This indifference to the larger issues of a theatrical performance could not be safely predicated of an enlightened censorship.  Such a censorship might be more liberal in its toleration of matters which are only objected to on the ground that they are not usually discussed in general social conversation or in the presence of children; but it would presumably have a far deeper insight to and concern for the real ethical tendency of the play.  For instance, had it been in existence during the last quarter of a century, it would have perceived that those plays of Ibsen’s which have been licensed without question are fundamentally immoral to an altogether extraordinary degree.  Every one of them is a deliberate act of war on society as at present constituted.  Religion, marriage, ordinary respectability, are subjected to a destructive exposure and criticism which seems to mere moralists—­that is, to persons of no more than average depth of mind—­to be diabolical.  It is no exaggeration to say that Ibsen gained his overwhelming reputation by undertaking a task of no less magnitude than changing the mind of Europe with the view of changing its morals.  Now you cannot license work of that sort without making yourself responsible for it.  The Lord Chamberlain accepted the responsibility because he did not understand it or concern himself about it.  But what really enlightened and conscientious official dare take such a responsibility?  The strength of character and range of vision which made Ibsen capable of it are not to be expected from any official, however eminent.  It is true that an enlightened censor might, whilst shrinking even with horror from Ibsen’s views, perceive that any nation which suppressed Ibsen would presently find itself falling behind the nations which tolerated him just as Spain fell behind England; but the proper action to take on such a conviction is the abdication of censorship, not the practise of it.  As long as a censor is a censor, he cannot endorse by his licence opinions which seem to him dangerously heretical.

We may, therefore, conclude that the more enlightened a censorship is, the worse it would serve us.  The Lord Chamberlain, an obviously unenlightened Censor, prohibits Ghosts and licenses all the rest of Ibsen’s plays.  An enlightened censorship would possibly license Ghosts; but it would certainly suppress many of the other plays.  It would suppress subversiveness as well as what is called bad taste.  The Lord Chamberlain prohibits one play by Sophocles because, like Hamlet, it mentions the subject of incest; but an enlightened censorship might suppress all the plays of Euripides because Euripides, like Ibsen, was a revolutionary Freethinker.  Under the Lord Chamberlain, we can smuggle a good deal of immoral drama and almost as much coarsely vulgar and furtively lascivious drama as we like.  Under a college of cardinals, or bishops, or judges, or any other conceivable form of experts in morals, philosophy, religion, or politics, we should get little except stagnant mediocrity.