A KING'S PROCTOR
Another hare was started by Professor Gilbert Murray and Mr.
Laurence Housman, who, in pure kindness to the managers, asked
whether it would not be possible to establish for their
assistance a sort of King's Proctor to whom plays might be
referred for an official legal opinion as to their compliance
with the law before production. There are several objections to
this proposal; and they may as well be stated in case the
proposal should be revived. In the first place, no lawyer with
the most elementary knowledge of the law of libel in its various
applications to sedition, obscenity, and blasphemy, could answer
for the consequences of producing any play whatsoever as to which
the smallest question could arise in the mind of any sane person.
I have been a critic and an author in active service for thirty
years; and though nothing I have written has ever been prosecuted
in England or made the subject of legal proceedings, yet I have
never published in my life an article, a play, or a book, as to
which, if I had taken legal advice, an expert could have assured
me that I was proof against prosecution or against an action for
damages by the persons criticized. No doubt a sensible solicitor
might have advised me that the risk was no greater than all men
have to take in dangerous trades; but such an opinion, though it
may encourage a client, does not protect him. For example, if a
publisher asks his solicitor whether he may venture on an edition
of Sterne's Sentimental Journey, or a manager whether he may
produce King Lear without risk of prosecution, the solicitor will
advise him to go ahead.
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