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.