English drama (Comedy); London (England) -- Drama; Marriage -- Drama; Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Drama
Mr Daly, having weathered the storm, can perhaps shake his soul free
of it as he heads for fresh successes with younger authors. But I have
certain sensitive places in my soul: I do not like that word "ordure."
Apply it to my work, and I can afford to smile, since the world, on the
whole, will smile with me. But to apply it to the woman in the street,
whose spirit is of one substance with our own and her body no less holy:
to look your women folk in the face afterwards and not go out and hang
yourself: that is not on the list of pardonable sins.
POSTSCRIPT. Since the above was written news has arrived from America
that a leading New York newspaper, which was among the most abusively
clamorous for the suppression of Mrs Warren's Profession, has just been
fined heavily for deriving part of its revenue from advertisements of
Mrs Warren's houses.
Many people have been puzzled by the fact that whilst stage
entertainments which are frankly meant to act on the spectators as
aphrodisiacs, are everywhere tolerated, plays which have an almost
horrifyingly contrary effect are fiercely attacked by persons and papers
notoriously indifferent to public morals on all other occasions. The
explanation is very simple. The profits of Mrs Warren's profession
are shared not only by Mrs Warren and Sir George Crofts, but by the
landlords of their houses, the newspapers which advertize them, the
restaurants which cater for them, and, in short, all the trades to
which they are good customers, not to mention the public officials
and representatives whom they silence by complicity, corruption, or
blackmail. Add to these the employers who profit by cheap female labor,
and the shareholders whose dividends depend on it [you find such people
everywhere, even on the judicial bench and in the highest places in
Church and State], and you get a large and powerful class with a
strong pecuniary incentive to protect Mrs Warren's profession, and a
correspondingly strong incentive to conceal, from their own consciences
no less than from the world, the real sources of their gain. These are
the people who declare that it is feminine vice and not poverty that
drives women to the streets, as if vicious women with independent
incomes ever went there. These are the people who, indulgent or
indifferent to aphrodisiac plays, raise the moral hue and cry against
performances of Mrs Warren's Profession, and drag actresses to the
police court to be insulted, bullied, and threatened for fulfilling
their engagements. For please observe that the judicial decision in New
York State in favor of the play does not end the matter. In Kansas City,
for instance, the municipality, finding itself restrained by the courts
from preventing the performance, fell back on a local bye-law against
indecency to evade the Constitution of the United States. They summoned
the actress who impersonated Mrs Warren to the police court, and offered
her and her colleagues the alternative of leaving the city or being
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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