Chamberlain dare not, in short, attempt to exclude from the stage
the tragedies of murder and lust, or the farces of mendacity,
adultery, and dissolute gaiety in which vulgar people delight.
But when these same vulgar people are threatened with an
unpopular play in which dissoluteness is shown to be no
laughing matter, it is prohibited at once amid the vulgar
applause, the net result being that vice is made delightful
and virtue banned by the very institution which is
supported on the understanding that it produces exactly
the opposite result.


THE WEAKNESS OF THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN'S DEPARTMENT

Now comes the question, Why is our censorship, armed as it is
with apparently autocratic powers, so scandalously timid in the
face of the mob? Why is it not as autocratic in dealing with
playwrights below the average as with those above it? The answer
is that its position is really a very weak one. It has no direct
co-ercive forces, no funds to institute prosecutions and recover
the legal penalties of defying it, no powers of arrest or
imprisonment, in short, none of the guarantees of autocracy. What
it can do is to refuse to renew the licence of a theatre at which
its orders are disobeyed. When it happens that a theatre is about
to be demolished, as was the case recently with the Imperial
Theatre after it had passed into the hands of the Wesleyan
Methodists, unlicensed plays can be performed, technically in
private, but really in full publicity, without risk. The
prohibited plays of Brieux and Ibsen have been performed in
London in this way with complete impunity. But the impunity is