Art made tongue-tied by authority

Janet Clare traces the development of dramatic censorship from its origins in the suppression of the medieval religious drama to the end of the Jacobean period. She examines how the scope of censorship and the objectives of the censor varied as the Revels Office responded to the political climate; and explores the constraints under which the playwrights worked. The author questions conventional notions which regard censorship as either consistently repressive or as irregular and ineffective and shows how its operation was governed by the dynamics of the historical movement. This is the first study to bring together all the evidence of censorship, its operation and impact, from the texts themselves and other sources. The book is primarily intended for students of literature and theatre studies and those of interdisciplinary Renaissance studies, but it will also be of considerable interest to students of history and politics.