though carried in both to the extreme point at which another step would
be dealt with, not by the King's Reader, but by the police, do not
involve adultery, nor any allusion to Mrs Warren's profession, nor to
the fact that the children of any polyandrous group will, when they grow
up, inevitably be confronted, as those of Mrs Warren's group are in my
play, with the insoluble problem of their own possible consanguinity.
In short, by depending wholly on the coarse humors and the physical
fascination of sex, they comply with all the formulable requirements of
the Censorship, whereas plays in which these humors and fascinations are
discarded, and the social problems created by sex seriously faced and
dealt with, inevitably ignore the official formula and are suppressed.
If the old rule against the exhibition of illicit sex relations on stage
were revived, and the subject absolutely barred, the only result would
be that Antony and Cleopatra, Othello (because of the Bianca episode),
Troilus and Cressida, Henry IV, Measure for Measure, Timon of Athens,
La Dame aux Camellias, The Profligate, The Second Mrs Tanqueray, The
Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith, The Gay Lord Quex, Mrs Dane's Defence, and
Iris would be swept from the stage, and placed under the same ban as
Tolstoy's Dominion of Darkness and Mrs Warren's Profession, whilst such
plays as the two described above would have a monopoly of the theatre as
far as sexual interest is concerned.

What is more, the repulsiveness of the worst of the certified plays
would protect the Censorship against effective exposure and criticism.
Not long ago an American Review of high standing asked me for an article
on the Censorship of the English stage. I replied that such an article
would involve passages too disagreeable for publication in a magazine
for general family reading. The editor persisted nevertheless; but
not until he had declared his readiness to face this, and had pledged
himself to insert the article unaltered (the particularity of the pledge