It would no doubt make short work of
the coarse and vicious pieces which now enjoy the protection of
the Lord Chamberlain, or at least of those of them in which the
vulgarity and vice are discoverable by merely reading the prompt
copy. But it would certainly disappoint the main hope of its
advocates: the hope that it would protect and foster the higher
drama. It would do nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it would
inevitably suppress it more completely than the Lord Chamberlain
does, because it would understand it better. The one play of
Ibsen's which is prohibited on the English stage, Ghosts, is far
less subversive than A Doll's House. But the Lord Chamberlain
does not meddle with such far-reaching matters as the tendency of
a play. He refuses to license Ghosts exactly as he would refuse
to license Hamlet if it were submitted to him as a new play. He
would license even Hamlet if certain alterations were made in it.
He would disallow the incestuous relationship between the King
and Queen. He would probably insist on the substitution of some
fictitious country for Denmark in deference to the near relations
of our reigning house with that realm. He would certainly make it
an absolute condition that the closet scene, in which a son, in
an agony of shame and revulsion, reproaches his mother for her
relations with his uncle, should be struck out as unbearably
horrifying and improper. But compliance with these conditions
would satisfy him.
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