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.