and Tolstoy, and would suppress Shakespear but for the absurd rule that
a play once licensed is always licensed (so that Wycherly is permitted
and Shelley prohibited), also suppresses unscrupulous playwrights. I
challenge Mr Redford to mention any extremity of sexual misconduct which
any manager in his senses would risk presenting on the London stage that
has not been presented under his license and that of his predecessor.
The compromise, in fact, works out in practice in favor of loose plays
as against earnest ones.

To carry conviction on this point, I will take the extreme course of
narrating the plots of two plays witnessed within the last ten years
by myself at London West End theatres, one licensed by the late Queen
Victoria's Reader of Plays, the other by the present Reader to the King.
Both plots conform to the strictest rules of the period when La Dame aux
Camellias was still a forbidden play, and when The Second Mrs Tanqueray
would have been tolerated only on condition that she carefully explained
to the audience that when she met Captain Ardale she sinned "but in
intention."

Play number one. A prince is compelled by his parents to marry the
daughter of a neighboring king, but loves another maiden. The scene
represents a hall in the king's palace at night. The wedding has taken
place that day; and the closed door of the nuptial chamber is in view of
the audience. Inside, the princess awaits her bridegroom. A duenna is in
attendance. The bridegroom enters. His sole desire is to escape from a
marriage which is hateful to him. An idea strikes him. He will assault
the duenna, and get ignominiously expelled from the palace by his
indignant father-in-law. To his horror, when he proceeds to carry out
this stratagem, the duenna, far from raising an alarm, is flattered,
delighted, and compliant. The assaulter becomes the assaulted. He flings