Napoleon Bonaparte was never going to be an easy character to put onstage, from the initial fears under the Directory about staging a living general to the Restoration’s horror at divisive memories of the Empire. Yet theatrical versions of Bonaparte or allusions to him were no stranger to the boards and tell us much about the construction of Napoleon’s image, indeed, the Napoleonic legend itself. Although there were certainly productions we would qualify as ‘propaganda’ promoting Napoleon, not all theatrical appearances or allusions were positive, and the bureaucratic censorship system often lagged behind audience interpretations, leaving room for derision via lateral censorship at any theatre, from the Opéra and the Variétés in Paris to Lyon’s Théâtre des Célestins. In this sense, censorship offered contemporaries a space for political subversion to advance another model of France, even at the height of imperial rule or under the restored monarchy.