But if they act, they should, from childhood upward, impersonate only the appropriate types of character, men who are brave, religious, self-controlled, generous.
-Plato, The Republic
Because plays are written as scripts for performance and then are published as texts for reading, they can be subjected to censorship in both forms. Efforts to censor or prohibit performance are more visible than efforts to prohibit reading, but the banning of a script can put an end to all performances. In medieval England, cycles of plays based on Biblical stories were performed annually throughout the realm. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the scripts were summoned to London to be inspected for theological correctness, and they mysteriously "disappeared." The performances also disappeared as a custom of the country.
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