shredsandpatches:whitmerule:reconditarmonia:From Facebook, but too interesting not to share here too
shredsandpatches:whitmerule:reconditarmonia:From Facebook, but too interesting not to share here too.shakespeare would have approved.elizabeth i would have carefully absented herself.(no but seriously if SHE was okay with having that performed in a much more socially dangerous climate trump has no call to get hysterical.)It did get licensed by the Master of Revels, after all. Free speech wasn’t really a thing in Elizabethan England, but the thing that tended to draw the censors down on you was usually a too-explicit evocation of contemporary events or personalities. (Directly representing a historical figure as the incumbent head of state would definitely not have flown, although to a degree all stage rulers reflect the incumbent.) That said: let us not forget that when Essex’s supporters commissioned that performance of Richard II – a play which had been censored either externally or internally before it was printed in 1597 – before Essex’s rebellion in 1601, the players (although questioned) were in fact not penalized for staging the play. Their excuse (that they did it for the money) seems to have held up. Although the Queen invited them to perform at court the night before Essex was beheaded, which I suppose was equivalent to letting them off with a warning. (Of course, Richard II is about as much a call to political violence as Julius Caesar is, which is to say REALLY NOT VERY MUCH AT ALL.) -- source link
#good analysis#julius caesar#and also