Theatre and Censorship in France from Revolution to Restoration

Drawing on over 150,000 pages of archival material and hundreds of manuscripts, this is the very first book-length study of theatre censorship in France – both in Paris and the provinces – between the end of the Ancien Régime and the Restoration. Clare Siviter explores the period through the lenses of both traditional bureaucratic notions of censorship and the novel concept of 'lateral censorship', which encompasses a far greater cast of participants, including authors, theatres, critics and audiences. Applying this dual methodology to three key topics – religion, mœurs, and government – she complicates political continuities and ruptures between regimes and questions how effectively theatre censorship worked in practice. By giving a voice back to individual French men and women not often recorded in print, Siviter shows how theatre censorship allowed contemporaries to shape the world around them and how they used theatre to promote or oppose the state, even at its most authoritarian.