Censorship In The Elizabethan Age

The Elizabethan Age was a golden age for the arts in England.

Despite the flourishing of the drama, Elizabethan theater attracted criticism and censorships from some sectors of English Society. Especially Puritans and officers of the Church of England considered actors to be of questionable characters and condemned playwrights for using the stage to broadcast their disrespectful opinions. Throughout the century, the parliament censored plays for blasphemy, heresy or political reasons. To appease these people, the queen prohibited the construction of theaters and performances to take place within London city limits, but playhouses like the Globe, the Rose and the Swan set up just outside the wall. Writers often commented on other conflicts in society in their plays. William Shakespeare referenced religion and its effect on politics and culture in Britain. For example, his character Malvolio from Twelfth Night ridicules the puritan lifestyle and the porter’s speech from Macbeth pokes fun at the act of equivocation.

This was profitable both for the new merchants in the growing towns and for the farmers who chose to raise sheep instead of planting crop. The peasants were thrown away from the patches of land they were renting, as the owners set up fencing, and they had to move to the city. But these unskilled laborers only managed to get poorly paid work or no work at all.

As the nobles and the merchant class bathed in extravagance, the people suffered greatly. Most decades of the Elizabethan Age, there was an increase in the poverty rate. The reasons for this included a steady rise in the population so the resources had to be shared by more people, poor harvests and rising prices. During the last years of Henry VIII’s reign, he debased the coins, so the amount of gold and silver was reduced. This led to the coins losing value and everything became more