Читать книгу Three Plays by Brieux - Eugène Brieux - Страница 20

Table of Contents

Unfortunately, he has not yet been able to conquer our detestable, discredited, but still all-powerful censorship. In France he was attacked by the censorship just as in England; but in France the censorship broke itself against him and perished. The same thing would probably have occurred here but for the fact that our Censor, by a grotesque accident of history—to be precise, because Henry VIII. began the censorship of the theatre by appointing an officer of his own household to do the work—remains part of the King’s retinue; and his abolition involves the curtailment of that retinue and therefore the reduction of the King’s State, always a very difficult and delicate matter in a monarchical country. In France the censorship was exercised by the Minister of Fine Arts (a portfolio that does not exist in our Cabinet) and was in the hands of two or three examiners of plays, who necessarily behaved exactly like our Mr. Redford; for, as I have so often pointed out, the evils of censorship are made compulsory by the nature of the office, and are not really the fault of the individual censor. These gentlemen, then, prohibited the performance of Brieux’s best and most useful plays just as Mr. Redford did here. But as the French Parliament, having nobody to consider but themselves and the interests of the nation, presently refused to vote the salaries of the Censors, the institution died a natural death. We have no such summary remedy here. Our Censor’s salary is part of the King’s civil list, and is therefore sacred. Years ago, our Playgoers’ Club asked me how the censorship could be abolished. I replied, to the great scandal of that loyal body: You must begin by abolishing the monarchy.