It’s a brilliant read. Fast, exciting, suspenseful, and totally impossible to solve. No reason not to give it a 10/10.

Thanks for reading my blog of And Then there were None and if you’ve read it too, I’d love to know what you think. Please just add a comment in the space below. The next book that Christie wrote was The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories. However, it was the only book of hers to be published in the United States but not in the UK. The stories in that volume weren’t printed in the UK until The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960) and later. So, as I am a Brit, and I’m doing it Brit-style, we won’t come to those stories until we reach their UK publication. Therefore, next up in the Agatha Christie Challenge is Sad Cypress, and the welcome return of Hercule Poirot. I’m afraid I can’t remember anything about this one, so I’m looking forward to my memory being jogged. As usual, I’ll blog my thoughts about it in a few weeks’ time. In the meantime, please read it too then we can compare notes! Happy sleuthing!

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!

Theatre Censorship – 1: Censors, Chamberlains and a bag of Revels

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On May 17th, 1966, in the House of Lords, Lord Stonham, a junior minister at the Home Office under Harold Wilson’s government, moved “that it is desirable that a Joint Committee of both Houses be appointed to review the law and practice relating to the censorship of stage plays” (quoted from the Report of the Joint Committee in Censorship in the Theatre 1966-7).

With that simple statement the process started. The Committee was chaired by George Strauss (Labour MP for Vauxhall) and its number included many notable politicians of the day including Michael Foot (who would become Labour leader) and Norman St John Stevas (Conservative MP for Chelmsford, later Minister of State for the Arts). Many meetings, interviews, and reports later, held over a period of nineteen months, the Committee recommended that “pre-censorship and licensing of plays should cease”.

Nowhere else in the free world did one man, the Lord Chamberlain, whose traditional role had always been that of Head of the Sovereign’s Household, have the right to censor material for the stage; nor was there any other form of creative art where a censor held absolute power to determine its circulation. The Committee did not seek to confer any special privileges on the theatre that weren’t enjoyed by other forms of art. Its report concluded: “The effect of the recommendations will be to allow freedom of speech in the theatre subject to the overriding requirements of the criminal law which, generally speaking, applies to other forms of art in this country”.

Sounds straightforward, doesn’t it? Let’s first consider the nature of a censor. Originally he was a Roman officer in charge of maintaining the Census; rather like a supreme Administrator. His other function was that of overseer of public morals. The last time magistrates were elected into this position was in 22 BC. Funny how little that changed over a couple of millennia! Certainly in Britain the censor was an unelected post.

Since the fourteenth century the Lord Chamberlain or the Master of the Revels, under his command, had supervised the production of plays. There’s a splendid old book called Censorship in England by F Fowell and F Palmer published in 1913, which states that the earliest recorded date of the Master of the Revels’ work is 1347, when he took charge of Edward III’s Christmas entertainment.

I am sure that this role was resented even at its inception. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for instance, Shakespeare includes the brief appearance of Philostrate, described in the Dramatis Personae as “Theseus’ Master of the Revels”. Theseus himself refers to him as “our usual manager of mirth” when he calls for some entertainment. Philostrate tries to take control of the situation, but Shakespeare is having none of it. He is a fussy and futile character, and Shakespeare delights in poking fun at him.

Theseus asks Philostrate: “Say, what abridgement have you for this evening?” Learned literature students will tell you that the meaning of this question means “what do you have to shorten or while away the time?” But I also sense there’s a double meaning, implying that Philostrate likes to exercise his blue pencil and cut passages of which he did not approve from the words of the author; as would all censors throughout the ages. The same word is used in Shakespeare’s epic poem, The Rape of Lucrece: “This brief abridgement of my will I make: My soul and body to the skies and ground; My resolution, husband, do thou take”. It’s clear to me that Shakespeare uses the word in the sense that we are listening to an abridged version of a longer original piece of writing.

Later at Theseus’ request to hear the dreaded Pyramus and Thisbe, we actually witness Philostrate step in as the shameless censor, and try to prevent Theseus from seeing it: “No, my noble Lord, it is not for you: I have heard it over, and it is nothing, nothing in the world”. Thus Philostrate reveals the arrogant belief of the censor that a grown adult – indeed, no less than the King himself – is not qualified to exercise sufficient discretion in choosing his own entertainment. The censor is exposed as a killjoy, an upstart and a control freak; and no doubt to Shakespeare’s extreme satisfaction, Theseus ignores Philostrate’s plea and insists on seeing the play that he chooses.

In my next blog post we’ll look at a couple of brushes that Shakespeare had with the censor.

Stage Censorship – an Introduction

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It was fifty years ago – or at least it will be on September 26th – that stage censorship was abolished in the UK. Many avid theatregoers of today might ask, “what’s stage censorship?” Indeed, generations have now enjoyed the liberty and expression that a, generally, free theatre offers. But prior to 1968, each new play had to go through a process of being read and evaluated, and potentially censored, before it reached the stage. And unlike films, which also have a censorship procedure, there was no classification of U, A, AA, and X (as it was in 1968 – U, PG, 12, 15, and 18 today). There’s no age restriction on a play unless the theatre where it’s playing chooses to adopt an age limit on any one particular production.

Occasionally films are subject to blanket censorship – the British Board of Film Classification can refuse to licence a film, or to insist on cuts before licensing. But that’s comparatively rare; the main element of film censorship in the UK is simply a matter of protecting people under 18 from seeing material deemed unsuitable for them. Not so in the theatre pre-1968. A play was either licensed “as is”, in other words as presented by the theatre management with no changes to the text; or the censor would require certain passages to be removed or rewritten; or it would be banned outright.

Back in 1981 a hopeful, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed young Mr Chrisparkle, with an unspectacular degree from a spectacular university in English Literature under his belt, applied to a number of universities to spend two years researching The Effects of the Withdrawal of Stage Censorship. Many failed to respond at all; several politely declined; some rudely declined (yes, University of Wales at Lampeter, I’m looking at you); some made constructive suggestions whilst still declining; and one – Queen Mary College at the University of London, bless them – said yes. I was really pleased at that, because one of the lecturers at Queen Mary was the playwright Simon Gray, whose works I greatly admired (and still do). What surprised me was that it wasn’t the late Mr Gray who ended up being my supervisor, but an American lecturer by the name of Dr Paul Kirschner. I found out after many years that Dr Kirschner was a devotee of the Irish poet W. B. Yeats, as was my tutor at Oxford, Dr Francis Warner. I have no idea if this was a coincidence or not; knowing academia, possibly not.

Sadly, Dr Kirschner and I had different views on what my thesis would contain. He was, of course, right, and did his best to point me in the right direction towards achieving that elusive Master of Philosophy degree. But I couldn’t write what he wanted me to write, even though I tried really hard. After about 18 months of fascinating research, extensive writing and a whole lot of brick wall head banging, I decided to call it a day. One of the main problems was, having called it “The Effects of the Withdrawal of Stage Censorship”, I largely concluded that there weren’t any. That was probably the wrong conclusion to draw, but once I’d got that idea into my head, there wasn’t any progress to be made!

Since then, I’ve often wondered what, if anything, I should do with all the research and writing I had done. I’ve looked at it, laughed at the pomposity of my writing style, cringed at how politically slanted my approach was, gasped at my occasional use of awfully non-PC terminology (well it was 35 years ago), and accepted that no way was this stuff ever going to get me a postgraduate degree! Additionally, over the years, some much brighter brains than mine have published excellent books about the history of stage censorship, and I’m in no position to compete with them.

But the 50th anniversary of the withdrawal of stage censorship seems too good an opportunity to miss, and I feel I must mark it in some way. Now that I am 9 years into my blog and I have a devoted readership to whom I am extremely grateful for their attention and kindness, I thought it was time to take another look at what I’d written. Jazz it up a little for the 21st century and bring in a few ideas and events that hadn’t even happened at the time – after all, drama didn’t end in 1983. There’ll be some history, some background, some personal observations, even some literary criticism – I know, get me. Above all, I’m hoping to remove much of that faux-academic style that I could never master anyway.

The plan is largely to keep to the same structure as my original thesis, which means some chapters are quite short and others are quite long – especially when I get into the nitty-gritty of (what I think are) two significant pre-withdrawal plays, John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and Edward Bond’s Saved. I’ll mention in advance any plays that I’m going to consider in any great detail, so you can have a re-read or a quick Google to refresh your memory. But I’m going to try to break down the longer chapters into bite-sized chunks so that you don’t have to put aside a whole evening just to wade through some interminable stuff about old plays. Even tragedy is meant to be fun sometimes!

To prepare you for what’s ahead: in the first couple of posts I’ll be doing some introductory stuff and looking at some Shakespeare, Restoration comedy and the 18th century ridiculing of politicians, which was really what got the censorial ball rolling in the first place. No need for you to do any research, and don’t worry, I’ll keep it light!

So, gentle reader, we embark on a new project for summer 2018. I give you, not “The Effects of the Withdrawal of Stage Censorship”, but “Stage Censorship? Leave it Out!” Welcome!