The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet
G >>
George Bernard Shaw >> The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 | 6 |
7 |
8
STAR CHAMBER SENTIMENTALITY
But what is most to be dreaded in a Star Chamber is not its
sternness but its sentimentality. There is no worse censorship
than one which considers only the feelings of the spectators,
except perhaps one which considers the feelings of people who do
not even witness the performance. Take the case of the Passion
Play at Oberammergau. The offence given by a representation of
the Crucifixion on the stage is not bounded by frontiers:
further, it is an offence of which the voluntary spectators
are guilty no less than the actors. If it is to be tolerated at
all: if we are not to make war on the German Empire for
permitting it, nor punish the English people who go to Bavaria to
see it and thereby endow it with English money, we may as well
tolerate it in London, where nobody need go to see it except
those who are not offended by it. When Wagner's Parsifal becomes
available for representation in London, many people will be
sincerely horrified when the miracle of the Mass is simulated on
the stage of Covent Garden, and the Holy Ghost descends in the
form of a dove. But if the Committee of the Privy Council, or the
Lord Chamberlain, or anyone else, were to attempt to keep
Parsifal from us to spare the feelings of these people, it would
not be long before even the most thoughtless champions of the
censorship would see that the principle of doing nothing that
could shock anybody had reduced itself to absurdity. No quarter
whatever should be given to the bigotry of people so unfit for
social life as to insist not only that their own prejudices and
superstitions should have the fullest toleration but that
everybody else should be compelled to think and act as they do.
Every service in St. Paul's Cathedral is an outrage to the
opinions of the congregation of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of
Westminster. Every Liberal meeting is a defiance and a challenge
to the most cherished opinions of the Unionists. A law to compel
the Roman Catholics to attend service at St. Paul's, or the
Liberals to attend the meetings of the Primrose League would be
resented as an insufferable tyranny. But a law to shut up both
St. Paul's and the Westminster Cathedral; and to put down
political meetings and associations because of the offence given
by them to many worthy and excellent people, would be a far worse
tyranny, because it would kill the religious and political life
of the country outright, whereas to compel people to attend the
services and meetings of their opponents would greatly enlarge
their minds, and would actually be a good thing if it were
enforced all round. I should not object to a law to compel
everybody to read two newspapers, each violently opposed to the
other in politics; but to forbid us to read newspapers at all
would be to maim us mentally and cashier our country in the ranks
of civilization. I deny that anybody has the right to demand more
from me, over and above lawful conduct in a general sense, than
liberty to stay away from the theatre in which my plays are
represented. If he is unfortunate enough to have a religion so
petty that it can be insulted (any man is as welcome to insult my
religion, if he can, as he is to insult the universe) I claim the
right to insult it to my heart's content, if I choose, provided I
do not compel him to come and hear me. If I think this country
ought to make war on any other country, then, so long as war
remains lawful, I claim full liberty to write and perform a play
inciting the country to that war without interference from the
ambassadors of the menaced country. I may "give pain to many
worthy people, and pleasure to none," as the Censor's pet phrase
puts it: I may even make Europe a cockpit and Asia a shambles: no
matter: if preachers and politicians, statesmen and soldiers, may
do these things--if it is right that such things should be done,
then I claim my share in the right to do them. If the proposed
Committee is meant to prevent me from doing these things whilst
men of other professions are permitted to do them, then I protest
with all my might against the formation of such a Committee. If
it is to protect me, on the contrary, against the attacks that
bigots and corrupt pornographers may make on me by appealing to
the ignorance and prejudices of common jurors, then I welcome it;
but is that really the object of its proposers? And if it is,
what guarantee have I that the new tribunal will not presently
resolve into a mere committee to avoid unpleasantness and keep
the stage "in good taste"? It is no more possible for me to do my
work honestly as a playwright without giving pain than it is for
a dentist. The nation's morals are like its teeth: the more
decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them. Prevent
dentists and dramatists from giving pain, and not only will our
morals become as carious as our teeth, but toothache and the
plagues that follow neglected morality will presently cause more
agony than all the dentists and dramatists at their worst
have caused since the world began.
ANYTHING FOR A QUIET LIFE
Another doubt: would a Committee of the Privy Council really face
the risks that must be taken by all communities as the price of
our freedom to evolve? Would it not rather take the popular
English view that freedom and virtue generally are sweet and
desirable only when they cost nothing? Nothing worth having is to
be had without risk. A mother risks her child's life every time
she lets it ramble through the countryside, or cross the street,
or clamber over the rocks on the shore by itself. A father risks
his son's morals when he gives him a latchkey. The members of the
Joint Select Committee risked my producing a revolver and
shooting them when they admitted me to the room without having me
handcuffed. And these risks are no unreal ones. Every day some
child is maimed or drowned and some young man infected with
disease; and political assassinations have been appallingly
frequent of late years. Railway travelling has its risks;
motoring has its risks; aeroplaning has its risks; every advance
we make costs us a risk of some sort. And though these are only
risks to the individual, to the community they are certainties.
It is not certain that I will be killed this year in a railway
accident; but it is certain that somebody will. The invention
of printing and the freedom of the press have brought upon us,
not merely risks of their abuse, but the establishment as part of
our social routine of some of the worst evils a community can
suffer from. People who realize these evils shriek for the
suppression of motor cars, the virtual imprisonment and
enslavement of the young, the passing of Press Laws (especially
in Egypt, India, and Ireland), exactly as they shriek for a
censorship of the stage. The freedom of the stage will be abused
just as certainly as the complaisance and innocence of the
censorship is abused at present. It will also be used by writers
like myself for raising very difficult and disturbing questions,
social, political, and religious, at moments which may be
extremely inconvenient to the government. Is it certain that a
Committee of the Privy Council would stand up to all this as the
price of liberty? I doubt it. If I am to be at the mercy of a
nice amiable Committee of elderly gentlemen (I know all about
elderly gentlemen, being one myself) whose motto is the highly
popular one, "Anything for a quiet life" and who will make the
inevitable abuses of freedom by our blackguards an excuse for
interfering with any disquieting use of it by myself, then I
shall be worse off than I am with the Lord Chamberlain, whose
mind is not broad enough to obstruct the whole range of thought.
If it were, he would be given a more difficult post.
SHALL THE EXAMINER OF PLAYS STARVE?
And here I may be reminded that if I prefer the Lord Chamberlain
I can go to the Lord Chamberlain, who is to retain all his
present functions for the benefit of those who prefer to be
judged by him. But I am not so sure that the Lord Chamberlain
will be able to exercise those functions for long if resort to
him is to be optional. Let me be kinder to him than he has been
to me, and uncover for him the pitfalls which the Joint Select
Committee have dug (and concealed) in his path. Consider how the
voluntary system must inevitably work. The Joint Select Committee
expressly urges that the Lord Chamberlain's licence must not be a
bar to a prosecution. Granted that in spite of this reservation
the licence would prove in future as powerful a defence as
it has been in the past, yet the voluntary clause nevertheless
places the manager at the mercy of any author who makes it a
condition of his contract that his play shall not be submitted
for licence. I should probably take that course without
opposition from the manager. For the manager, knowing that three
of my plays have been refused a licence, and that it would be far
safer to produce a play for which no licence had been asked than
one for which it had been asked and refused, would agree that it
was more prudent, in my case, to avail himself of the power of
dispensing with the Lord Chamberlain's licence. But now mark the
consequences. The manager, having thus discovered that his best
policy was to dispense with the licence in the few doubtful
cases, would presently ask himself why he should spend two
guineas each on licences for the many plays as to which no
question could conceivably arise. What risk does any manager run
in producing such works as Sweet Lavender, Peter Pan, The Silver
King, or any of the 99 per cent of plays that are equally neutral
on controversial questions? Does anyone seriously believe that
the managers would continue to pay the Lord Chamberlain two
guineas a play out of mere love and loyalty, only to create an
additional risk in the case of controversial plays, and to guard
against risks that do not exist in the case of the great bulk of
other productions? Only those would remain faithful to him who
produce such plays as the Select Committee began by discussing in
camera, and ended by refusing to discuss at all because they were
too nasty. These people would still try to get a licence, and
would still no doubt succeed as they do today. But could the
King's Reader of Plays live on his fees from these plays alone;
and if he could how long would his post survive the discredit of
licensing only pornographic plays? It is clear to me that the
Examiner would be starved out of existence, and the censorship
perish of desuetude. Perhaps that is exactly what the Select
Committee contemplated. If so, I have nothing more to say, except
that I think sudden death would be more merciful.
LORD GORELL'S AWAKENING
In the meantime, conceive the situation which would arise if a
licensed play were prosecuted. To make it clearer, let us imagine
any other offender--say a company promoter with a fraudulent
prospectus--pleading in Court that he had induced the Lord
Chamberlain to issue a certificate that the prospectus contained
nothing objectionable, and that on the strength of that
certificate he issued it; also, that by law the Court could do
nothing to him except order him to wind up his company. Some such
vision as this must have come to Lord Gorell when he at last
grappled seriously with the problem. Mr. Harcourt seized the
opportunity to make a last rally. He seconded Lord Gorell's
proposal that the Committee should admit that its scheme of an
optional censorship was an elaborate absurdity, and report that
all censorship before production was out of the question. But it
was too late: the volte face was too sudden and complete. It was
Lord Gorell whose vote had turned the close division which took
place on the question of receiving my statement. It was Lord
Gorell without whose countenance and authority the farce of the
books could never have been performed. Yet here was Lord Gorell,
after assenting to all the provisions for the optional
censorship paragraph by paragraph, suddenly informing his
colleagues that they had been wrong all through and that I had
been right all through, and inviting them to scrap half their
work and adopt my conclusion. No wonder Lord Gorell got only one
vote: that of Mr. Harcourt. But the incident is not the less
significant. Lord Gorell carried more weight than any other
member of the Committee on the legal and constitutional
aspect of the question. Had he begun where he left off--had he at
the outset put down his foot on the notion that an optional penal
law could ever be anything but a gross contradiction in terms,
that part of the Committee's proposals would never have come into
existence.
JUDGES: THEIR PROFESSIONAL LIMITATIONS
I do not, however, appeal to Lord Gorell's judgment on all
points. It is inevitable that a judge should be deeply impressed
by his professional experience with a sense of the impotence of
judges and laws and courts to deal satisfactorily with evils
which are so Protean and elusive as to defy definition, and which
yet seem to present quite simple problems to the common sense of
men of the world. You have only to imagine the Privy Council as
consisting of men of the world highly endowed with common sense,
to persuade yourself that the supplementing of the law by the
common sense of the Privy Council would settle the whole
difficulty. But no man knows what he means by common sense,
though every man can tell you that it is very uncommon, even in
Privy Councils. And since every ploughman is a man of the world,
it is evident that even the phrase itself does not mean what it
says. As a matter of fact, it means in ordinary use simply a man
who will not make himself disagreeable for the sake of a
principle: just the sort of man who should never be allowed to
meddle with political rights. Now to a judge a political right,
that is, a dogma which is above our laws and conditions our
laws, instead of being subject to them, is anarchic and
abhorrent. That is why I trust Lord Gorell when he is defending
the integrity of the law against the proposal to make it in any
sense optional, whilst I very strongly mistrust him, as I
mistrust all professional judges, when political rights are in
danger.
CONCLUSION
I must conclude by recommending the Government to take my advice
wherever it conflicts with that of the Joint Select Committee. It
is, I think, obviously more deeply considered and better
informed, though I say it that should not. At all events, I have
given my reasons; and at that I must leave it. As the tradition
which makes Malvolio not only Master of the Revels but Master
of the Mind of England, and which has come down to us from Henry
VIII., is manifestly doomed to the dustbin, the sooner it goes
there the better; for the democratic control which naturally
succeeds it can easily be limited so as to prevent it becoming
either a censorship or a tyranny. The Examiner of Plays should
receive a generous pension, and be set free to practise privately
as an expert adviser of theatrical managers. There is no reason
why they should be deprived of the counsel they so highly value.
It only remains to say that public performances of The Shewing-Up
of Blanco Posnet are still prohibited in Great Britain by the
Lord Chamberlain. An attempt was made to prevent even its
performance in Ireland by some indiscreet Castle officials in the
absence of the Lord Lieutenant. This attempt gave extraordinary
publicity to the production of the play; and every possible
effort was made to persuade the Irish public that the
performance would be an outrage to their religion, and to provoke
a repetition of the rioting that attended the first performances
of Synge's Playboy of the Western World before the most sensitive
and, on provocation, the most turbulent audience in the kingdom.
The directors of the Irish National Theatre, Lady Gregory and Mr.
William Butler Yeats, rose to the occasion with inspiriting
courage. I am a conciliatory person, and was willing, as I always
am, to make every concession in return for having my own way. But
Lady Gregory and Mr. Yeats not only would not yield an inch, but
insisted, within the due limits of gallant warfare, on taking the
field with every circumstance of defiance, and winning the battle
with every trophy of victory. Their triumph was as complete as
they could have desired. The performance exhausted the
possibilities of success, and provoked no murmur, though it
inspired several approving sermons. Later on, Lady Gregory and
Mr. Yeats brought the play to London and performed it under the
Lord Chamberlain's nose, through the instrumentality of the Stage
Society.
After this, the play was again submitted to the Lord Chamberlain.
But, though beaten, he, too, understands the art of How Not To Do
It. He licensed the play, but endorsed on his licence the
condition that all the passages which implicated God in the
history of Blanco Posnet must be omitted in representation. All
the coarseness, the profligacy, the prostitution, the violence,
the drinking-bar humor into which the light shines in the play
are licensed, but the light itself is extinguished. I need hardly
say that I have not availed myself of this licence, and do not
intend to. There is enough licensed darkness in our theatres
today without my adding to it.
AYOT ST. LAWRENCE,
14TH JULY 1910.
POSTSCRIPT.--Since the above was written the Lord Chamberlain has
made an attempt to evade his responsibility and perhaps to
postpone his doom by appointing an advisory committee, unknown to
the law, on which he will presumably throw any odium that may
attach to refusals of licences in the future. This strange and
lawless body will hardly reassure our moralists, who
object much more to the plays he licenses than to those
he suppresses, and are therefore unmoved by his plea that
his refusals are few and far between. It consists of two
eminent actors (one retired), an Oxford professor of literature,
and two eminent barristers. As their assembly is neither created
by statute nor sanctioned by custom, it is difficult to know what
to call it until it advises the Lord Chamberlain to deprive some
author of his means of livelihood, when it will, I presume,
become a conspiracy, and be indictable accordingly; unless,
indeed, it can persuade the Courts to recognize it as a new
Estate of the Realm, created by the Lord Chamberlain. This
constitutional position is so questionable that I strongly
advise the members to resign promptly before the Lord
Chamberlain gets them into trouble.
THE SHEWING-UP OF BLANCO POSNET
A number of women are sitting working together in a big room not
unlike an old English tithe barn in its timbered construction,
but with windows high up next the roof. It is furnished as a
courthouse, with the floor raised next the walls, and on this
raised flooring a seat for the Sheriff, a rough jury box on his
right, and a bar to put prisoners to on his left. In the well in
the middle is a table with benches round it. A few other benches
are in disorder round the room. The autumn sun is shining warmly
through the windows and the open door. The women, whose dress and
speech are those of pioneers of civilisation in a territory of
the United States of America, are seated round the table and on
the benches, shucking nuts. The conversation is at its height.
BABSY [a bumptious young slattern, with some good looks] I say
that a man that would steal a horse would do anything.
LOTTIE [a sentimental girl, neat and clean] Well, I never should
look at it in that way. I do think killing a man is worse any day
than stealing a horse.
HANNAH [elderly and wise] I dont say it's right to kill a man. In
a place like this, where every man has to have a revolver, and
where theres so much to try people's tempers, the men get to be a
deal too free with one another in the way of shooting. God knows
it's hard enough to have to bring a boy into the world and nurse
him up to be a man only to have him brought home to you on a
shutter, perhaps for nothing, or only just to shew that the man
that killed him wasn't afraid of him. But men are like children
when they get a gun in their hands: theyre not content til theyve
used it on somebody.
JESSIE [a good-natured but sharp-tongued, hoity-toity young
woman; Babsy's rival in good looks and her superior in tidiness]
They shoot for the love of it. Look at them at a lynching. Theyre
not content to hang the man; but directly the poor creature is
swung up they all shoot him full of holes, wasting their
cartridges that cost solid money, and pretending they do it in
horror of his wickedness, though half of them would have a
rope round their own necks if all they did was known--let alone
the mess it makes.
LOTTIE. I wish we could get more civilized. I don't like all this
lynching and shooting. I don't believe any of us like it, if the
truth were known.
BABSY. Our Sheriff is a real strong man. You want a strong man
for a rough lot like our people here. He aint afraid to shoot and
he aint afraid to hang. Lucky for us quiet ones, too.
JESSIE. Oh, don't talk to me. I know what men are. Of course he
aint afraid to shoot and he aint afraid to hang. Wheres the risk
in that with the law on his side and the whole crowd at his back
longing for the lynching as if it was a spree? Would one of them
own to it or let him own to it if they lynched the wrong man? Not
them. What they call justice in this place is nothing but a
breaking out of the devil thats in all of us. What I want to see
is a Sheriff that aint afraid not to shoot and not to hang.
EMMA [a sneak who sides with Babsy or Jessie, according to the
fortune of war] Well, I must say it does sicken me to see Sheriff
Kemp putting down his foot, as he calls it. Why don't he put it
down on his wife? She wants it worse than half the men he
lynches. He and his Vigilance Committee, indeed!
BABSY [incensed] Oh, well! if people are going to take the part
of horse-thieves against the Sheriff--!
JESSIE. Who's taking the part of horse-thieves against the
Sheriff?
BABSY. You are. Waitle your own horse is stolen, and youll know
better. I had an uncle that died of thirst in the sage brush
because a negro stole his horse. But they caught him and burned
him; and serve him right, too.
EMMA. I have known that a child was born crooked because its
mother had to do a horse's work that was stolen.
BABSY. There! You hear that? I say stealing a horse is ten times
worse than killing a man. And if the Vigilance Committee ever
gets hold of you, youd better have killed twenty men than as much
as stole a saddle or bridle, much less a horse.
[Elder Daniels comes in.]
ELDER DANIELS. Sorry to disturb you, ladies; but the Vigilance
Committee has taken a prisoner; and they want the room to try him
in.
JESSIE. But they cant try him til Sheriff Kemp comes back from
the wharf.
ELDER DANIELS. Yes; but we have to keep the prisoner here til he
comes.
BABSY. What do you want to put him here for? Cant you tie him up
in the Sheriff's stable?
ELDER DANIELS. He has a soul to be saved, almost like the rest of
us. I am bound to try to put some religion into him before he
goes into his Maker's presence after the trial.
HANNAH. What has he done, Mr Daniels?
ELDER DANIELS. Stole a horse.
BABSY. And are we to be turned out of the town hall for a horse-
thief? Aint a stable good enough for his religion?
ELDER DANIELS. It may be good enough for his, Babsy; but, by your
leave, it is not good enough for mine. While I am Elder here, I
shall umbly endeavour to keep up the dignity of Him I serve to
the best of my small ability. So I must ask you to be good enough
to clear out. Allow me. [He takes the sack of husks and put it
out of the way against the panels of the jury box].
THE WOMEN [murmuring] Thats always the way. Just as we'd settled
down to work. What harm are we doing? Well, it is tiresome. Let
them finish the job themselves. Oh dear, oh dear! We cant have a
minute to ourselves. Shoving us out like that!
HANNAH. Whose horse was it, Mr Daniels?
ELDER DANIELS [returning to move the other sack] I am sorry to
say that it was the Sheriff's horse--the one he loaned to young
Strapper. Strapper loaned it to me; and the thief stole it,
thinking it was mine. If it had been mine, I'd have forgiven him
cheerfully. I'm sure I hoped he would get away; for he had two
hours start of the Vigilance Committee. But they caught him. [He
disposes of the other sack also].
JESSIE. It cant have been much of a horse if they caught him with
two hours start.
ELDER DANIELS [coming back to the centre of the group] The
strange thing is that he wasn't on the horse when they took him.
He was walking; and of course he denies that he ever had the
horse. The Sheriff's brother wanted to tie him up and lash him
till he confessed what he'd done with it; but I couldn't allow
that: it's not the law.
BABSY. Law! What right has a horse-thief to any law? Law is
thrown away on a brute like that.
ELDER DANIELS. Dont say that, Babsy. No man should be made to
confess by cruelty until religion has been tried and failed.
Please God I'll get the whereabouts of the horse from him if
youll be so good as to clear out from this. [Disturbance
outside]. They are bringing him in. Now ladies! please, please.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 | 6 |
7 |
8