Mrs. Warrens Profession | Page 6

is but for the vigilance of the
King's Reader. The truth is, that no manager would dare produce on his
own responsibility the pieces he can now get royal certificates for at
two guineas per piece.
I hasten to add that I believe these evils to be inherent in the nature of
all censorship, and not merely a consequence of the form the institution
takes in London. No doubt there is a staggering absurdity in appointing
an ordinary clerk to see that the leaders of European literature do not
corrupt the morals of the nation, and to restrain Sir Henry Irving, as a
rogue and a vagabond, from presuming to impersonate Samson or
David on the stage, though any other sort of artist may daub these
scriptural figures on a signboard or carve them on a tombstone without
hindrance. If the General Medical Council, the Royal College of
Physicians, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Incorporated Law Society,
and Convocation were abolished, and their functions handed over to the
Mr Redford, the Concert of Europe would presumably declare England
mad, and treat her accordingly. Yet, though neither medicine nor

painting nor law nor the Church moulds the character of the nation as
potently as the theatre does, nothing can come on the stage unless its
dimensions admit of its passing through Mr Redford's mind! Pray do
not think that I question Mr Redford's honesty. I am quite sure that he
sincerely thinks me a blackguard, and my play a grossly improper one,
because, like Tolstoy's Dominion of Darkness, it produces, as they are
both meant to produce, a very strong and very painful impression of
evil. I do not doubt for a moment that the rapine play which I have
described, and which he licensed, was quite incapable in manuscript of
producing any particular effect on his mind at all, and that when he was
once satisfied that the ill-conducted hero was a German and not an
English officer, he passed the play without studying its moral
tendencies. Even if he had undertaken that study, there is no more
reason to suppose that he is a competent moralist than there is to
suppose that I am a competent mathematician. But truly it does not
matter whether he is a moralist or not. Let nobody dream for a moment
that what is wrong with the Censorship is the shortcoming of the
gentleman who happens at any moment to be acting as Censor. Replace
him to-morrow by an Academy of Letters and an Academy of Dramatic
Poetry, and the new and enlarged filter will still exclude original and
epoch-making work, whilst passing conventional, old-fashioned, and
vulgar work without question. The conclave which compiles the index
of the Roman Catholic Church is the most august, ancient, learned,
famous, and authoritative censorship in Europe. Is it more enlightened,
more liberal, more tolerant that the comparatively infinitesimal office
of the Lord Chamberlain? On the contrary, it has reduced itself to a
degree of absurdity which makes a Catholic university a contradiction
in terms. All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging
current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by
challenging current concepts, and executed by supplanting existing
institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal
of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a
nutshell.
It will be asked whether theatrical managers are to be allowed to
produce what they like, without regard to the public interest. But that is
not the alternative. The managers of our London music-halls are not

subject to any censorship. They produce their entertainments on their
own responsibility, and have no two-guinea certificates to plead if their
houses are conducted viciously. They know that if they lose their
character, the County Council will simply refuse to renew their license
at the end of the year; and nothing in the history of popular art is more
amazing than the improvement in music-halls that this simple
arrangement has produced within a few years. Place the theatres on the
same footing, and we shall promptly have a similar revolution: a whole
class of frankly blackguardly plays, in which unscrupulous low
comedians attract crowds to gaze at bevies of girls who have nothing to
exhibit but their prettiness, will vanish like the obscene songs which
were supposed to enliven the squalid dulness, incredible to the younger
generation, of the music-halls fifteen years ago. On the other hand,
plays which treat sex questions as problems for thought instead of as
aphrodisiacs will be freely performed. Gentlemen of Mr Redford's way
of thinking will have plenty of opportunity of protesting against them
in Council; but the result will be that the Mr Redford will find his
natural level; Ibsen and Tolstoy theirs; so no harm will be done.
This question of the