The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet
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George Bernard Shaw >> The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet
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SUMMARY
The general case against censorship as a principle, and the
particular case against the existing English censorship and
against its replacement by a more enlightened one, is now
complete. The following is a recapitulation of the propositions
and conclusions contended for.
1. The question of censorship or no censorship is a question of
high political principle and not of petty policy.
2. The toleration of heresy and shocks to morality on the stage,
and even their protection against the prejudices and
superstitions which necessarily enter largely into morality and
public opinion, are essential to the welfare of the nation.
3. The existing censorship of the Lord Chamberlain does not only
intentionally suppress heresy and challenges to morality in their
serious and avowed forms, but unintentionally gives the special
protection of its official licence to the most extreme
impropriety that the lowest section of London playgoers will
tolerate in theatres especially devoted to their entertainment,
licensing everything that is popular and forbidding any attempt
to change public opinion or morals.
4. The Lord Chamberlain's censorship is open to the special
objection that its application to political plays is taken to
indicate the attitude of the Crown on questions of domestic and
foreign policy, and that it imposes the limits of etiquet on the
historical drama.
5. A censorship of a more enlightened and independent kind,
exercised by the most eminent available authorities, would prove
in practice more disastrous than the censorship of the Lord
Chamberlain, because the more eminent its members were the less
possible it would be for them to accept the responsibility for
heresy or immorality by licensing them, and because the many
heretical and immoral plays which now pass the Lord Chamberlain
because he does not understand them, would be understood and
suppressed by a more highly enlightened censorship.
6. A reconstructed and enlightened censorship would be armed with
summary and effective powers which would stop the evasions by
which heretical and immoral plays are now performed in spite of
the Lord Chamberlain; and such powers would constitute a tyranny
which would ruin the theatre spiritually by driving all
independent thinkers from the drama into the uncensored
forms of art.
7. The work of critically examining all stage plays in their
written form, and of witnessing their performance in order to see
that the sense is not altered by the stage business, would, even
if it were divided among so many officials as to be physically
possible, be mentally impossible to persons of taste and
enlightenment.
8. Regulation of theatres is an entirely different matter from
censorship, inasmuch as a theatre, being not only a stage, but a
place licensed for the sale of spirits, and a public resort
capable of being put to disorderly use, and needing special
provision for the safety of audiences in cases of fire, etc.,
cannot be abandoned wholly to private control, and may therefore
reasonably be made subject to an annual licence like those now
required before allowing premises to be used publicly for music
and dancing.
9. In order to prevent the powers of the licensing authority
being abused so as to constitute a virtual censorship, any Act
transferring the theatres to the control of a licensing authority
should be made also a charter of the rights of dramatic authors
and managers by the following provisions:
A. The public prosecutor (the Attorney-General) alone should have
the right to set the law in operation against the manager of a
theatre or the author of a play in respect of the character of
the play or entertainment.
B. No disclosure of the particulars of a theatrical entertainment
shall be required before performance.
C. Licences shall not be withheld on the ground that the
existence of theatres is dangerous to religion and morals, or on
the ground that any entertainment given or contemplated is
heretical or immoral.
D. The licensing area shall be no less than that of a County
Council or City Corporation, which shall not delegate its
licensing powers to any minor local authority or to any official
or committee; it shall decide all questions affecting the
existence of a theatrical licence by vote of the entire body;
managers, lessees, and proprietors of theatres shall have the
right to plead, in person or by counsel, against a proposal to
withhold a licence; and the licence shall not be withheld except
for stated reasons, the validity of which shall be subject to the
judgment of the high courts.
E. The annual licence, once granted, shall not be cancelled or
suspended unless the manager has been convicted by public
prosecution of an offence against the ordinary laws against
disorderly housekeeping, indecency, blasphemy, etc., except in
cases where some structural or sanitary defect in the building
necessitates immediate action for the protection of the public
against physical injury.
F. No licence shall be refused on the ground that the proximity
of the theatre to a church, mission hall, school, or other place
of worship, edification, instruction, or entertainment (including
another theatre) would draw the public away from such places into
its own doors.
PREFACE RESUMED
MR. GEORGE ALEXANDER'S PROTEST
On the facts mentioned in the foregoing statement, and in my
evidence before the Joint Select Committee, no controversy arose
except on one point. Mr. George Alexander protested vigorously
and indignantly against my admission that theatres, like public-
houses, need special control on the ground that they can profit
by disorder, and are sometimes conducted with that end in view.
Now, Mr. Alexander is a famous actor-manager; and it is very
difficult to persuade the public that the more famous an actor-
manager is the less he is likely to know about any theatre except
his own. When the Committee of 1892 reported, I was considered
guilty of a perverse paradox when I said that the witness who
knew least about the theatre was Henry Irving. Yet a moment's
consideration would have shown that the paradox was a platitude.
For about quarter of a century Irving was confined night after
night to his own theatre and his own dressing-room, never seeing
a play even there because he was himself part of the play;
producing the works of long-departed authors; and, to the extent
to which his talent was extraordinary, necessarily making his
theatre unlike any other theatre. When he went to the provinces
or to America, the theatres to which he went were swept and
garnished for him, and their staffs replaced--as far as he came
in contact with them--by his own lieutenants. In the end, there
was hardly a first-nighter in his gallery who did not know more
about the London theatres and the progress of dramatic art than
he; and as to the provinces, if any chief constable had told him
the real history and character of many provincial theatres, he
would have denounced that chief constable as an ignorant libeller
of a noble profession. But the constable would have been right
for all that. Now if this was true of Sir Henry Irving, who did
not become a London manager until he had roughed it for years in
the provinces, how much more true must it be of, say, Mr. George
Alexander, whose successful march through his profession has
passed as far from the purlieus of our theatrical world as the
king's naval career from the Isle of Dogs? The moment we come to
that necessary part of the censorship question which deals with
the control of theatres from the point of view of those who know
how much money can be made out of them by managers who seek to
make the auditorium attractive rather than the stage, you find
the managers divided into two sections. The first section
consists of honorable and successful managers like Mr. Alexander,
who know nothing of such abuses, and deny, with perfect sincerity
and indignant vehemence, that they exist except, perhaps, in
certain notorious variety theatres. The other is the silent
section which knows better, but is very well content to be
publicly defended and privately amused by Mr. Alexander's
innocence. To accept a West End manager as an expert in theatres
because he is an actor is much as if we were to accept the
organist of St. Paul's Cathedral as an expert on music halls
because he is a musician. The real experts are all in the
conspiracy to keep the police out of the theatre. And they are so
successful that even the police do not know as much as they
should.
The police should have been examined by the Committee, and the
whole question of the extent to which theatres are disorderly
houses in disguise sifted to the bottom. For it is on this point
that we discover behind the phantoms of the corrupt dramatists
who are restrained by the censorship from debauching the stage,
the reality of the corrupt managers and theatre proprietors
who actually do debauch it without let or hindrance from
the censorship. The whole case for giving control over
theatres to local authorities rests on this reality.
ELIZA AND HER BATH
The persistent notion that a theatre is an Alsatia where the
king's writ does not run, and where any wickedness is possible in
the absence of a special tribunal and a special police, was
brought out by an innocent remark made by Sir William Gilbert,
who, when giving evidence before the Committee, was asked by
Colonel Lockwood whether a law sufficient to restrain impropriety
in books would also restrain impropriety in plays. Sir William
replied: "I should say there is a very wide distinction between
what is read and what is seen. In a novel one may read that
'Eliza stripped off her dressing-gown and stepped into her bath'
without any harm; but I think if that were presented on the stage
it would be shocking." All the stupid and inconsiderate people
seized eagerly on this illustration as if it were a successful
attempt to prove that without a censorship we should be unable to
prevent actresses from appearing naked on the stage. As a matter
of fact, if an actress could be persuaded to do such a thing (and
it would be about as easy to persuade a bishop's wife to appear
in church in the same condition) the police would simply arrest
her on a charge of indecent exposure. The extent to which this
obvious safeguard was overlooked may be taken as a measure of the
thoughtlessness and frivolity of the excuses made for the
censorship. It should be added that the artistic representation
of a bath, with every suggestion of nakedness that the law as to
decency allows, is one of the most familiar subjects of scenic
art. From the Rhine maidens in Wagner's Trilogy, and the bathers
in the second act of Les Huguenots, to the ballets of water
nymphs in our Christmas pantomimes and at our variety theatres,
the sound hygienic propaganda of the bath, and the charm of the
undraped human figure, are exploited without offence on the stage
to an extent never dreamt of by any novelist.
A KING'S PROCTOR
Another hare was started by Professor Gilbert Murray and Mr.
Laurence Housman, who, in pure kindness to the managers, asked
whether it would not be possible to establish for their
assistance a sort of King's Proctor to whom plays might be
referred for an official legal opinion as to their compliance
with the law before production. There are several objections to
this proposal; and they may as well be stated in case the
proposal should be revived. In the first place, no lawyer with
the most elementary knowledge of the law of libel in its various
applications to sedition, obscenity, and blasphemy, could answer
for the consequences of producing any play whatsoever as to which
the smallest question could arise in the mind of any sane person.
I have been a critic and an author in active service for thirty
years; and though nothing I have written has ever been prosecuted
in England or made the subject of legal proceedings, yet I have
never published in my life an article, a play, or a book, as to
which, if I had taken legal advice, an expert could have assured
me that I was proof against prosecution or against an action for
damages by the persons criticized. No doubt a sensible solicitor
might have advised me that the risk was no greater than all men
have to take in dangerous trades; but such an opinion, though it
may encourage a client, does not protect him. For example, if a
publisher asks his solicitor whether he may venture on an edition
of Sterne's Sentimental Journey, or a manager whether he may
produce King Lear without risk of prosecution, the solicitor will
advise him to go ahead. But if the solicitor or counsel consulted
by him were asked for a guarantee that neither of these works was
a libel, he would have to reply that he could give no such
guarantee; that, on the contrary, it was his duty to warn his
client that both of them are obscene libels; that King Lear,
containing as it does perhaps the most appalling blasphemy that
despair ever uttered, is a blasphemous libel, and that it is
doubtful whether it could not be construed as a seditious libel
as well. As to Ibsen's Brand (the play which made him popular
with the most earnestly religious people) no sane solicitor would
advise his client even to chance it except in a broadly
cultivated and tolerant (or indifferent) modern city. The lighter
plays would be no better off. What lawyer could accept any
responsibility for the production of Sardou's Divorcons or Clyde
Fitch's The Woman in the Case? Put the proposed King's Proctor in
operation to-morrow; and what will be the result? The managers
will find that instead of insuring them as the Lord Chamberlain
does, he will warn them that every play they submit to him is
vulnerable to the law, and that they must produce it not only on
the ordinary risk of acting on their own responsibility, but at
the very grave additional risk of doing so in the teeth of an
official warning. Under such circumstances, what manager would
resort a second time to the Proctor; and how would the Proctor
live without fees, unless indeed the Government gave him a salary
for doing nothing? The institution would not last a year, except
as a job for somebody.
COUNSEL'S OPINION
The proposal is still less plausible when it is considered that
at present, without any new legislation at all, any manager who
is doubtful about a play can obtain the advice of his solicitor,
or Counsel's opinion, if he thinks it will be of any service to
him. The verdict of the proposed King's Proctor would be nothing
but Counsel's opinion without the liberty of choice of counsel,
possibly cheapened, but sure to be adverse; for an official
cannot give practical advice as a friend and a man of the world:
he must stick to the letter of the law and take no chances. And
as far as the law is concerned, journalism, literature, and the
drama exist only by custom or sufferance.
WANTED: A NEW MAGNA CHARTA
This leads us to a very vital question. Is it not possible to
amend the law so as to make it possible for a lawyer to advise
his client that he may publish the works of Blake, Zola, and
Swinburne, or produce the plays of Ibsen and Mr. Granville
Barker, or print an ordinary criticism in his newspaper, without
the possibility of finding himself in prison, or mulcted in
damages and costs in consequence? No doubt it is; but only by a
declaration of constitutional right to blaspheme, rebel, and deal
with tabooed subjects. Such a declaration is not just now within
the scope of practical politics, although we are compelled to act
to a great extent as if it was actually part of the constitution.
All that can be done is to take my advice and limit the necessary
public control of the theatres in such a manner as to prevent its
being abused as a censorship. We have ready to our hand the
machinery of licensing as applied to public-houses. A licensed
victualler can now be assured confidently by his lawyer that a
magistrate cannot refuse to renew his licence on the ground that
he (the magistrate) is a teetotaller and has seen too much of the
evil of drink to sanction its sale. The magistrate must give
a judicial reason for his refusal, meaning really a
constitutional reason; and his teetotalism is not such a reason.
In the same way you can protect a theatrical manager by ruling
out certain reasons as unconstitutional, as suggested in my
statement. Combine this with the abolition of the common
informer's power to initiate proceedings, and you will have gone
as far as seems possible at present. You will have local control
of the theatres for police purposes and sanitary purposes without
censorship; and I do not see what more is possible until we get a
formal Magna Charta declaring all the Categories of libel and the
blasphemy laws contrary to public liberty, and repealing and
defining accordingly.
PROPOSED: A NEW STAR CHAMBER
Yet we cannot mention Magna Charta without recalling how useless
such documents are to a nation which has no more political
comprehension nor political virtue than King John. When Henry
VII. calmly proceeded to tear up Magna Charta by establishing the
Star Chamber (a criminal court consisting of a committee of the
Privy Council without a jury) nobody objected until, about a
century and a half later, the Star Chamber began cutting off the
ears of eminent XVII. century Nonconformists and standing them in
the pillory; and then the Nonconformists, and nobody else,
abolished the Star Chamber. And if anyone doubts that we are
quite ready to establish the Star Chamber again, let him read the
Report of the Joint Select Committee, on which I now venture to
offer a few criticisms.
The report of the Committee, which will be found in the bluebook,
should be read with attention and respect as far as page x., up
to which point it is an able and well-written statement of the
case. From page x. onward, when it goes on from diagnosing the
disease to prescribing the treatment, it should be read with even
greater attention but with no respect whatever, as the main
object of the treatment is to conciliate the How Not To Do It
majority. It contains, however, one very notable proposal, the
same being nothing more or less than to revive the Star Chamber
for the purpose of dealing with heretical or seditious plays and
their authors, and indeed with all charges against theatrical
entertainments except common police cases of indecency. The
reason given is that for which the Star Chamber was created by
Henry VII: that is, the inadequacy of the ordinary law. "We
consider," says the report, "that the law which prevents or
punishes indecency, blasphemy and libel in printed publications
[it does not, by the way, except in the crudest police cases]
would not be adequate for the control of the drama." Therefore
a committee of the Privy Council is to be empowered to suppress
plays and punish managers and authors at its pleasure, on the
motion of the Attorney-General, without a jury. The members of
the Committee will, of course, be men of high standing and
character: otherwise they would not be on the Privy Council. That
is to say, they will have all the qualifications of Archbishop
Laud.
Now I have no guarantee that any member of the majority of the
Joint Select Committee ever heard of the Star Chamber or of
Archbishop Laud. One of them did not know that politics meant
anything more than party electioneering. Nothing is more alarming
than the ignorance of our public men of the commonplaces of our
history, and their consequent readiness to repeat experiments
which have in the past produced national catastrophes. At all
events, whether they knew what they were doing or not, there can
be no question as to what they did. They proposed virtually that
the Act of the Long Parliament in 1641 shall be repealed, and the
Star Chamber re-established, in order that playwrights and
managers may be punished for unspecified offences unknown to the
law. When I say unspecified, I should say specified as follows
(see page xi. of the report) in the case of a play.
(a) To be indecent.
(b) To contain offensive personalities.
(c) To represent on the stage in an invidious manner a living
person, or any person recently dead.
(d) To do violence to the sentiment of religious reverence.
(e) To be calculated to conduce to vice or crime.
(f) To be calculated to impair friendly relations with any
foreign power.
(g) To be calculated to cause a breach of the peace.
Now it is clear that there is no play yet written, or possible to
be written, in this world, that might not be condemned under one
or other of these heads. How any sane man, not being a professed
enemy of public liberty, could put his hand to so monstrous a
catalogue passes my understanding. Had a comparatively definite
and innocent clause been added forbidding the affirmation or
denial of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, the country would
have been up in arms at once. Lord Ribblesdale made an effort to
reduce the seven categories to the old formula "not to be fitting
for the preservation of good manners, decorum, or the public
peace"; but this proposal was not carried; whilst on Lord
Gorell's motion a final widening of the net was achieved by
adding the phrase "to be calculated to"; so that even if a play
does not produce any of the results feared, the author
can still be punished on the ground that his play is "calculated"
to produce them. I have no hesitation in saying that a committee
capable of such an outrageous display of thoughtlessness and
historical ignorance as this paragraph of its report implies
deserves to be haled before the tribunal it has itself proposed,
and dealt with under a general clause levelled at conduct
"calculated to" overthrow the liberties of England.
POSSIBILITIES OF THE PROPOSAL
Still, though I am certainly not willing to give Lord Gorell the
chance of seeing me in the pillory with my ears cut off if I can
help it, I daresay many authors would rather take their chance
with a Star Chamber than with a jury, just as some soldiers would
rather take their chance with a court-martial than at Quarter
Sessions. For that matter, some of them would rather take their
chance with the Lord Chamberlain than with either. And though
this is no reason for depriving the whole body of authors of the
benefit of Magna Charta, still, if the right of the proprietor of
a play to refuse the good offices of the Privy Council and to
perform the play until his accusers had indicted him at law, and
obtained the verdict of a jury against him, were sufficiently
guarded, the proposed committee might be set up and used for
certain purposes. For instance, it might be made a condition of
the intervention of the Attorney-General or the Director of
Public Prosecutions that he should refer an accused play to the
committee, and obtain their sanction before taking action,
offering the proprietor of the play, if the Committee thought
fit, an opportunity of voluntarily accepting trial by the
Committee as an alternative to prosecution in the ordinary course
of law. But the Committee should have no powers of punishment
beyond the power (formidable enough) of suspending performances
of the play. If it thought that additional punishment was called
for, it could order a prosecution without allowing the proprietor
or author of the play the alternative of a trial by itself. The
author of the play should be made a party to all proceedings
of the Committee, and have the right to defend himself in person
or by counsel. This would provide a check on the Attorney-General
(who might be as bigoted as any of the municipal aldermen who are
so much dreaded by the actor-managers) without enabling the
Committee to abuse its powers for party, class, or sectarian
ends beyond that irreducible minimum of abuse which a popular
jury would endorse, for which minimum there is no remedy.
But when everything is said for the Star Chamber that can be
said, and every precaution taken to secure to those whom it
pursues the alternative of trial by jury, the expedient still
remains a very questionable one, to be endured for the sake of
its protective rather than its repressive powers. It should
abolish the present quaint toleration of rioting in theatres. For
example, if it is to be an offence to perform a play which the
proposed new Committee shall condemn, it should also be made an
offence to disturb a performance which the Committee has not
condemned. "Brawling" at a theatre should be dealt with as
severely as brawling in church if the censorship is to be taken
out of the hands of the public. At present Jenny Geddes may throw
her stool at the head of a playwright who preaches unpalatable
doctrine to her, or rather, since her stool is a fixture, she may
hiss and hoot and make it impossible to proceed with the
performance, even although nobody has compelled her to come to
the theatre or suspended her liberty to stay away, and although
she has no claim on an unendowed theatre for her spiritual
necessities, as she has on her parish church. If mob censorship
cannot be trusted to keep naughty playwrights in order, still
less can it be trusted to keep the pioneers of thought in
countenance; and I submit that anyone hissing a play permitted by
the new censorship should be guilty of contempt of court.
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