Frightful Stage: Political Censorship of the Theater in Nineteenth-Century Europe

In nineteenth-century Europe the ruling elites viewed the theater as a form of communication which had enormous importance. The theater provided the most significant form of mass entertainment and was the only arena aside from the church in which regular mass gatherings were possible. Therefore, drama censorship occupied a great deal of the ruling class’s time and energy, with a particularly focus on proposed scripts that potentially threatened the existing political, legal, and social order. This volume provides the first comprehensive examination of nineteenth-century political theater censorship at a time, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when the European population was becoming increasingly politically active.

In nineteenth-century Europe the ruling elites viewed the theater as a form of communication which had enormous importance. The theater provided the most significant form of mass entertainment and was the only arena aside from the church in which regular mass gatherings were possible. Therefore, drama censorship occupied a great deal of the ruling class's time and energy, with a particularly focus on proposed scripts that potentially threatened the existing political, legal, and social order. This volume provides the first comprehensive examination of nineteenth-century political theater censorship at a time, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when the European population was becoming increasingly politically active.

Robert Justin Goldstein is Emeritus Professor of political science at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, and Research Associate at the Center for Russian & Eastern European Studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He has written and edited numerous books on modern American and European history, including Political Repression in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1983), Political Censorship of the Arts & the Press in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1989) and (ed.) The War for the Public Mind: Political Censorship in Nineteenth-Century Europe (2000).