tives of English cant, hypocrisy and
prudery, and one advantage that must follow from the abolition, if it
comes, will be the ousting of the comedy of indecent suggestion by the
drama of honest candour. He possesses his little vocabulary in which
_tambour_ passes for _amour_, and in fact his office has been worked on
the ostrich head-in-the-sand system for many years past. The chief duty
of the official has been to prevent people from calling a spade a spade,
and most, though not all, of the pieces banned would have obtained a
licence if in place of straightforward phrase the author had employed
some hypocritical, prudish suggestion.

Who doubts that a licensed English version of _Monna Vanna_ could have
been prepared, although fully giving to the audience the meaning of the
awful line, "_Nue sous son manteau_"? One may doubt the comic story that
Mr Redford mistook the _sous_ for _sans_. The motto for the office, if
it has a crest, should be the famous line from a music-hall song: "It
ain't exac'ly wot 'e sez, it's the narsty way 'e sez it."

No wonder foreigners are puzzled by our theatre. The Parisian sees a
Palais Royal farce played before an audience of which many members are
girls in the bread-and-butter stage. In his great city maidens are--or,
at least, were--not allowed to enter the theatre so long famous for its
naughty farces. He gasps; he wonders whether the English _mees_ is as
innocent as she looks--or used to look--and does not know the _perfide_
tongue of the _perfide Albion_ well enough to be aware that nothing
shocking is said, and that it is pretended that the _cocotte_ is a mere
kindly friend, the _collage_ a trifling flirtation, the _debauche_ a
viceless lark, and that the foulest conduct of husband or wife does not
reach a real breach of the commandment more often broken in England than
the rest of the sacred ten.

The real sin of the Censor's office lies as much in what it permits as
in what it forbids; and a growing sense of decency in the public is
displacing prudery so that the abolition of the office will not cause
the ill-results announced by the managers, who regard the existence of
the Censor as valuable to them, because it frees them from
responsibility and enables them to gratify the taste of the prurient
prude, the person who revels in and blushes at the indelicacy of his own
thoughts.

Moral Effect on Audience

There was quite a pretty hubbub in theatredom caused by a circular
le