One further difference remains to be noted. As a magistrate grows
old his mind may change or decay; but the law remains the same.
The censorship of the theatre fluctuates with every change in the
views and character of the man who exercises it. And what this
implies can only be appreciated by those who can imagine what the
effect on the mind must be of the duty of reading through every
play that is produced in the kingdom year in, year out.
WHY THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN?
What may be called the high political case against censorship as
a principle is now complete. The pleadings are those which have
already freed books and pulpits and political platforms in
England from censorship, if not from occasional legal
persecution. The stage alone remains under a censorship of a
grotesquely unsuitable kind. No play can be performed if the Lord
Chamberlain happens to disapprove of it. And the Lord
Chamberlain's functions have no sort of relationship to
dramatic literature. A great judge of literature, a farseeing
statesman, a born champion of liberty of conscience and
intellectual integrity--say a Milton, a Chesterfield, a Bentham--
would be a very bad Lord Chamberlain: so bad, in fact, that his
exclusion from such a post may be regarded as decreed by natural
law. On the other hand, a good Lord Chamberlain would be a
stickler for morals in the narrowest sense, a busy-body, a man to
whom a matter of two inches in the length of a gentleman's sword
or the absence of a feather from a lady's head-dress would be a
graver matter than the Habeas Corpus Act.
Pages:
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52