The final category named by the 1909 Committee – and also the broadest – is “indecency”. This, frankly useless, word can mean anything to anyone. Primarily in this context it is applied to the use of nudity. In 1902, Maeterlinck’s Monna Vanna was banned because of its alleged “indecency”; in the scene which gave most offence, Monna Vanna enters the tent of the commander of the invading army when she is known to be “naked beneath her cloak” – as per the Stage Direction. Redford’s offence at this gave rise to much heated discussion: John Palmer in his 1912 book The Censor and the Theatres maintained that “naked beneath her cloak” was not intended to be synonymous with “scarcely dressed”, but was meant to emphasise the horror of the fate that Monna Vanna would meet within the commander’s tent, that of acceding unwillingly to sexual intercourse in return for the guarantee that the town’s inhabitants would be saved. Fortunately for Monna Vanna, the commander is a gentleman and does not take advantage of her.

Maeterlinck himself defended his play, which won great success in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia, without arousing a thought of obscenity. Frank Palmer and Frank Fowell argued very angrily against its banning because of this notorious stage direction. After all, they reasoned, in their 1913 book Censorship in England, we are all naked beneath our clothes: “Are Englishmen incapable of passing, say, a bathing machine on the beach, or a hotel bathroom, without deriving harm from the thought that it perhaps contains a naked female?”

In 1912, shortly after Brookfield succeeded Redford as Examiner of Plays, he clamped down on an oriental revue, Kismet, by Edward Knoblock, which had been running at the Garrick Theatre for 255 performances, and which was later to inspire the 1953 musical of the same name. It included a scene called the “Sapphire Bath”, where an actress took off her gown and, seemingly naked, plunged into a moonlit pool. She was, in fact, wearing fleshings, but Brookfield nevertheless decided that the suggestion of her nudity was too realistic and insisted on her wearing more clothes. It is recorded that King George V and Queen Mary had enjoyed the show enormously.

During the First World War, entertainment in theatres wasn’t particularly avant-garde, challenging, or, to use that word, indecent. However, during the Second World War, the Windmill Theatre featured naked or semi-naked actresses on stage although they had to remain perfectly still in tableaux of unattainable beauty. Owing to the controversial nature of this subject, the Lord Chamberlain’s Office chose to issue a statement on the use of nudity on stage, which the 1966 Committee quoted in its report:

“i) Actresses in movement must not wear less than briefs and an opaque
controlling brassiere.

ii) Actresses may pose completely nude provided:
The pose is motionless and expressionless.
The pose is artistic and something rather more than a mere display of nakedness.
The lighting must be subdued.

iii) Strip-tease as such is not allowed in a stage play. The unresisted growth in recent years of so-called “Private Strip-Tease Clubs” has caused some complaint from public theatres where the Lord Chamberlain’s rules are enforced.

iv) To date requests for males to pose in the nude have not been received.”

In August 1960 the Lord Chamberlain’s officers attended performances of Les Ballets Africains in order to decided whether it was a play in mime, in which case the female dancers’ bare breasts were not permissible, or whether it was actually ballet, in which case the production did not come under the Lord Chamberlain’s jurisdiction. Much to their own relief, the officers decided that it was a ballet. The importance of this kind of distinction is an indication of the extraordinary anomalies which were involved in stage censorship.

As well as nudity, any frank approach to sexuality could come under the heading of “indecency”. The case of the censorship of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde (1896) is one of the most notorious in theatre history. The play consists of a series of ten dialogues, each one except the last containing a seduction leading to sexual intercourse – represented in the text by a row of dashes or asterisks – followed by the characters’ post-coital reflections. It was first performed in 1903 in Britain and immediately banned; it was not performed again until 1920, when it caused riots in Berlin and Vienna. Schnitzler withdrew it completely, refusing permission for any more performances, chiefly in order to protect his own suffering reputation.

There were four film versions made of the play, although largely ignoring Schnitzler’s original script, and a radio version by Frank Marcus was transmitted by the BBC. But, as a result of Schnitzler’s withdrawal of the play, no more performances were permitted until 1982, when the copyright expired fifty years after his death. Suddenly Britain was saturated with productions of the play by different companies. There are many ways in which this play might offend; it regards sexual intercourse as a thoughtless pursuit, usually denying it any association with love, and involving infidelity, cheating and subjugation; at the same time, it suggests that sex is the raison d’etre of life: in one sense true, but hardly an acceptable concept to the respectable people of the 1890s. In emphasising both its frivolousness and its seriousness, the play shows great insight into the reactions that sex can provoke.

Moreover, the play examines the way in which society demands that a superior constantly asserts himself over an inferior, and shows that it is the exertion of this pressure that gives rise to “love’s round”. The whore is tricked by the soldier; he selfishly seduces the grateful parlour maid; the young gentleman exercises his domestic superiority over the parlour maid; he patronises the young wife into yielding to him; the husband sleeps with his wife; the husband has an affair with the little miss, although it is she who dominates and manipulates him; the poet charms the little miss; the actress pampers the poet; the Count woos the actress; and finally the Count wakes up with the whore of the first scene. “La Ronde” has come full circle, but progress has been made; in the last scene the Count and the whore meet on equal terms: he does not treat her contemptuously like the soldier did, but insists on paying her.

The irony of this is, of course, that in the ranks of society, the Count and the whore are at opposite ends of the scale, yet this scene and that between the husband and wife are the only scenes containing anything resembling respect. This respect makes us admire the Count; our regard for him is also increased as he is the only character to have the good taste to have sex in private, before the final scene began. By the end of the play, this “uniqueness” is refreshing. The play is deeply satisfying in its structure; it appears to be a perfect circle, but the subtleties which show how relationships change between different people make it constantly surprising as well as very funny. There are no conceivable circumstances in which it would have been possible to alter this play to make it fit for public morals in Schnitzler’s lifetime.

In my next post, I’m going to concentrate in some detail on Peter Nichols’ ground-breaking play, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg.