SOURCE: “The Censorship of the Deposition Scene in Richard II,” in The Review of English Studies XLI, No. 161, February, 1990, pp. 89-94.

In the following essay, Clare reviews the debate regarding the issue of the possible censorship of the deposition scene in Richard II, and maintains that strong and persuasive evidence exists to support the view that the scene was suppressed by the Master of the Revels due ot its “explicit portrayal of deposition and usurpation.”

The question of Elizabethan censorship and its impact upon Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists is one which has evoked cautious responses of ‘not proven’. Apart from the clear evidence of Tilney's censorship on the manuscript of The Book of Sir Thomas More, proof of early theatrical censorship is scant. There are, however, strong grounds for claiming that Richard II also suffered from theatrical censorship in the 1590s. To date editors have tended to...