Art Made Tongue-Tied By Authority: Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship

by Janet Clare

In Art Made Tongue-tied by Authority Janet Clare argues that to understand dramatic and theatrical censorship in the Renaissance we need to map its terrain, note its serial changes and examine the language through which it was articulated. In tracing the development of dramatic censorship from its origins in the suppression of the medieval religious drama to the end of the Jacobean period, she shows how the system of censorship that operated under Elizabeth I and James I was dynamic, unstable and unpredictable. She questions notions that regard censorship as either consistently repressive or irregular and negotiable, arguing that it was governed by the contingencies of the historical moment.

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990