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Show censors the exit; A theatre director removing a passage from a Christopher Marlowe classic to avoid offending Muslims is a backward step for hard-won freedom of speech.

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From: The Evening Standard (London, England)
Date: 20051125
Author:

Byline: NICHOLAS DE JONGH

IT WAS a misguided act of self censorship. David Farr, responsible for the production of Christopher Marlowe's Elizabethan epic, Tamburlaine, now on at the Barbican, excised a passage of the original text. In it, Marlowe's hero jubilantly burns the Koran "and all the heaps of superstitious books found in the temples of Mahomet", a "supposed" god whom he believes will be found uncomfortably resident "in hell".

Simon Reade, the normally sensible artistic director of the Bristol Old Vic, where this lauded production originated, claims that if he and ...

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