Our stage has suffered because our dramatists have been able to get much of the indelicate fun out of French farces by using, hypocritically, decent phrases which all parties understand in a bad sense whilst pretending to see nothing shocking in them; for without this elasticity of our tongue British playwrights would have been thrown upon their own resources. Nowadays our playwrights have to some extent abandoned their subservience to France, and it is noticeable that those who take their work seriously, and deal with the difficult questions of life sincerely, are showing a tendency to abandon the language of suggestion, to give up hinting, and to avoid the _double entente_. The result is that many prudes are shocked, and people who have no real objection to certain subjects or ideas denounce plays embodying them because this hypocrisy of language has been abandoned. The Censor, of course, is one obstacle to plain speaking. He and his office are the superb representatives of English cant, hypocrisy and prudery, and one advantage that must follow from the abolition, if it comes, will be the ousting of the comedy of indecent suggestion by the drama of honest candour. He possesses his little vocabulary in which _tambour_ passes for _amour_, and in fact his office has been worked on the ostrich head-in-the-sand system for many years past. The chief duty of the official has been to prevent people from calling a spade a spade, and most, though not all, of the pieces banned would have obtained a licence if in place of straightforward phrase the author had employed some hypocritical, prudish suggestion. Who doubts that a licensed English version of _Monna Vanna_ could have been prepared, although fully giving to the audience the meaning of the awful line, "_Nue sous son manteau_"? One may doubt the comic story that Mr Redford mistook the _sous_ for _sans_. The motto for the office, if it has a crest, should be the famous line from a music-hall song: "It ain't exac'ly wot 'e sez, it's the narsty way 'e sez it." No wonder foreigners are puzzled by our theatre. The Parisian sees a Palais Royal farce played before an audience of which many members are girls in the bread-and-butter stage. In his great city maidens are--or, at least, were--not allowed to enter the theatre so long famous for its naughty farces. He gasps; he wonders whether the English _mees_ is as innocent as she looks--or used to look--and does not know the _perfide_ tongue of the _perfide Albion_ well enough to be aware that nothing shocking is said, and that it is pretended that the _cocotte_ is a mere kindly friend, the _collage_ a trifling flirtation, the _debauche_ a viceless lark, and that the foulest conduct of husband or wife does not reach a real breach of the commandment more often broken in England than the rest of the sacred ten.