Steve Nicholson. The Censorship of British Drama, 1900-1968.("The Censorship of British Drama, 1900-1968, vol. 2")(Book review)

Publication: Comparative Drama

Publication Date: 22-JUN-06

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Steve Nicholson. The Censorship of British Drama, 1900-1968. Vol. 1, 1900-1932. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2003. Pp. x + 350. $69.95.

Steve Nicholson. The Censorship of British Drama, 1900-1968. Vol. 2, 1933-1952. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005. Pp. vii + 431. $75.00.

In an effort to protect English audiences the Lord Chamberlain refused to license, and more than once, canonical plays like Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, August Strindberg's Miss Julie, George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession, and Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour. The travails of these plays with the Lord Chamberlains office are well documented. However, little is known about the Lord Chamberlains censoring of plays like Laurence Hausman's Bethlehem (1902) because of the use of biblical Scriptures in the play's plot, Mary Stopes's Married Love (1923) because of an impotent male protagonist, Vere Sullivan's We, the Condemned (1938) because of its anti-Nazi stance, and Norman Ginsberg and Eric Maschwitz's Birthday Bouquet (1951) because Queen Victoria and Prince Albert sang and danced their way through a musical comedy. And, these latter plays make Steve Nicholson's three-volume history (two of which have so far been published) of the censorship of British drama in the twentieth century a crucial, influential, and groundbreaking view of theater history. The machinations behind the lesser known plays of the British theater explicitly illuminate the policies...

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