The Censorship of British Drama 1900-1968 Volume 1

Steve Nicholson

Description

This is the first volume in a new paperback edition of Steve Nicholson's well-reviewed four-volume analysis of British theatre censorship from 1900-1968, based on previously undocumented material in the Lord Chamberlain's Correspondence archives. It charts the period before 1932, when theatre was seen as a crucial medium with the power to shape society, determining what people believed and how they behaved. It uncovers the differing views and the disputes which occurred among and between the Lord Chamberlain and his Readers and Advisers, and discusses the extensive pressures exerted on him by bodies such as the Public Morality Council, the Church, the monarch, government departments, foreign embassies, newspapers, powerful individuals and those claiming to represent national or international opinion. The book explores the portrayal of a broad range of topics in relation to censorship, including the First World War, race and inter-racial relationships, contemporary and historical international conflicts, horror, sexual freedom and morality, class, the monarchy, and religion.

This new edition includes a contextualising timeline for those readers who are unfamiliar with the period, and a new preface.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47788/LXOK1281

Preface 

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Because Lions Ain't Rabbits

Section One: 1900-1918

1.  From Ibsenity to Obscenity: Principles and Practice 1900-1909

2.  People Who Eat Peas With Their Knife: The Government Enquiry of 1909

3.  Cats, Canaries and Guinea Pigs: Principles and Practice 1909-1913

4.  A Clique of Erotic Women: The First World War (Part One)

5.  The Hidden Hand: The First World War (Part Two)

Section Two: 1919-1932

6. The Dead Men: Principles and Practice

7.  No Screams from Rabbit: Horror and Religion

8.  Merchandisers in Muck: The Immoral Maze

9.  Our Good Humoured Community: Domestic Politics

10.  Foreign Bodies: International Politics

Conclusion: A Gentler Process of Prevention

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

 

 

Sujets

• Political Science
• Theater
• Reino Unido
• Theatre
• Censorship
• World War I
• Lord Chamberlain's Office
• Lord Chamberlain
• General officer
• 20th century
• United Kingdom
• Church of England
• Great Britain
• General
• Lord chambellan
• Performance
• Royaume-Uni
• Media

Informations

• Publié par: University of Exeter Press
• Date de parution: 03 mars 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780859899031
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

The Censorship of British Drama 1900–1968

Volume One: 1900–1932

This book is based on a systematic exploration of the Lord Chamberlain’s Correspondence archives, which contain files for every play submitted for a public performance licence in Great Britain. Volume One covers the period before 1932, when theatre was widely seen to possess an almost unique power to shape the future of society, determining what people believed and how they behaved. It is not just about the relatively small number of plays which were banned outright (though these are impor- tant): it is more about how and why themes, characters, speeches and lines had to be removed or rewritten, and how action, gesture, costume and even advertising were restricted. Censorship is also examined in relation to contemporary debates and argu- ments about freedom and the role of the artist within the historical, social and political contexts of the plays. The emphasis is not exclusively on the profes- sional theatre, for it is often in relation to apparently obscure or unimportant plays that policies and practices were most clearly defined. The book uncovers the disputes which occurred among and between the Lord Chamberlain and his Readers and Advisers, and discusses the extensive pressures exerted on him by bodies such as the Public Morality Council, the Church, the monarch, government departments, foreign embassies, newspa- pers, powerful individuals and those claiming to represent national or international opinion. For all of these sought—often successfully—to control what could be said and done on stages throughout Britain.

Exeter Performance Studies

Exeter Performance Studiesaims to publish the best new scholarship from a variety of sources, presenting established authors alongside innovative work from new scholars. The list explores critically the relationship between theatre and history, relating performance studies to broader political, social and cultural contexts. It also includes titles which offer access to previously unavailable material.

Series editors:Peter Thomson, Professor of Drama at the University of Exeter; Graham Ley, Reader in Drama and Theory at the University of Exeter; Steve Nicholson, Head of Theatre Studies and Principal Lecturer at the University of Huddersfield.

From Mimesis to Interculturalism: Readings of Theatrical Theory Before and After ‘Modernism’ Graham Ley (1999)

British Theatre and the Red Peril: The Portrayal of Communism 1917–1945 Steve Nicholson (1999)

On Actors and Acting Peter Thomson (2000)

Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror Richard J. Hand and Michael Wilson (2002)

The Censorship of British Drama 1900 –1968

Volume One: 1900–1932

Steve Nicholson

In 1990, John Johnston, a former member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, dedicated his apologia for theatre censorship to

‘the Lord Chamberlains who wielded their blue pencil and to their Examiners of Plays’.

I would like to dedicate my study to those who corresponded, and especially argued, with the Lords Chamberlain.

First published in 2003 by University of Exeter Press Reed Hall, Streatham Drive Exeter EX4 4QR UK www.ex.ac.uk/uep/

© Steve Nicholson 2003

The right of Steve Nicholson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0 85989 638 2

Typeset in 10pt Plantin Light by XL Publishing Services, Tiverton

Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham

Contents

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Because Lions Ain’t Rabbits

1 2

3 4 5

SECTION ONE: 1900–1918

From Ibsenity to Obscenity: Principles and Practice 1900–1909

vii x 1

21

People Who Eat Peas With Their Knife: The Government Enquiry of 1909 46 Cats, Canaries and Guinea Pigs: Principles and Practice 1909–1913 71 A Clique of Erotic Women: The First World War (Part One) 96 The Hidden Hand: The First World War (Part Two) 117

SECTION TWO: 1919–1932

6 The Dead Men: Principles and Practice 7 No Screams from Rabbit: Horror and Religion 8 Merchandisers in Muck: The Immoral Maze 9 Our Good Humoured Community: Domestic Politics 10 Foreign Bodies: International Politics

Conclusion: A Gentler Process of Prevention

Notes Select Bibliography Index

149 178 205 240 268

292

305 334 337

Preface

This is the first of two volumes which, together, will chart and analyse censor- ship in Britain between 1900 and 1968, when the unique system of control and licensing exercised through the Lord Chamberlain was finally abolished. This present volume covers the period up until 1932, and Volume Two will continue from 1933. The basic structure within each volume will be chrono- logical, although specific themes and issues will also be followed. Although the books will be contextualised in relation to social, political, cultural and theatrical history, and although other sources relevant to censor- ship will be referred to, the central story and analysis is based very largely on the extensive theatre and correspondence archives of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. These archives have never previously been subjected to a comparably systematic or thorough analysis, and it is this focus which will make these books unique, and which will provide a distinct perspective on British theatre history and activity in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. Remarkably, with the exception of a relatively small amount of material which has gone missing, these archives contain files in relation to every single script which was submitted to the Lord Chamberlain as required by the Acts of 1737 and 1843, as a prerequisite for obtaining a licence to allow public perform- ance; in most cases, the scripts themselves are also preserved in a separate archive. Crucially for any attempt to understand the full range of theatrical activity and its control, the archives cover scripts which were accepted but amended as well as those which were refused, those which were published and unpublished, and those which were intended not only for professional but also for amateur public performance anywhere in Britain. The most notable exception is music-hall material, which remained more or less unof- ficially exempt from the same process of licensing and censorship. It is perhaps worth saying that when I began working on this project, my original intention was to produce one book which would cover the whole period, and which would have been rather shorter than this first volume on its own has turned out to be. Since that proposal was accepted by the publisher, and since I began more detailed research, it has more than doubled in length. Previous work had already given me some familiarity with the archive, and I knew it was a rich resource which deserved a much fuller explo- ration than it had previously received. Yet I had no real idea of the extent or

viii

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the range of the material which was preserved, or that there would be so many stories to be uncovered. Funding from the University of Huddersfield, the Society for Theatre Research and, especially, the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) enabled me to spend time reading not just a broad sample or cross-section of the material in the archive (as I had previously intended) but every single file. It is only this extensive research that allows me to claim that these books are, at least in relation to that archive, authoritative— though by no means, of course, definitive. And it is also this which has yielded many of the insights which these two books aim to present. Primarily, of course, those insights are into the history of theatre censorship itself; but they also extend more broadly into other aspects of theatre history in the twentieth century, and into social and political attitudes and practices beyond the theatre. Though originally I admitted it with some reluctance, it gradually became apparent as I undertook the research for this study that the material I was uncovering demanded to be dealt with at greater length and in more detail, and that I should considerably expand the scope of what I was writing. I am particularly grateful for the enthusiasm with which the University of Exeter Press accepted and embraced this revision of my original intentions. I should add that even when the two volumes are completed, there will be much that remains untold and which deserves to be brought into the light of day. I have never previously told my publisher that there was a point when I seriously considered proposing that I should write not two volumes, but six. Future scholarly explorations of this archive may well take narrower and more focused perspectives on the material than I have done, in order to pursue and reveal a specific aspect in greater depth than will be possible in this present study; they may well choose to structure their discussion in ways other than the chronological. In some ways, then, I see my two volumes as groundwork, which may help to encourage other kinds of investigation and other ways of approaching the archive. For that reason, the broadly chronological approach —while the most obvious and perhaps unimaginative—has seemed to me to be the most useful. Yet to have followed this pattern slavishly would, I think, have concealed more than it would have revealed. I have therefore tried to construct a balance between the sequential and the thematic. I have also chosen to quote directly and sometimes at length from the contents of corre- spondence files. Inevitably, such quotations are highly selective and are both dependent on and mediated by my arguments; nevertheless, I would hope that the extent of the quotations has the added advantage of allowing the reader as much direct contact with the archive as would be appropriate in a study of this kind, and perhaps the opportunity to reach different conclusions from my own. A strong case could be made for publishing an annotated selec- tion of material from the correspondence archives in its own right. I refer elsewhere—especially in the introduction to this first volume—to the