The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet

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The Lord Chamberlain then has his powers so adjusted that he is
tyrannical just where it is important that he should be tolerant,
and tolerant just where he could screw up the standard a little
by being tyrannical. His plea that there are unmentionable depths
to which managers and authors would descend if he did not prevent
them is disproved by the plain fact that his indulgence goes as
far as the police, and sometimes further than the public, will
let it. If our judges had so little power there would be no law
in England. If our churches had so much, there would be no
theatre, no literature, no science, no art, possibly no England.
The institution is at once absurdly despotic and abjectly weak.

AN ENLIGHTENED CENSORSHIP STILL WORSE THAN THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN'S

Clearly a censorship of judges, bishops, or statesmen would not
be in this abject condition. It would no doubt make short work of
the coarse and vicious pieces which now enjoy the protection of
the Lord Chamberlain, or at least of those of them in which the
vulgarity and vice are discoverable by merely reading the prompt
copy. But it would certainly disappoint the main hope of its
advocates: the hope that it would protect and foster the higher
drama. It would do nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it would
inevitably suppress it more completely than the Lord Chamberlain
does, because it would understand it better. The one play of
Ibsen's which is prohibited on the English stage, Ghosts, is far
less subversive than A Doll's House. But the Lord Chamberlain
does not meddle with such far-reaching matters as the tendency of
a play. He refuses to license Ghosts exactly as he would refuse
to license Hamlet if it were submitted to him as a new play. He
would license even Hamlet if certain alterations were made in it.
He would disallow the incestuous relationship between the King
and Queen. He would probably insist on the substitution of some
fictitious country for Denmark in deference to the near relations
of our reigning house with that realm. He would certainly make it
an absolute condition that the closet scene, in which a son, in
an agony of shame and revulsion, reproaches his mother for her
relations with his uncle, should be struck out as unbearably
horrifying and improper. But compliance with these conditions
would satisfy him. He would raise no speculative objections to
the tendency of the play.

This indifference to the larger issues of a theatrical
performance could not be safely predicated of an enlightened
censorship. Such a censorship might be more liberal in its
toleration of matters which are only objected to on the ground
that they are not usually discussed in general social
conversation or in the presence of children; but it would
presumably have a far deeper insight to and concern for the real
ethical tendency of the play. For instance, had it been in
existence during the last quarter of a century, it would have
perceived that those plays of Ibsen's which have been licensed
without question are fundamentally immoral to an altogether
extraordinary degree. Every one of them is a deliberate act of
war on society as at present constituted. Religion, marriage,
ordinary respectability, are subjected to a destructive exposure
and criticism which seems to mere moralists--that is, to persons
of no more than average depth of mind--to be diabolical. It is no
exaggeration to say that Ibsen gained his overwhelming reputation
by undertaking a task of no less magnitude than changing the mind
of Europe with the view of changing its morals. Now you cannot
license work of that sort without making yourself responsible for
it. The Lord Chamberlain accepted the responsibility because
he did not understand it or concern himself about it. But what
really enlightened and conscientious official dare take such a
responsibility? The strength of character and range of vision
which made Ibsen capable of it are not to be expected from any
official, however eminent. It is true that an enlightened censor
might, whilst shrinking even with horror from Ibsen's views,
perceive that any nation which suppressed Ibsen would presently
find itself falling behind the nations which tolerated him
just as Spain fell behind England; but the proper action to take
on such a conviction is the abdication of censorship, not the
practise of it. As long as a censor is a censor, he cannot
endorse by his licence opinions which seem to him dangerously
heretical.

We may, therefore, conclude that the more enlightened a
censorship is, the worse it would serve us. The Lord Chamberlain,
an obviously unenlightened Censor, prohibits Ghosts and licenses
all the rest of Ibsen's plays. An enlightened censorship would
possibly license Ghosts; but it would certainly suppress many of
the other plays. It would suppress subversiveness as well as what
is called bad taste. The Lord Chamberlain prohibits one play by
Sophocles because, like Hamlet, it mentions the subject of
incest; but an enlightened censorship might suppress all the
plays of Euripides because Euripides, like Ibsen, was a
revolutionary Freethinker. Under the Lord Chamberlain, we can
smuggle a good deal of immoral drama and almost as much coarsely
vulgar and furtively lascivious drama as we like. Under a college
of cardinals, or bishops, or judges, or any other conceivable
form of experts in morals, philosophy, religion, or politics, we
should get little except stagnant mediocrity.

THE PRACTICAL IMPOSSIBILITIES OF CENSORSHIP

There is, besides, a crushing material difficulty in the way of
an enlightened censorship. It is not too much to say that the
work involved would drive a man of any intellectual rank mad.
Consider, for example, the Christmas pantomimes. Imagine a judge
of the High Court, or an archbishop, or a Cabinet Minister, or an
eminent man of letters, earning his living by reading through the
mass of trivial doggerel represented by all the pantomimes which
are put into rehearsal simultaneously at the end of every year.
The proposal to put such mind-destroying drudgery upon an
official of the class implied by the demand for an enlightened
censorship falls through the moment we realize what it implies
in practice.

Another material difficulty is that no play can be judged by
merely reading the dialogue. To be fully effective a censor
should witness the performance. The mise-en-scene of a play is as
much a part of it as the words spoken on the stage. No censor
could possibly object to such a speech as "Might I speak to you
for a moment, miss"; yet that apparently innocent phrase has
often been made offensively improper on the stage by popular low
comedians, with the effect of changing the whole character and
meaning of the play as understood by the official Examiner. In
one of the plays of the present season, the dialogue was that of
a crude melodrama dealing in the most conventionally correct
manner with the fortunes of a good-hearted and virtuous girl. Its
morality was that of the Sunday school. But the principal
actress, between two speeches which contained no reference to her
action, changed her underclothing on the stage? It is true that
in this case the actress was so much better than her part that
she succeeded in turning what was meant as an impropriety into
an inoffensive stroke of realism; yet it is none the less clear
that stage business of this character, on which there can be no
check except the actual presence of a censor in the theatre,
might convert any dialogue, however innocent, into just the sort
of entertainment against which the Censor is supposed to protect
the public.

It was this practical impossibility that prevented the London
County Council from attempting to apply a censorship of the Lord
Chamberlain's pattern to the London music halls. A proposal to
examine all entertainments before permitting their performance
was actually made; and it was abandoned, not in the least as
contrary to the liberty of the stage, but because the executive
problem of how to do it at once reduced the proposal to
absurdity. Even if the Council devoted all its time to witnessing
rehearsals of variety performances, and putting each item to the
vote, possibly after a prolonged discussion followed by a
division, the work would still fall into arrear. No committee
could be induced to undertake such a task. The attachment of an
inspector of morals to each music hall would have meant an
appreciable addition to the ratepayers' burden. In the face
of such difficulties the proposal melted away. Had it been pushed
through, and the inspectors appointed, each of them would have
become a censor, and the whole body of inspectors would have
become a police des moeurs. Those who know the history of such
police forces on the continent will understand how impossible it
would be to procure inspectors whose characters would stand the
strain of their opportunities of corruption, both pecuniary
and personal, at such salaries as a local authority could be
persuaded to offer.

It has been suggested that the present censorship should be
supplemented by a board of experts, who should deal, not with the
whole mass of plays sent up for license, but only those which the
Examiner of Plays refuses to pass. As the number of plays which
the Examiner refuses to pass is never great enough to occupy
a Board in permanent session with regular salaries, and as casual
employment is not compatible with public responsibility, this
proposal would work out in practice as an addition to the duties
of some existing functionary. A Secretary of State would be
objectionable as likely to be biased politically. An
ecclesiastical referee might be biassed against the theatre
altogether. A judge in chambers would be the proper authority.
This plan would combine the inevitable intolerance of an
enlightened censorship with the popular laxity of the Lord
Chamberlain.

The judge would suppress the pioneers, whilst the Examiner of
Plays issued two guinea certificates for the vulgar and vicious
plays. For this reason the plan would no doubt be popular; but it
would be very much as a relaxation of the administration of the
Public Health Acts accompanied by the cheapening of gin would be
popular.

THE ARBITRATION PROPOSAL

On the occasion of a recent deputation of playwrights to the
Prime Minister it was suggested that if a censorship be
inevitable, provision should be made for an appeal from the Lord
Chamberlain in cases of refusal of licence. The authors of this
suggestion propose that the Lord Chamberlain shall choose one
umpire and the author another. The two umpires shall then elect a
referee, whose decision shall be final.

This proposal is not likely to be entertained by constitutional
lawyers. It is a naive offer to accept the method of arbitration
in what is essentially a matter, not between one private
individual or body and another, but between a public offender and
the State. It will presumably be ruled out as a proposal to refer
a case of manslaughter to arbitration would be ruled out. But
even if it were constitutionally sound, it bears all the marks
of that practical inexperience which leads men to believe that
arbitration either costs nothing or is at least cheaper than law.
Who is to pay for the time of the three arbitrators, presumably
men of high professional standing? The author may not be able:
the manager may not be willing: neither of them should be called
upon to pay for a public service otherwise than by their
contributions to the revenue. Clearly the State should pay. But
even so, the difficulties are only beginning. A licence is seldom
refused except on grounds which are controversial.

The two arbitrators selected by the opposed parties to the
controversy are to agree to leave the decision to a third party
unanimously chosen by themselves. That is very far from being a
simple solution. An attempt to shorten and simplify the passing
of the Finance Bill by referring it to an arbitrator chosen
unanimously by Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour might not improbably
cost more and last longer than a civil war. And why should the
chosen referee--if he ever succeeded in getting chosen--be
assumed to be a safer authority than the Examiner of Plays? He
would certainly be a less responsible one: in fact, being
(however eminent) a casual person called in to settle a single
case, he would be virtually irresponsible. Worse still, he would
take all responsibility away from the Lord Chamberlain, who is at
least an official of the King's Household and a nominee of the
Government. The Lord Chamberlain, with all his shortcomings,
thinks twice before he refuses a licence, knowing that his
refusal is final and may promptly be made public. But if he
could transfer his responsibility to an arbitrator, he would
naturally do so whenever he felt the slightest misgiving, or
whenever, for diplomatic reasons, the licence would come more
gracefully from an authority unconnected with the court. These
considerations, added to the general objection to the principle
of censorship, seem sufficient to put the arbitration expedient
quite out of the question.

END OF THE FIRST PART OF THE REJECTED STATEMENT.

THE REJECTED STATEMENT: PART TWO

THE LICENSING OF THEATRES

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN LICENSING AND CENSORSHIP

It must not be concluded that the uncompromising abolition of all
censorship involves the abandonment of all control and regulation
of theatres. Factories are regulated in the public interest; but
there is no censorship of factories. For example, many persons
are sincerely convinced that cotton clothing is unhealthy; that
alcoholic drinks are demoralizing; and that playing-cards are the
devil's picture-books. But though the factories in which cotton,
whiskey, and cards are manufactured are stringently regulated
under the factory code and the Public Health and Building Acts,
the inspectors appointed to carry out these Acts never go to a
manufacturer and inform him that unless he manufactures woollens
instead of cottons, ginger-beer instead of whiskey, Bibles
instead of playing-cards, he will be forbidden to place his
products on the market. In the case of premises licensed for the
sale of spirits the authorities go a step further. A public-house
differs from a factory in the essential particular that whereas
disorder in a factory is promptly and voluntarily suppressed,
because every moment of its duration involves a measurable
pecuniary loss to the proprietor, disorder in a public-house may
be a source of profit to the proprietor by its attraction for
disorderly customers. Consequently a publican is compelled to
obtain a licence to pursue his trade; and this licence lasts
only a year, and need not be renewed if his house has been
conducted in a disorderly manner in the meantime.

PROSTITUTION AND DRINK IN THEATRES

The theatre presents the same problem as the public-house in
respect to disorder. To begin with, a theatre is actually a place
licensed for the sale of spirits. The bars at a London theatre
can be let without difficulty for 30 pounds a week and upwards.
And though it is clear that nobody will pay from a shilling to
half a guinea for access to a theatre bar when he can obtain
access to an ordinary public-house for nothing, there is no law
to prevent the theatre proprietor from issuing free passes
broadcast and recouping himself by the profit on the sale of
drink. Besides, there may be some other attraction than the sale
of drink. When this attraction is that of the play no objection
need be made. But it happens that the auditorium of a theatre,
with its brilliant lighting and luxurious decorations, makes a
very effective shelter and background for the display of fine
dresses and pretty faces. Consequently theatres have been used
for centuries in England as markets by prostitutes. From the
Restoration to the days of Macready all theatres were made use of
in this way as a matter of course; and to this, far more than to
any prejudice against dramatic art, we owe the Puritan formula
that the theatre door is the gate of hell. Macready had a hard
struggle to drive the prostitutes from his theatre; and since his
time the London theatres controlled by the Lord Chamberlain have
become respectable and even socially pretentious. But some of the
variety theatres still derive a revenue by selling admissions to
women who do not look at the performance, and men who go to
purchase or admire the women. And in the provinces this state of
things is by no means confined to the variety theatres. The real
attraction is sometimes not the performance at all. The theatre
is not really a theatre: it is a drink shop and a prostitution
market; and the last shred of its disguise is stripped by the
virtually indiscriminate issue of free tickets to the men. Access
to the stage is so easily obtained; and the plays preferred by
the management are those in which the stage is filled with young
women who are not in any serious technical sense of the word
actresses at all. Considering that all this is now possible at
any theatre, and actually occurs at some theatres, the fact that
our best theatres are as respectable as they are is much to their
credit; but it is still an intolerable evil that respectable
managers should have to fight against the free tickets and
disorderly housekeeping of unscrupulous competitors. The dramatic
author is equally injured. He finds that unless he writes plays
which make suitable sideshows for drinking-bars and brothels, he
may be excluded from towns where there is not room for two
theatres, and where the one existing theatre is exploiting
drunkenness and prostitution instead of carrying on a legitimate
dramatic business. Indeed everybody connected with the theatrical
profession suffers in reputation from the detestable tradition of
such places, against which the censorship has proved quite
useless.

Here we have a strong case for applying either the licensing
system or whatever better means may be devized for securing the
orderly conduct of houses of public entertainment, dramatic or
other. Liberty must, no doubt, be respected in so far that no
manager should have the right to refuse admission to decently
dressed, sober, and well-conducted persons, whether they are
prostitutes, soldiers in uniform, gentlemen not in evening
dress, Indians, or what not; but when disorder is stopped,
disorderly persons will either cease to come or else reform their
manners. It is, however, quite arguable that the indiscriminate
issue of free admissions, though an apparently innocent and good-
natured, and certainly a highly popular proceeding, should expose
the proprietor of the theatre to the risk of a refusal to renew
his licence.

WHY THE MANAGERS DREAD LOCAL CONTROL

All this points to the transfer of the control of theatres from
the Lord Chamberlain to the municipality. And this step is
opposed by the long-run managers, partly because they take it for
granted that municipal control must involve municipal censorship
of plays, so that plays might be licensed in one town and
prohibited in the next, and partly because, as they have no
desire to produce plays which are in advance of public opinion,
and as the Lord Chamberlain in every other respect gives more
scandal by his laxity than trouble by his severity, they find in
the present system a cheap and easy means of procuring a
certificate which relieves them of all social responsibility, and
provides them with so strong a weapon of defence in case of a
prosecution that it acts in practice as a bar to any such
proceedings. Above all, they know that the Examiner of Plays is
free from the pressure of that large body of English public
opinion already alluded to, which regards the theatre as the
Prohibitionist Teetotaller regards the public-house: that is, as
an abomination to be stamped out unconditionally. The managers
rightly dread this pressure more than anything else; and they
believe that it is so strong in local governments as to be a
characteristic bias of municipal authority. In this they are no
doubt mistaken. There is not a municipal authority of any
importance in the country in which a proposal to stamp out the
theatre, or even to treat it illiberally, would have a chance of
adoption. Municipal control of the variety theatres (formerly
called music halls) has been very far from liberal, except in the
one particular in which the Lord Chamberlain is equally
illiberal. That particular is the assumption that a draped figure
is decent and an undraped one indecent. It is useless to point to
actual experience, which proves abundantly that naked or
apparently naked figures, whether exhibited as living pictures,
animated statuary, or in a dance, are at their best not only
innocent, but refining in their effect, whereas those actresses
and skirt dancers who have brought the peculiar aphrodisiac
effect which is objected to to the highest pitch of efficiency
wear twice as many petticoats as an ordinary lady does, and seldom
exhibit more than their ankles. Unfortunately, municipal
councillors persist in confusing decency with drapery; and both in
London and the provinces certain positively edifying performances
have been forbidden or withdrawn under pressure, and replaced by
coarse and vicious ones. There is not the slightest reason to
suppose that the Lord Chamberlain would have been any more
tolerant; but this does not alter the fact that the municipal
licensing authorities have actually used their powers to set up a
censorship which is open to all the objections to censorship in
general, and which, in addition, sets up the objection from which
central control is free: namely, the impossibility of planning
theatrical tours without the serious commercial risk of having the
performance forbidden in some of the towns booked. How can this be
prevented?

DESIRABLE LIMITATIONS OF LOCAL CONTROL

The problem is not a difficult one. The municipality can be
limited just as the monarchy is limited. The Act transferring
theatres to local control can be a charter of the liberties of
the stage as well as an Act to reform administration. The power
to refuse to grant or renew a licence to a theatre need not be an
arbitrary one. The municipality may be required to state the
ground of refusal; and certain grounds can be expressly declared
as unlawful; so that it shall be possible for the manager to
resort to the courts for a mandamus to compel the authority to
grant a licence. It can be declared unlawful for a licensing
authority to demand from the manager any disclosure of the nature
of any entertainment he proposes to give, or to prevent its
performance, or to refuse to renew his licence on the ground that
the tendency of his entertainments is contrary to religion and
morals, or that the theatre is an undesirable institution, or
that there are already as many theatres as are needed, or that
the theatre draws people away from the churches, chapels, mission
halls, and the like in its neighborhood. The assumption should be
that every citizen has a right to open and conduct a theatre, and
therefore has a right to a licence unless he has forfeited that
right by allowing his theatre to become a disorderly house, or
failing to provide a building which complies with the regulations
concerning sanitation and egress in case of fire, or being
convicted of an offence against public decency. Also, the
licensing powers of the authority should not be delegated to any
official or committee; and the manager or lessee of the theatre
should have a right to appear in person or by counsel to plead
against any motion to refuse to grant or renew his licence. With
these safeguards the licensing power could not be stretched to
censorship. The manager would enjoy liberty of conscience as far
as the local authority is concerned; but on the least attempt on
his part to keep a disorderly house under cover of opening a
theatre he would risk his licence.

But the managers will not and should not be satisfied with these
limits to the municipal power. If they are deprived of the
protection of the Lord Chamberlain's licence, and at the same
time efficiently protected against every attempt at censorship by
the licensing authority, the enemies of the theatre will resort
to the ordinary law, and try to get from the prejudices of a jury
what they are debarred from getting from the prejudices of a
County Council or City Corporation. Moral Reform Societies,
"Purity" Societies, Vigilance Societies, exist in England and
America for the purpose of enforcing the existing laws against
obscenity, blasphemy, Sabbath-breaking, the debauchery of
children, prostitution and so forth. The paid officials of these
societies, in their anxiety to produce plenty of evidence of
their activity in the annual reports which go out to the
subscribers, do not always discriminate between an obscene
postcard and an artistic one, or to put it more exactly, between
a naked figure and an indecent one. They often combine a narrow
but terribly sincere sectarian bigotry with a complete ignorance
of art and history. Even when they have some culture, their
livelihood is at the mercy of subscribers and committee men who
have none. If these officials had any power of distinguishing
between art and blackguardism, between morality and virtue,
between immorality and vice, between conscientious heresy and
mere baseness of mind and foulness of mouth, they might be
trusted by theatrical managers not to abuse the powers of the
common informer. As it is, it has been found necessary, in order
to enable good music to be performed on Sunday, to take away
these powers in that particular, and vest them solely in the
Attorney-General. This disqualification of the common informer
should be extended to the initiation of all proceedings of a
censorial character against theatres. Few people are aware of the
monstrous laws against blasphemy which still disgrace our statute
book. If any serious attempt were made to carry them out, prison
accommodation would have to be provided for almost every educated
person in the country, beginning with the Archbishop of
Canterbury. Until some government with courage and character
enough to repeal them comes into power, it is not too much to
ask that such infamous powers of oppression should be kept in
responsible hands and not left at the disposal of every bigot
ignorant enough to be unaware of the social dangers of
persecution. Besides, the common informer is not always a
sincere bigot, who believes he is performing an action of signal
merit in silencing and ruining a heretic. He is unfortunately
just as often a blackmailer, who has studied his powers as a
common informer in order that he may extort money for refraining
from exercising them. If the manager is to be responsible he
should be made responsible to a responsible functionary. To be
responsible to every fanatical ignoramus who chooses to prosecute
him for exhibiting a cast of the Hermes of Praxiteles in his
vestibule, or giving a performance of Measure for Measure, is
mere slavery. It is made bearable at present by the protection
of the Lord Chamberlain's certificate. But when that is no longer
available, the common informer must be disarmed if the manager
is to enjoy security.

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