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1. Theatrical Censorship and Disorder in Ireland
- University of Wisconsin Press
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1 Theatrical Censorship and Disorder in Ireland This is bigger than Jurassic Park! Thanks to the protest you’ve put up, The Passion of St.Tibulus is breaking all box office records! —Father Ted 11 Two striking anomalies foreground any analysis of Irish stage censorship: first, the Lord Chamberlain’s authority did not extend to Ireland; second, despite strict, even draconian , regulation of print and film, Ireland as Free State and Republic never institutionalized stage censorship. Although many writers proudly proclaim, “There is no stage censorship in Ireland,” de facto instances of censorship regularly occurred throughout the twentieth century. Before Independence, the prevailing standards for acceptable stage productions in Ireland drew heavily upon the British model, especially in restricting the representation of living or recently deceased people as stage characters and in prohibiting obscenity and blasphemy. The majority of plays performed in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century were works licensed by the Lord Chamberlain that usually featured British actors. In the twentieth century, Irish plays and players came to dominate. Despite calls for an institutional dramatic censorship, Ireland never adopted a preproduction approval or licensing of plays. What was seen as incendiary or immoral by Irish audiences, such as bringing the Irish tricolor into a public house in O’Casey’s Plough, posed no problem to the Lord Chamberlain and audiences outside Ireland. What was acceptable to and even beloved by Dublin audiences caused civil disorder in Westport. And on more than one occasion—most notably the 1909 production of Shaw’s The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet at the Abbey and the 1928 production of Oscar Wilde’s Salome in the inaugural season of the Gate—Irish productions of plays banned elsewhere, especially in England, capitalized on the freedom afforded theatre in Ireland. Laws Governing Censorship Institutional stage censorship in England dates back to 1544 when Henry VIII appointed the first “Master of the Revels, an official under the Lord Chamberlain.”1 Beginning with Edmund Tilney in 1579, the Master of the Revels reviewed plays before their production . Plays previously performed, such as Colley Cibber’s 1700 reworking of Shakespeare’s Richard III, were sometimes suppressed on an ad hoc basis. Other legal mechanisms governed the licensing and safety not of the plays but of the venues where they were performed; still others, such as the vagrancy laws, applied to theatre companies and individual actors. The enforcement of these laws was selective; some fell into desuetude. By the early 1730s, “if a manager wished to operate a theatre without the sanction of letters patent, and even under the disapproval of Lord Chamberlain, there was no remedy at law available to the Crown or to others who opposed him.”2 The powers of the Master of the Revels and Lord Chamberlain waned and waxed, remaining ill-defined for more than a century. After the Restoration, the Lord Chamberlain oversaw “the management of the theatres, particularly their relationships with actors and actresses,” while the Master of the Revels dealt with licensing the plays.3 As theatre in Britain reclaimed its popularity in the late seventeenth century, hostility to theatre and calls for censorship of the stage intensified. Jeremy Collier’s 1698 diatribe, “A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage,” fully articulated the religious prejudice against theatre. Within forty years, the stage would come under strict regulation—not, however, in response to religious agitation or moralistic motive. Stung by scathing 12 Riot and Great Anger [3.234.177.119] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:26 GMT) 13 Theatrical Censorship and Disorder satires of John Gay and Henry Fielding, politicians enacted the Licensing Act of 1737 (Walpole’s Act), which formalized theatre censorship by investing the Lord Chamberlain with the authority to censor or to ban plays. Thereafter, any manager who planned to present a new play in London was legally bound to submit it for licensing by the Lord Chamberlain, an obligation that continued until 1968. The specific prohibition against the stage depiction of living or recently deceased personages or of the Royal family was now entrenched as a, perhaps the, central tenet of British stage censorship . Those in power would be spared the humiliation of being traduced, usually comically, on the public stage. Importantly, the Lord Chamberlain licensed a specific script, fixed and committed to paper. The text, rather than a staged performance, received a permanently valid license. In rare instances, however, a license could be...