Publication details
Censorship as a Framing Factor in 18th Century British Drama
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The paper explores the means by which the government or local authorities exerted control over the production of stage dramas at the turn of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries in London theatres. Recently, the role of censorship, specifically the practices of John Larpent, who was the Examiner of Plays from 1778 until his death in 1824, has been discussed by leading scholars in the field. It is significant that in this period of war, social upheaval, and confusion following the French Revolution, drama was the only literary form subjected to a strict government supervision. This fact had far-reaching consequences for playwrights, actors, critics, theatre managers, and other groups involved in stage productions of that time. Censorship influenced writing for the stage in patent royal theatres in Westminster as well as for the non-patent theatres in the capital or provinces. While licensed theatres were able to stage regular five-act dramas, the minor houses were allowed to play burlettas or hybrid genres such as comic opera, melodrama, and various scenic spectacles. To illustrate the effects of this limited theatrical freedom on a specific work, the paper shows how The Kentish Barons (1791) by Francis North, originally a “three-act play interspersed with songs”, became, after the cuts of the passages marked as offensive by the censor, and other alterations made by a theatre manager, only a two-act piece with several resulting inconsistencies in its dramatic structure. |