Political censorship in four vaudeville plays by Bayard, Kock, Labiche and Royer.

What is it about?

This article explores the link between parody and politics in four vaudeville plays from the period between July 1850 and Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s coup d’État of 1851: Le Jour et la Nuit by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz, La Maison du Carrousel ou l’Hôtel de Nantes by Henry de Kock, Martial, ou le Vol à la fleur d’orange by Jean-François Bayard and Antoine-François Varner, and Un chapeau de paille d’Italie by Eugène Labiche and Marc-Michel. Known for its comedy based on surprises and misunderstandings, vaudeville relied on the active participation of the audience for much of its humor. For this reason, censors paid special attention to this type of play. At the same time, they gave more latitude to authors because they took into account the specific needs of comic theater. The techniques authors used to create comic effects often allowed them to add political comments to their plays, which the censors sometimes overlooked

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Why is it important?

My approach to censored manuscripts looks closely at the passages that the censors highlighted for changes and how authors responded to these requests in order to show how censorship often fails. By focusing too narrowly on the words themselves, censors often failed to understand and fully evaluate the impact a play could have on its audience. Extra-textual elements such as songs, props, costumes, and interaction with the audience added meaning to these works that were difficult for the censors to control

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