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.