The public, in short, takes
care that nobody shall outrage it.
But the public also takes care that nobody shall starve it, or
regulate its dramatic diet as a schoolmistress regulates the
reading of her pupils. Even when it wishes to be debauched, no
censor can--or at least no censor does--stand out against it. If
a play is irresistibly amusing, it gets licensed no matter what
its moral aspect may be. A brilliant instance is the Divorcons of
the late Victorien Sardou, which may not have been the naughtiest
play of the 19th century, but was certainly the very naughtiest
that any English manager in his senses would have ventured to
produce. Nevertheless, being a very amusing play, it passed the
licenser with the exception of a reference to impotence as a
ground for divorce which no English actress would have ventured
on in any case. Within the last few months a very amusing comedy
with a strongly polygamous moral was found irresistible by the
Lord Chamberlain. Plenty of fun and a happy ending will get
anything licensed, because the public will have it so, and the
Examiner of Plays, as the holder of the office testified before
the Commission of 1892 (Report, page 330), feels with the public,
and knows that his office could not survive a widespread
unpopularity. In short, the support of the mob--that is, of the
unreasoning, unorganized, uninstructed mass of popular
sentiment--is indispensable to the censorship as it exists to-
day in England.
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