It is true that an enlightened censor
might, whilst shrinking even with horror from Ibsen's views,
perceive that any nation which suppressed Ibsen would presently
find itself falling behind the nations which tolerated him
just as Spain fell behind England; but the proper action to take
on such a conviction is the abdication of censorship, not the
practise of it. As long as a censor is a censor, he cannot
endorse by his licence opinions which seem to him dangerously
heretical.
We may, therefore, conclude that the more enlightened a
censorship is, the worse it would serve us. The Lord Chamberlain,
an obviously unenlightened Censor, prohibits Ghosts and licenses
all the rest of Ibsen's plays. An enlightened censorship would
possibly license Ghosts; but it would certainly suppress many of
the other plays. It would suppress subversiveness as well as what
is called bad taste. The Lord Chamberlain prohibits one play by
Sophocles because, like Hamlet, it mentions the subject of
incest; but an enlightened censorship might suppress all the
plays of Euripides because Euripides, like Ibsen, was a
revolutionary Freethinker. Under the Lord Chamberlain, we can
smuggle a good deal of immoral drama and almost as much coarsely
vulgar and furtively lascivious drama as we like. Under a college
of cardinals, or bishops, or judges, or any other conceivable
form of experts in morals, philosophy, religion, or politics, we
should get little except stagnant mediocrity.
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