Censorship inevitably generates techniques of evasion. Like Midas’s wife, people feel compelled to talk, if only to the wind and the reeds, about whatever is most deeply disturbing to them. Theater companies, competing fiercely with one another, had a strong economic incentive for addressing this compulsion. They discovered that it was possible to do so by shifting the scene to far-off places or by depicting events in the distant past. On rare occasions, the censor found the parallels too obvious or demanded proof that historical events were being correctly rendered, but for the most part he
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