Jacobean Drama and Censorship

Abstract

After his accession to the English throne in 1603, James I placed all major theatrical companies in London under royal patronage. Some scholars believe that censorship and direct royal patronage combined to establish the tight control of drama － much tighter in Jacobean times than under Elizabeth. The present paper calls into question the efficiency of the censorship as exercised by James and his government. Actors' violations of the standards and rules of the Master of the Revels and the Privy Council recurred throughout James's times, though most conspicuously and most flagrantly in the first decade of his reign. The occasional or frequent lax situation of censorship may be partly ascribed to the nonmonolithic structure of James's government (as typified by the existence of "factions" struggling for power at Court) which could render the efficient working of the censorship system impossible, and partly to the "tolerance" and "forgetfulness" of the sovereign. Or, perhaps, James, unable to contain the subversive "lavish and licentious speech" of the actors, chose to forget and forgive their infringement, thereby turning the manifest expression of his own limits as a ruler into a display of the power to issue pardon.