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Satire is a lesson. Parody is a game. — Vladimir Nabokov

The devil, the proude spirit, cannot endure to be mocked. — Thomas Moore

In 2005, a London production of Philip Marlowe’s sixteenth-century play Tamburlaine the Great was subject to minor editing by its director. A part of one of the scenes needed to be cut, it was decided — not cut down, but cut out. The scene in question showed the burning of books, one of which was the Koran (which the BBC went through a phase of referring to as “the holy Koran”).