| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

John Houchin. Censorship of the American Theatre in the Twentieth Century. (Cambridge Studies in American Theatre and Drama, number 16.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Pp. ix, 332. $60.00.
American theater history, traditionally written, has followed a standard Whig interpretation: formulaic melodrama of the nineteenth century gave way to the mature theatrical literature of Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and David Mamet in the twentieth, while the contrived acting styles of earlier days likewise surrendered to a nuanced realistic style of performance. John Houchin tells a different story. His is not a story of progress but of ever-present threat. The theater, as it fulfills its duty to challenge the certitudes of American culture, has met with persistent hostility. Despite what would seem to be considerable cultural latitude in contemporary America, Houchin sees no sign of a permanent truce. "Defenders of the moral and cultural status quo ... will arrest actors, enact legislation, boycott sponsors, or initiate any other action that will silence the voices of transgressive artists" (p. 267).	1
If Houchin tells a doleful tale, he nonetheless tells it very well. He sets up his twentieth-century focus with a helpful overview of colonial and nineteenth-century censorship. Early censors reflected traditional religious animosities toward the stage. Victorian moralists were incensed by the appearance of burlesque, and Comstockian censors continued to be influential into the twentieth century. The more frank drama of the Progressive era, dealing with such issues as venereal disease or prostitution, earned rebuke, as did ethnic dramas with potentially inflammatory portraits, such as J. M. Synge's Playboy of the Western World.	. . .

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