• The archbishops of Canterbury, the Lord Chamberlain and the censorship of the theatre, 1909-49

    Author(s):
    Peter Webster (see profile)
    Date:
    2012
    Group(s):
    British History
    Subject(s):
    Theater, History, Theater and society, Religions, Church history, Theology, Arts, Censorship
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    archbishops of Canterbury, Church-state relations, Church and State, Theatre and history, Theatre and society, Religious history, Theology and the arts
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M60C4SJ3K
    Abstract:
    The position of the archbishop of Canterbury 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. According to the report of the 1909 Joint Select Committee on the system, the Lord Chamberlain was able to refuse to a licence to any play that was likely ‘to do violence to the sentiment of religious reverence’, to be indecent, or ‘to be calculated to conduce to crime or vice’. It was on matters such as these that from time to time the Lord Chamberlain’s office would consult the archbishop. Despite the apparent oddity of a senior churchman being asked to adjudicate on artistic matters such as this, the matter has hitherto received little attention from religious historians to match that given to the censorship of the cinema and to the Lady Chatterley trial of 1960. It receives scant attention also from successive archiepiscopal biographers, and is only treated in passing in general accounts of the censorship. Taking as its period the forty years from the Joint Select Committee report in 1909 to the unsuccessful attempt in Parliament to reform the system in 1949, this article details the curious unofficial position of the archbishops within the system of censorship. The various grounds on which Archbishops Randall Davidson (1903–28) and Cosmo Gordon Lang (1928–42) in particular offered their advice to the Lord Chamberlain are then examined. The article thus provides a case study of the singular and often anomalous position of the archbishop at the heart of the Establishment in Britain, and the extent to which the secular and ecclesiastical powers combined in the regulation of the life of the nation, both moral and aesthetic. In addition, it examines a unique nodal point in the interaction between the Church and the arts.
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. Date:
    2012
    Journal:
    Studies in Church History
    Volume:
    48
    Page Range:
    437 - 448
    ISSN:
    0424-2084
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    5 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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