anything licensed, because the public will have it so, and the
Examiner of Plays, as the holder of the office testified before
the Commission of 1892 (Report, page 330), feels with the public,
and knows that his office could not survive a widespread
unpopularity. In short, the support of the mob--that is, of the
unreasoning, unorganized, uninstructed mass of popular
sentiment--is indispensable to the censorship as it exists to-
day in England. This is the explanation of the toleration by the
Lord Chamberlain of coarse and vicious plays. It is not long
since a judge before whom a licensed play came in the course of a
lawsuit expressed his scandalized astonishment at the licensing
of such a work. Eminent churchmen have made similar protests.
In some plays the simulation of criminal assaults on the stage
has been carried to a point at which a step further would have
involved the interference of the police. Provided the treatment
of the theme is gaily or hypocritically popular, and the ending
happy, the indulgence of the Lord Chamberlain can be counted on.
On the other hand, anything unpleasing and unpopular is
rigorously censored. Adultery and prostitution are tolerated and
even encouraged to such an extent that plays which do not deal
with them are commonly said not to be plays at all. But if any of
the unpleasing consequences of adultery and prostitution--for
instance, an UNSUCCESSFUL illegal operation (successful ones are
tolerated) or venereal disease--are mentioned, the play is
prohibited. This principle of shielding the playgoer from
unpleasant reflections is carried so far that when a play was
submitted for license in which the relations of a prostitute
with all the male characters in the piece was described as
"immoral," the Examiner of Plays objected to that passage, though
he made no objection to the relations themselves. The Lord