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The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chamberlain and the Censorship of the Theatre, 1909–49
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
It was ever the lot of the archbishops of Canterbury to be involved in seemingly incongruous affairs. The position of the archbishop at the heart of the Establishment engendered requests to be patron, advocate or opponent of almost every conceivable development in national life. One such entanglement was his role as unofficial advisor to the Lord Chamberlain in the matter of the licensing of stage plays.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2012
References
1 Dominic Shellard and Steve Nicholson, with Handley, Miriam, The Lord Chamberlain Regrets …A History of British Theatre Censorship (London, 2004), 61–3 Google Scholar, at 63.
2 Machin, G. I. T., ‘British Churches and the Cinema in the 1930s’, in Wood, Diana, ed., The Church and the Arts, SCH 28 (Oxford, 1992), 477–88 Google Scholar; on Chatterley, see Roodhouse, Mark, ‘Lady Chatterley and the Monk: Anglican Radicals and the Lady Chatterley Trial of 1960’, JEH 59 (2008), 475–500 Google Scholar; in the present volume, Stuart Mews, ‘The Trials of Lady Chatterley, the Modernist Bishop and the Victorian Archbishop: Clashes of Class, Culture and Generations’, 448–63.
3 George Bell included a handful of letters in his Randall Davidson: Archbishop of Canterbury, 3rd edn, 2 vols (London, 1952), 2: 1211–15. There is still less in J. G. Lock-hart, Cosmo Gordon Lang (London, 1949).
4 General accounts include Shellard and Nicholson, The Lord Chamberlain Regrets; Aldgate, Anthony and Robertson, James C., Censorship in Theatre and Cinema (Edinburgh, 2005)Google Scholar; Nicholson, Steve, The Censorship of British Drama 1900–68, 3 vols (Exeter, 2003-9)Google Scholar; Johnston, John, The Lord Chamberlain’s Blue Pencil (London, 1990)Google Scholar.
5 The holders of the office of Lord Chamberlain during this period were Lord William Sandhurst (1912–21); John, 8th Duke of Atholl (1921–2); Rowland, 2nd Earl of Cromer (1922–38); George, 6th Earl of Clarendon (1938–52).
6 This action extended to correcting reports in the press, as in the case of the play Public Saviour No. 1 in 1935: London, LPL, Lang Papers, vol. 137, fols 20–4. The Lang, Davidson, Fisher and Ramsey Papers are cited by kind permission of the Librarian of Lambeth Palace.
7 Hansard House of Commons (ser. 5), vol. 463, col. 742 (25 March 1949).
8 London, LPL, Davidson Papers, vol. 180, fol. 39, Maggie Ponsonby to Davidson [hereafter: RTD], 29 February 1912. On the affair, see Nicholson, Censorship, 1: 88.
9 The London Council for the Promotion of Public Morality awaits its historian. On its impact in relation to the theatre, see Nicholson, Censorship, 1: 158–9, 300. See the ‘Memorial’ on the depiction of sexual scenes, sent to the Prime Minister in August 1925: Davidson Papers, vol. 205, fols 250–1. Davidson wrote in support of a 1927 memorial on the use of bad language: ibid., vol. 215, fol. 288, RTD to Cromer, 8 October 1927.
10 London, BL, Lord Chamberlain’s Correspondence [hereafter: LCP, CORR] 1939/2844 Family Portrait, Cromer to Lady Winifred Elwes (Catholic Women’s League), 6 June 1940; Nicholson, Censorship, 2: 145–6.
11 See the correspondence concerning a proposed English production of the Oberammergau passion play: Lang Papers, vol. 102, fols 200–23, October-December 1930.
12 Davidson Papers, vol. 205, fol. 237, RTD to Cromer, 17 June 1924.
13 Ibid., vol. 173, fols 26–7, RTD to Douglas Dawson, 19 June 1911.
14 Ibid., vol. 213, fols 98–100, RTD to Cromer, 10 March 1926.
15 On Masefield’s The Trial of Jesus (1926), see Davidson’s letter reproduced in Bell, Davidson, 1: 1213–15; Nicholson, Censorship, 1: 191–2. On Moore’s The Passing of the Essenes (1930), see Nicholson, Censorship, 1: 167–8; Lang Papers, vol. 102, fols 190–1, Lang to Cromer, 27 October 1930.
16 Aldgate and Robertson, Censorship, 161
17 See the file at LCP, CORR, LR (1930), Green Pastures.
18 The plays had been edited by Pollard, A. W., English Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes (Oxford, 1890)Google Scholar. This had reached its seventh edition by 1923.
19 Pickering, Kenneth, Drama in the Cathedral: The Canterbury Festival Plays 1928–1948 (Worthing, 1985)Google Scholar.
20 The question was considered in 1932, 1946 and 1950, with a policy document being privately circulated in 1952: copy at London, LPL, Fisher Papers, vol. 106, fols 239–42.
21 Lang Papers, vol. 102, fols 216–19, Lang to Cromer, 28 December 1930, at fol. 219.
22 Fisher Papers, vol. 204, fol. 85, Fisher to Leslie Hunter, bishop of Sheffield, 31 May 1958. This was in connection with a proposed production of Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Man Born to be King.
23 Davidson Papers, vol. 205, fol. 252, RTD to Cromer, 14 October 1925; Robert King, The Last Judgment: A Theological Farce (Tynemouth, 1929).
24 Lang Papers, vol. 178, fols 334–6, Don to Colin Gordon, 26 February 1940. The play was Our Brother Oliver. On the ambivalence of the Established Church towards the movement, see Bebbington, David, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London, 1989), 235–40.Google Scholar On Lang’s own attitude, see Hastings, Adrian, A History of English Christianity 1920–1990, 3rd edn (London, 1991), 288.Google Scholar
25 Shellard and Nicholson, The Lord Chamberlain Regrets, ix.
26 Nicholson, , Censorship, 1: 109–14, 131 Google Scholar; Shellard and Nicholson, The Lord Chamberlain Regrets, 73–6.
27 Quoted in full in Nicholson and Shellard, The Lord Chamberlain Regrets, 76.
28 Lang Papers, vol. 164, fol. 162, Don to Norman Gwatkin, 27 May 1938. Theodore Dreiser’s The Hand of the Potter: A Tragedy in Four Acts was first published in New York in 1918. It was subsequently published in London in his Plays, Natural and Supernatural (1930). See also Newlin, Keith, A Theodore Dreiser Encyclopedia (Westport, CT, 2003), 177–9, 305.Google Scholar
29 In an essay in the North American Review, quoted at length in Nicholson, Censorship, 1: 24–5.
30 Davidson Papers, vol. 188, fols 106–7, Dawson to RTD, 1 February 1913; vol. 188, fols 104–5, Sandhurst to RTD, 31 January 1913.
31 Ibid., vol. 188, fols 109–11, RTD to Sandhurst, 3 February 1913.
32 Ibid., vol. 189, fol. 140, RTD to Lord Arthur John Bigge Stamfordham [private secretary to the king], 4 November 1913.
33 Lang Papers, vol. 164, fols 158–60, Don to Gwatkin, 9 February 1938. See also LCP, CORR 1938/1159, The Love of Judas [by Teresa Hooley and Cedric Wallis].
34 Davidson Papers, vol. 205, fols 237–8.
35 Ibid., vol. 200, fols 8–10, RTD to Dawson, 24 October 1921, concerning an unidentified play.
36 Ibid., vol. 189, fol. 140, RTD to Stamfordham, 4 November 1913.
37 Ibid., vol. 180, fols 1–10. On Bell’s early experimentation at Canterbury, and other work nationally, see Webster, Peter, ‘George Bell, John Masefield and “The Coming of Christ”: Context and Significance’, Humanitas: The Journal of the George Bell Institute 10 (2009), 111–24 Google Scholar, at 112–14.
38 Webster, Peter, ‘The “Revival” of the Visual Arts in the Church of England, c. 1935 - c. 1956”, in Cooper, Kate and Gregory, Jeremy, eds, Revival and Resurgence in Christian History, SCH 44 (Woodbridge, 2008), 297–306.Google Scholar
39 Davidson Papers, vol. 213, fol. 93, RTD to Cromer, 13 November 1924. This letter is given in full in Bell, Randall Davidson, 2: 1213.
40 Davidson Papers, vol. 215, fol. 294, RTD to Cromer, 19 November 1927.
41 LCP, CORR 1928/8304, Adam the Creator, Davidson to Cromer, 21 April 1928.
42 Webster, ‘Bell and Masefield’, 117; Paul Foster, ‘The Goring Judgement: Is it still Valid?’, Theology 102 (1999), 253–61. Davidson had seen Shaw’s St Joan in 1924, and evidently appreciated it: Bell, Randall Davidson, 2: 1212.
43 Lang Papers, vol. 178, fols 339–43, Don to Gordon, 2 April 1940.
44 Ibid., vol. 178, fol. 344, Gordon to Don, 15 April 1940; LCP, CORR 1939/2844 Family Portrait, J. K. Mozley to the Lord Chamberlain, 14 March 1940.
45 Nicholson, Censorship, 2: 142–4.
46 Fisher Papers, vol.86, fols 210–12, Fisher to the Earl of Clarendon, 30 April 1951; London, LPL, Ramsey Papers, vol. 8, fol. 17, Ramsey to the Earl of Scarborough, 29 October 1961.