[New-Poetry] Taking Kooser's measure

[Roger Day]

Now that the Lord Chamberlain's Blue Pencil has been laid to rest, how
fares the DWEM in the London West End?

http://www.theatre.com/tickets/landing.aspx

Shakespeare: 2 out of 50 plays (both US productions)
Tolkien  - 1
Chaucer - 2

Not bad at all. Although I don't think either Bent, The Vegemite
Tales, Frost/Nixon or many of the others would have survived
unscathed.

Of course this is an unscientific, totally spurious straw-poll.

R

On 9/1/06, Roger Day <rog3r.day at gmail.com> wrote:
> Our conversation presumes that the theatre in the period we are
> discussing is a complete free-market i.e. the theatres were free to
> put on what they wanted, and the audience free to watch [1]. The
> latter's choices has always been pre-selected for them through the
> Lord Chamberlain's Office. How much the various censorship laws
> encouraged pre-censorship ("chilling effects" in the modern jargon) is
> up for debate.  However Shakespeare's permafrost position on the
> boards could be a result of his plays being safe, from the Lord
> Chamberlain's office POV. S's plays have been legally sanctioned for
> the 400 years we're talking about.

-- 
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http://www.cb1poetry.org.uk/
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legs... facing the wrong way."