Fourth, there was the powerful
interest of the trade in intoxicating liquors, fiercely
determined to resist any extension of the authority of
teetotaller-led local governing bodies over theatres. Fifth,
there were the playwrights, without political power, but with a
very close natural monopoly of a talent not only for play-writing
but for satirical polemics. And since every interest has its
opposition, all these influences had created hostile bodies by
the operation of the mere impulse to contradict them, always
strong in English human nature.
WHY THE MANAGERS LOVE THE CENSORSHIP
The only one of these influences which seems to be generally
misunderstood is that of the managers. It has been assumed
repeatedly that managers and authors are affected in the same way
by the censorship. When a prominent author protests against the
censorship, his opinion is supposed to be balanced by that of
some prominent manager who declares that the censorship is the
mainstay of the theatre, and his relations with the Lord
Chamberlain and the Examiner of Plays a cherished privilege and
an inexhaustible joy. This error was not removed by the evidence
given before the Joint Select Committee. The managers did not
make their case clear there, partly because they did not
understand it, and partly because their most eminent witnesses
were not personally affected by it, and would not condescend to
plead it, feeling themselves, on the contrary, compelled by their
self-respect to admit and even emphasize the fact that the Lord
Chamberlain in the exercise of his duties as licenser had done
those things which he ought not to have done, and left undone
those things which he ought to have done.
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