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.