The other is the silent
section which knows better, but is very well content to be
publicly defended and privately amused by Mr. Alexander's
innocence. To accept a West End manager as an expert in theatres
because he is an actor is much as if we were to accept the
organist of St. Paul's Cathedral as an expert on music halls
because he is a musician. The real experts are all in the
conspiracy to keep the police out of the theatre. And they are so
successful that even the police do not know as much as they
should.
The police should have been examined by the Committee, and the
whole question of the extent to which theatres are disorderly
houses in disguise sifted to the bottom. For it is on this point
that we discover behind the phantoms of the corrupt dramatists
who are restrained by the censorship from debauching the stage,
the reality of the corrupt managers and theatre proprietors
who actually do debauch it without let or hindrance from
the censorship. The whole case for giving control over
theatres to local authorities rests on this reality.
ELIZA AND HER BATH
The persistent notion that a theatre is an Alsatia where the
king's writ does not run, and where any wickedness is possible in
the absence of a special tribunal and a special police, was
brought out by an innocent remark made by Sir William Gilbert,
who, when giving evidence before the Committee, was asked by
Colonel Lockwood whether a law sufficient to restrain impropriety
in books would also restrain impropriety in plays.
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