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.