Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England (review)

230 Reviews Parergon 20.1 (2003) Hadfield,Andrew, ed.,Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England, Houndmills , Palgrave, 2001; hardback; pp. 234; RRP £47.50; ISBN 0333794109. My only, largely irrelevant, quibble with this interesting collection is the organisation of its material. I would have opened with Arnold Hunt’s essay, ‘Licensing and Religious Censorship in Early Modern England’, as it provides a clear and concise summary of the ever-tightening net of censorship in the whole period from the royal injunctions of 1559 to the Laudian system of the 1630s. Although targeting religious censorship only, the coverage is wide because so much written material contained overt or covert theological commentary. I would, for the same reason, question the meaningfulness of subdividing the book under headings ‘Theatrical’, ‘Religious’ and ‘Political Censorship’, since religion and politics were so inextricably linked, especially in writing destined for the public theatre. This point is made and exemplified by Stephen Longstaffe in his account of the specific kinds of state control exercised over the Protestant history play, and the implications for the portrayal of puritanism. Richard Dutton reinforces the general point, in revisiting the celebrated case of upheavals in international politics surrounding A Game at Chess, an affair which nearly saw Middleton imprisoned. Richard McCabe shows that despite the rhetoric of censors in the Anglican Church, the issue is never simply a ‘moral’ one of obscenity, but one of state sedition. This goes for just about all written material, not just that directly concerned with religion. He whimsically suggests that Lear’s image of Authority as no more than a dog in office might be a scurrilous reference to the Master of Revels and other censors. Alison Shell demonstrates that recusant, Catholic poetry was not defined by religious statements but more pervasively by ‘those elements which a Protestant could not have imagined or condoned’. Cyndia Susan Clegg arbitrates between the discrepant images of James’s ‘management style’ as on the one hand, very public, like ‘an actor transparently displayed’ and a prolific writer, or on the other hand, the duke of dark corners, working subtly and behind the scenes. She argues that a crucial consideration is James’s reverence for the printed word, whose stability outweighs the ambiguity of public ceremony. Hence his remarkable fondness for burning book in public spaces like Paul’s Square and the streets of Oxford and Cambridge. In these ‘pageants’, the power of the printed word itself was the issue, as James publicly destroyed books that differed from his own, on issues central to him: ‘Burning books was for James an act of personal propaganda’ (p. 183), his way of expressing private opinions through public display. Reviews 231 Parergon 20.1 (2003) Annabel Patterson’s name understandably crops up several times in the volume because her important book, Censorship and Interpretation (1984) in many ways led to the collection. She writes here onAndrew Marvell, who ‘wrote all his life under the shadow of political censorship’(p. 187). He emerges not, as he is often seen, as a congenital ‘trimmer’, but as brilliantly ‘dancing’ around censors, always one adroit step ahead of them. He chose very carefully what, and when, he published. It is something of a relief that Patterson at least acknowledges the supreme importance of Milton’s Areopagitica for the whole debate of censorship throughout the seventeenth century, since without this the volume would be sadly lacking. A whole essay on it would not have gone amiss. David Norbrook, for example, has written well on Areopagitica in Writing the English Republic, and although all the essays here have not been published before, his contribution perhaps deserves to be revised in the different context of censorship rather than Protestant politics. The names of two other writers have become associated with the subject. The first is that of the editor, Andrew Hadfield, who contributes an illuminating Introduction on ‘the Politics of Early Modern Censorship’, and an account of Elizabeth’s practice in ‘Censoring Ireland’ (his own particular expertise). Naturally, Spenser is the main case, first represented by his notorious View, and secondly in the changed opinions of his posthumously published The Faerie Queene. The second is Richard Burt, who published The Administration...