What governments have banned Shakespeare's plays for being decadent, seditious or corrupting of values?

Question

Were any of Shakespeare's plays banned in Nazi Germany, in the Soviet Union under Stalin, or in communist China? Was the Merchant of Venice ever banned in Israel or any other of Shakespeare's plays? Can you recommend any scholarly journals, articles, books or websites where I can confirm this specific information?

Answer 1

Actually, for a time his works were also banned in England and the colonies during the Puritan reign of the middle 1600's.

Answer 2

It looks that most banning, censorsing and Bowdlerizing was being done in the UK and the US, especially in American schools :

"The first real case of ethnic censorship of Shakespeare occurred in 1931. According to Haight and Grannis, the New York towns of Buffalo and Manchester removed The Merchant of Venice from high school curricula, due to protests from Jewish groups that it encouraged bigotry (18). In 1953, the suppression of the play was again sought (Haight and Grannis 19); and in 1980, Ockerbloom states, it was banned in Midland, Michigan schools due to Shylock's depiction. In fact, according to Norrie Epstein, it is the most banned Shakespeare play in post-World War II classrooms; interestingly, though, it is the most popular play in Israel (100)."

"Another case of ethnic censorship: according to Epstein, when the first production of Othello with a black Othello came to the United States in the 1930s, they discovered that "American audiences weren't ready to see a middle-aged black man touching a young white woman," which led to the cancellation of the tour (389)."

"Censorship of Shakespeare was also prevalent under repressive regimes: Stalin's regime banned Hamlet, claiming that "Hamlet's indecisiveness and depression were incompatible with the new Soviet spirit of optimism, fortitude, and clarity" (Epstein 353). According to Epstein, Hamlet was also banned in 1989 from an Israeli detention camp for Palestinians. The banning had to do with Hamlet's soliloquy about taking up arms versus suffering silently (353). The soliloquy that incited censorship is one of the most quoted speeches in the English language:"

"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. (3.1.57-60)"

"The Bonfire of Liberties states that school versions of Romeo and Juliet are expurgated without indicating the expurgated lines (shades of the 1800s). It also states that schools have banned the Franco Zeffirelli movie version because it "romanticizes teen-age suicide," "has no suitable role models," and "encourages drug use". The same allegations could be applied to the play, although I fail to see how a tragic suicide by poison or a sleeping draught that misleads Romeo into believing Juliet dead "encourages" drug use--it seems as though it would have the opposite effect."

"Homosexuality is another sensitive issue in modern society, and homosexual and gender issues (e.g. cross-dressing) in Shakespeare's work have come under attack recently. In 1996, Merrimack, New Hampshire schools banned Twelfth Night when the school board prohibited "alternative lifestyle instruction." (Ockerbloom) Does Twelfth Night even truly depict "alternative lifestyles", much less "instruct" one in them? The Christian Science Monitor also listed Twelfth Night as one of the books challenged in school libraries in 1996-97, presumably for the same incident."

"The Sonnets, however, are the most homoerotic of Shakespeare's works, a fact that has often been hidden. According to Epstein,"

" "If Shakespeare were to apply for an NEA grant on the basis of the Sonnets, he would probably be denied one. There is profound resistance to accepting Shakespeare, the icon of Western civilization, as gay. (267)" "

"Epstein also states that teachers often fail to explain that many of the Sonnets were written to a man, while Shakespearean scholars ignore their homoeroticism, explaining it away as male friendship (267). To avoid this issue, George Chalmers even went to the length of believing that Shakespeare wrote the Sonnets to Queen Elizabeth, who was "considered a man" (Epstein 269)."

"The Bonfire of Liberties also states that Macbeth was challenged in 1986 in Jefferson County, Colorado schools because it focuses on "Death, suicide, ghosts and Satan." "

"shakespeare censored : Post-1900 Censorship: The Ideas ", govind : http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~govind/shakespeare/

"Even in the early twentieth-century, versions of "Macbeth" circulating in schools and colleges still had the bawdy gatekeeper's scene omitted on grounds of decency."

"In Search of Shakespeare : Censorship" : http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/events/event91.html

"The Savannah Morning News reported in November 1999 that a teacher at the Windsor Forest High School required seniors to obtain permission slips before they could read Hamlet, Macbeth, or King Lear. The teacher's school board had pulled the books from class reading lists, citing "adult language" and references to sex and violence. Many students and parents protested the school's board's policy, which also included the outright banning of three other books. Shakespeare is no stranger to censorship: the Associated Press reported in March 1996 that Merrimack, NH schools had pulled Shakespeare's Twelfth Night from the curriculum after the school board passed a "prohibition of alternative lifestyle instruction" act. (Twelfth Night includes a number of romantic entanglements including a young woman who disguises herself as a boy.) Readers from Merrimack informed me in 1999 that school board members who had passed the act had been voted out, after the uproar resulting from the act's passage, and that the play is now used again in Merrimack classrooms. Govind has a page with more information about the censorship of Shakespeare through history."

"Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice was banned from classrooms in Midland, Michigan in 1980, due to its portrayal of the Jewish character Shylock. It has been similarly banned in the 1930s in schools in Buffalo and Manchester, NY. Shakespeare's plays have also often been "cleansed" of crude words and phrases. Thomas Bowdler's efforts in his 1818 "Family Shakespeare" gave rise to the word "bowdlerize". "

"BANNED BOOKS ONLINE : Unfit for Schools and Minors?" : http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/banned-books.html

"Such efforts to save the Bard from himself culminated in the famous Family Edition of Shakespeare (1818), edited by Thomas Bowdler and an unnamed close relative, probably his sister. In the words of Marvin Rosenberg, Bowdler's compelling motive was "to protect the purity of British womanhood from indecent language.… Shakespeare's words were simply too potent to be trusted with a lady" (244-45). Bowdler himself wrote that the Bard's plays are "stained with words and expressions of so indecent a nature that no parent would chuse to submit them in uncorrected form to the eye or ear of a daughter."

"Some examples of Bowdler's improvements, still from Othello: Iago no longer tells Brabantio that "your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs" (I.i.115-17), but rather that "your daughter and the Moor are now together." In Shakespeare, the bloodthirsty hero worries that Desdemona's "body and beauty" will distract him from his purpose (IV.i.205); in Bowdler, her body is deleted. "Top" is gone, and "tup" along with it, and "naked" for good measure. Shakespeare's "bawdy wind that kisses all it meets" (IV.ii.78) is reduced to a "very wind." "

"Bowdler's efforts, which in truth weren't nearly so extreme as Gentleman's, earned him gratitude in his century and infamy in ours. The Family Edition is now out of print, and bowdlerize is a term of contempt. Yet Shakespeare has never really recovered; many of those who read the complete texts and understand them are even today embarrassed by his low comedy and incorrect ideas."

"In any case, between about 1750 and about 1950, it was either censored Shakespeare or no Shakespeare; so we must partly thank Gentleman and Bowdler for keeping his plays alive and onstage. "

"Naughty Shakespeare Continued " : http://www.caderbooks.com/exnshake2.html