Dec 19, 2009

Elizabethan Drama | Historical Context

Master of Revels and Censorship
Every play had to be submitted to the Master of Revels for licensing before performance. He acted as the official censor and would often force the deletion of passages or references that were deemed offensive. Gerald Eades Bentley, in “Regulation and Censorship” from The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare’s Time, 1590–1642, observes that

most of the censoring activities were intended to eliminate from the stage five general types of lines or scenes: 1. Critical comments on the policies or conduct of...