sly. They know that if they lose their
character, the County Council will simply refuse to renew their license
at the end of the year; and nothing in the history of popular art
is more amazing than the improvement in music-halls that this simple
arrangement has produced within a few years. Place the theatres on the
same footing, and we shall promptly have a similar revolution: a whole
class of frankly blackguardly plays, in which unscrupulous low comedians
attract crowds to gaze at bevies of girls who have nothing to exhibit
but their prettiness, will vanish like the obscene songs which were
supposed to enliven the squalid dulness, incredible to the younger
generation, of the music-halls fifteen years ago. On the other hand,
plays which treat sex questions as problems for thought instead of as
aphrodisiacs will be freely performed. Gentlemen of Mr Redford's way of
thinking will have plenty of opportunity of protesting against them
in Council; but the result will be that the Mr Redford will find his
natural level; Ibsen and Tolstoy theirs; so no harm will be done.

This question of the Censorship reminds me that I have to apologize
to those who went to the recent performance of Mrs Warren's Profession
expecting to find it what I have just called an aphrodisiac. That was
not my fault; it was Mr Redford's. After the specimens I have given of
the tolerance of his department, it was natural enough for thoughtless
people to infer that a play which overstepped his indulgence must be a
very exciting play indeed. Accordingly, I find one critic so explicit as
to the nature of his disappointment as to say candidly that "such airy
talk as there is upon the matter is utterly unworthy of acceptance as
being a representation of what people with blood in them think or do on
such occasions." Thus am I crushed between the upper millstone of the Mr
Redford, who thinks me a libertine, and the nether popular critic, who
thinks me a prude. Critics of all grades and ages, middle-aged fathers
of families no less than ardent young enthusiasts, are equally indignant
with me. They revile me as lacking in passion, in feeling, in manhood.
Some of them even sum the matter up by denying me any dramatic power: a
melancholy betrayal of what dramatic power has come to mean on our stage
under the Censorship! Can I be expected to refrain from laughing at
the spectacle of a number of respectable gentlemen lamenting because a
playwright lures them to the the