BANNED

The materials that a community deems suitable or unsuitable for consumption by its citizens is an interesting and ever-evolving conversation. As we can see in our own media landscape, there are some films and TV shows that were once considered risque or even corrupting that today we harmless, perhaps even laughably consider so. Likewise, there are things in the past that today simply seem unconscionable, be of the language used, stereotypes it because propagated or something else. Throughout history artists have considered it their duty to push at the outer edges of taste and court confrontation as a result, but others have fallen unwittingly into social debates. Digging through the records we wanted to give you the stories behind some of the most eye-catching and peculiar examples of censorship from around the world.

KING LEAR WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

When: 1810–1820 What: Play Where: England

It’s long been known that performances of King Lear were prohibited in England during the reign of George III, but medical records released in 2018 have actually revealed new details behind the temporary ban. The parallels between the increasingly unstable and delusional Lear and George III are clear enough. Shakespeare’s king is often lost in the imagined scenes of his own mind, striking out at invisible enemies, and the mental health of George III was likewise famously complex and debilitating.

The new twist, however, in these royal records released in 2018 is that one episode of George III’s mental health crisis began after he read the.”