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

320 Pages·2009·1.454 MB·English

by  Robert Justin Goldstein

The Frightful Stage

The Frightful Stage
Political Censorship of the Th eater
in Nineteenth-Century Europe
n
Edited by
Robert Justin Goldstein
Berghahn Books
New York • Oxford
First published in 2009 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
©2009 Robert Justin Goldstein
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Th e frightful stage : political censorship of the theater in nineteenth-century Europe / edited
by Robert Justin Goldstein.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84545-459-3 (alk. paper)
1. Th eater—Censorship—Europe—History—19th century. 2. Th eater and state—
Europe—History—19th century. 3. Th eater—Political aspects—Europe—History—19th
century. 4. Censorship—Europe—History—19th century. I. Goldstein, Robert Justin.
PN2044.E85 F75 2009
792.094’09034—dc22
2008052534
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper.
ISBN: 978-1-84545-459-3 Hardback
Contents
n
Preface
vii
INTRODUCTION
Robert Justin Goldstein
1
GERMANY
Gary D. Stark
22
FRANCE
Robert Justin Goldstein
70
RUSSIA
Anthony Swift
130
SPAIN
David T. Gies
162
vi CONTENTS
ITALY
John A. Davis
190
THE HABSBURG MONARCHY
Norbert Bachleitner
228
SUMMARY
Robert Justin Goldstein
265
List of Contributors
300
Index
302
Preface
n
his volume is the second in what has been conceived as a trilogy of
edited collections about political censorship in nineteenth-century
Europe. Its origins date to my 1983 book Political Repression in Nineteenth-
T
Century Europe, which was, in retrospect, a rather foolishly ambitious at-
tempt to survey all aspects of political repression for all of Europe between
1815 and 1914. As the general subject continued to interest me, I decided
to focus thereafter especially upon one key aspect of the overall topic: po-
litical censorship. Th is led to two further books published in 1989, Censor-
ship of Political Caricature in Nineteenth-Century France (Kent State) and
Political Censorship of the Arts and the Press in Nineteenth-Century Europe
(MacMillan). Th ey were based on both archival research and extensive
readings in secondary sources in English and French, the two European
languages accessible to me.
Th e further and deeper I explored the general subject of nineteenth-
century European political censorship, the more it became clear that this
was an issue of enormous signifi cance both to the ruling elites and to op-
po sition movements, each of whom invested extraordinary amounts of
time and energy in attempting to, respectively, implement and resist it.
It also became increasingly clear that my language limitations were a seri-
ous impediment to further research, since most relevant publications, not
to mention archival materials, have not been translated into English or
French. Th erefore, I decided to recruit a group of multilingual scholars
who could penetrate materials for all of the major countries of nineteenth-
century continental Europe—namely France (which I could handle), Ger-
many, the Habsburg Monarchy, Italy, Russia, and Spain—to create a book
that focused especially on print censorship in nineteenth-century Europe,
which resulted in the 2000 publication of Th e War for the Public Mind:
viii PREFACE
Political Censorship in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Praeger). Although focus-
ing on censorship of newspapers, books, and journals, this volume touched
briefl y on censorship of other media, including theater, opera, caricature,
and cinema—just enough to make clear that, although in the twentieth
and twenty-fi rst centuries we tend to think of print censorship as espe-
cially important, in nineteenth-century Europe, when large segments of
the population were illiterate, censorship of the stage and the visual arts
was perhaps even more signifi cant. Th us, as detailed in this volume, most
European regimes continued prior censorship of such media long after
ceasing print censorship. Th erefore, a second book, focused on censorship
of the stage (including both spoken and musical theater, such as opera)—
the one that is now in your hands—seemed called for. A third and fi nal
volume, focused on censorship of the visual arts (such as caricature, post-
ers, sculpture, painting, and early photography and cinema) is now in the
planning stages.
As with Th e War for the Public Mind, the primary purpose of this volume
is to provide reliable and comprehensive summaries, for an English-lan-
guage audience, of the latest research available from the most important
countries of nineteenth-century Europe. In most cases a large (and some-
times overwhelming) literature (in non-English languages) is available on
this topic, and the contributors to this book were therefore not asked or
required to do archival research (although they were certainly not discour-
aged from such). To hold the number of endnotes down to a reasonable
level, they have generally been grouped together, in the appropriate order,
at the end of paragraphs; in addition, each chapter includes an extensive
bibliographical essay, including whatever sources are available in English,
designed to highlight the most important sources.
Th e War for the Public Mind received overwhelmingly positive reviews
in a wide diversity of academic journals, with the primary criticism that
it lacked a chapter on England. Th e reason for this, and why there is no
England chapter in this book either, is simply that material on English
censorship—of the theater in particular—is both abundant and easily ac-
cessible to English-language readers, and this book seeks to make available
to them material that is not. However, I have included many references to
England, as well as to other countries that do not have individual chapters
devoted to them, in the introductory and summary essays, which attempt
to point out similarities and diff erences in nineteenth-century theater cen-
sorship across the European continent. Th e introductory chapter seeks
primarily to provide some brief general background context for readers
more knowledgeable about (or interested in) theater than European history
PREFACE ix
in general, and to briefl y summarize both the reasons why European
political authorities feared especially the theater and the history of pre–
nineteenth-century European political theater censorship. Th e heart of
the book consists of individual country chapters on Germany, France,
Russia, Spain, Italy, and the Habsburg Monarchy. A summary seeks to
recapitulate major themes about the substance of nineteenth-century Eu-
ropean drama censorship. Although the introduction and summary are
massively informed by the country chapters, they also draw heavily on
my own research. Inevitably there is some duplication of both general
content and specifi c incidents/quotations between the introduction and
(especially) the summary and the country chapters. I have tried to keep
this to a minimum, but have deliberately erred on the side of repetition in
certain cases, both because I view the information as particularly apt and/
or eloquent and because, realistically, some readers will examine some, but
not all, of the country chapters, and would otherwise miss some critical
material. Th e introductory and summary chapters lack bibliographic es-
says because there is virtually no signifi cant comparative or summary lit-
erature dealing with nineteenth-century European political theater censor-
ship, as opposed to material on individual countries; what little is available
is included in endnotes 19 in the introduction and 2 in the summary. In
writing the introduction, in particular, I have liberally borrowed from my
earlier publications, which are mentioned in the latter endnote.
I am deeply indebted to the chapter contributors, who have of course
made this book a reality, and have exhibited seemingly limitless patience
as the delays that inevitably impact all multi-authored collections came
into play. I also want to thank Janice Best, professor of languages and
literature at Acadia University (Canada), and Robin Lenman, formerly
history professor at the University of Warwick (UK), for reading a draft
manuscript and providing many helpful suggestions. I am also much in-
debted to Berghahn Books and to my editor, Marion Berghahn, for her
confi dence in this work from its early days and, more generally, for keep-
ing the faith at a time when marketplace pressures are probably a greater
and more ruthless censorship threat to academic freedom and publication
than anything wielded (or dreamed of) by the authorities.