Theatre
Victor Hugo's 1832 play Le roi s'amuse was banned after one performance. Though it depicts the escapades of Francis I of France, censors of the time believed that it also contained insulting references to King Louis-Philippe. Hugo brought a suit to permit the performance of the play, which he lost but it propelled him into celebrity as a defender of freedom of speech.
Read more about this topic: Censorship In France
Famous quotes containing the word theatre:
“The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The theatre is the best way of showing the gap between what is said and what is seen to be done, and that is why, ragged and gap-toothed as it is, it has still a far healthier potential than some poorer, abandoned arts.”
—David Hare (b. 1947)
“The theatre is supremely fitted to say: “Behold! These things are.” Yet most dramatists employ it to say: “This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.””
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)