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Unnecessary Plays: European Drama and the British Censor in the 1920s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Steve Nicholson
Steve Nicholson
Affiliation:
Steve Nicholson is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies, University of Huddersfield.
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Extract

It is an hysterical and unpleasant affair and would have no chance of being produced here it if had been written by an Englishman. To some soi-disant ‘intellectuals’ anything foreign is good. (Lord Chamberlain's Report on Toller's Mass Man, 1924)

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , Spring 1995 , pp. 30 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1995

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References

Notes

1 Extracted from the Lord Chamberlain's Correspondence Files of Licensed Plays. These files, now housed in the Manuscript Section of the British Library, contain applications, letters, reports, memoranda, licence restrictions and other relevant information for all scripts for which a licence was granted for public performance, and many for which a licence was refused.

2 Griffith, Both's and Shaw's remarks are quoted in Dorothy Knowles, The Censor, the Drama and the Film 1900–1934. (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1934).Google Scholar

3 Op. cit. n.1, file on Peer Gynt.

4 Op. cit. n.1, file on Miss Julie.

6 See 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 and Appendices, (London: Government Publication, 1909).Google Scholar

7 Op. cit. n.1, file on The Passion Flower.

8 By interesting contrast, in refusing to license Andrieff's The Days of Our Life in 1923, Cromer ruled that ‘the suggestion to act this in Yiddish in no way palliates the objectionable theme of the play.’

9 Op. cit. n.1, file on Six Characters in Search of an Author.

10 Op. cit. n.4, One or two other lines and phrases were also made ‘more discreet’.

11 Op. cit. n.7.

12 Op. cit. n.1, files on Feuchtwanger's The Oil Islands (1930), Pirandello's Henry IV (1924), Pirandello's Naked (1925), Gantillon's Maya (1929).

13 Op. cit. n.1, file on Hinkemann.

14 The phrase was used, for example, of Lenormand The Eater Of Dreams, licensed with much reluctance in 1931. Op. cit. n.1, file on The Eater Of Dreams.

15 The comment was by Lord Buckmaster. Op. cit. n.7.