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!

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.