If you seek to discover how it has acted during this century, you will find that according as the censor was indolent or zealous his office has been a nullity or a nuisance. In theatrical circles that censor will not soon be forgotten who suppressed the word "thigh" as dangerous to public morals, and who exorcised from a play by Douglas Jerrold, as disrespectful to religion, the following phrase:--"He plays the violin like an angel!" The same censor found these words in a tragedy:--"_I_ do homage to pride, debauchery, avarice!... Never!" He hastened to delete this, admitting thus by implication that English society, which it was his mission to protect, was compact of these three heinous characteristics.
It was forbidden to make fun of Holloway's ointment, for Mr. Holloway was "an estimable manufacturer who employs thousands of workmen." It was forbidden to put a comic bishop on the stage--unless it were a colonial bishop, in which case the censor would give his sanction. A play founded on Oliver Twist was forbidden because it was calculated to incite to crime, but it was allowed for a benefit performance; whence it would appear that it is allowable to incite the audience to crime on such special occasions. This poor censorship, which has to read everything, which has to supervise everything,--from the rages of Othello to the grimaces of the clown and the tights of the ballet girls,--which has to uphold at once the constitution and propriety, to defend at once the Divinity and Mr. Holloway, loses its head over it all at last, and reminds one of the _bourgeois_ broken loose who is being launched at carnival time into some dizzying Saraband.
Its most absorbing task is that of barring the way against French immorality. Its vigilance is eluded, however, by a kind of conventional terminology. Where our authors have had the effrontery to write the word "cocotte" in black and white, they replace it by the word "actress." Where we have unblushingly written "adultery," they have inserted "flirtation." The censor gives his sanction and pockets his fees, and on the performance of the piece the by-play of the actor and actresses completes the translation, re-establishing if not reinforcing the original sense.