But I am not so sure that the Lord Chamberlain
will be able to exercise those functions for long if resort to
him is to be optional. Let me be kinder to him than he has been
to me, and uncover for him the pitfalls which the Joint Select
Committee have dug (and concealed) in his path. Consider how the
voluntary system must inevitably work. The Joint Select Committee
expressly urges that the Lord Chamberlain's licence must not be a
bar to a prosecution. Granted that in spite of this reservation
the licence would prove in future as powerful a defence as
it has been in the past, yet the voluntary clause nevertheless
places the manager at the mercy of any author who makes it a
condition of his contract that his play shall not be submitted
for licence. I should probably take that course without
opposition from the manager. For the manager, knowing that three
of my plays have been refused a licence, and that it would be far
safer to produce a play for which no licence had been asked than
one for which it had been asked and refused, would agree that it
was more prudent, in my case, to avail himself of the power of
dispensing with the Lord Chamberlain's licence. But now mark the
consequences. The manager, having thus discovered that his best
policy was to dispense with the licence in the few doubtful
cases, would presently ask himself why he should spend two
guineas each on licences for the many plays as to which no
question could conceivably arise.
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