Author's Preface

THE CENSORSHIP

This little play is really a religious tract in dramatic
form. If our silly censorship would permit its performance,
it might possibly help to set right-side-up the perverted
conscience and re-invigorate the starved self-respect of our
considerable class of loose-lived playgoers whose point of honor
is to deride all official and conventional sermons. As it is, it
only gives me an opportunity of telling the story of the Select
Committee of both Houses of Parliament which sat last year to
enquire into the working of the censorship, against which it was
alleged by myself and others that as its imbecility and
mischievousness could not be fully illustrated within the limits
of decorum imposed on the press, it could only be dealt with by a
parliamentary body subject to no such limits.

A READABLE BLUEBOOK

Few books of the year 1909 can have been cheaper and more
entertaining than the report of this Committee. Its full title is
REPORT FROM THE JOINT SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS AND
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE STAGE PLAYS (CENSORSHIP) TOGETHER
WITH THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMMITTEE, MINUTES OF EVIDENCE, AND
APPENDICES. What the phrase "the Stage Plays" means in this title
I do not know; nor does anyone else. The number of the Bluebook
is 214.

How interesting it is may be judged from the fact that it
contains verbatim reports of long and animated interviews between
the Committee and such witnesses as W. William Archer, Mr.
Granville Barker, Mr. J. M. Barrie, Mr. Forbes Robertson, Mr.
Cecil Raleigh, Mr. John Galsworthy, Mr. Laurence Housman, Sir
Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Mr. W. L. Courtney, Sir William Gilbert,
Mr. A. B. Walkley, Miss Lena Ashwell, Professor Gilbert Murray,
Mr. George Alexander, Mr. George Edwardes, Mr. Comyns Carr, the
Speaker of the House of Commons, the Bishop of Southwark, Mr.
Hall Caine, Mr. Israel Zangwill, Sir Squire Bancroft, Sir Arthur
Pinero, and Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, not to mention myself and a
number of gentlemen less well known to the general public, but
important in the world of the theatre. The publication of a book
by so many famous contributors would be beyond the means of any
commercial publishing firm. His Majesty's Stationery Office sells
it to all comers by weight at the very reasonable price of three-
and-threepence a copy.

HOW NOT TO DO IT

It was pointed out by Charles Dickens in Little Dorrit, which
remains the most accurate and penetrating study of the genteel
littleness of our class governments in the English language, that
whenever an abuse becomes oppressive enough to persuade our party
parliamentarians that something must be done, they immediately
set to work to face the