The 17th century rector of St Alban’s College in Valladolid, Spain, must have rolled his eyes at the size of the book he had to review for the library. The Jesuit seminary, known as the English College because it produced missionaries committed to the reconversion of England to Catholicism, had received a 900-page volume of Shakespeare’s plays.
William Sankey prepared his quill and began the long work of censoring ungodly, anti-Catholic and otherwise unsuitable material. “Holy-day fools” – a jibe in the Tempest that seemed to impugn the Christian calendar – struck out. “Heavier soon by the weight of a man”, as Margaret tells Hero on the eve of her wedding in Much Ado About Nothing – filth – blotted into unreadability with heavy ink. A play about a pretend friar and a novice nun: actually, at Measure for Measure Sankey admitted defeat, put down his pen and took a sharp blade to cut out the pages of the entire play.
