The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-08-05

/ peur. The field is a wide one, you will say;
but you forget the Censure which
sstand in ones way to mount
guard over all subjects that affect
| politics, religion, or political economy The
Censure has forbidden the plays Of Victor
Hugo, and half of those of Alexandra Dumas
the elder Why? Solely because there are a
few political ideas scattered about them, a
| few lines here and there in defense Of liberty.
What would it serve me then if l could write
play like Ruy Bias" or the 'Chevalier de
Maison Rouge, when Corneille himself, if he
had lived during this reign, would never have
seen his China performed? The famous
lines
.Le sac des campagnes ct lie pillagc des villes,
Les prescriptions et les queries civlles,
SOnt les degrees s1nCunts don't Augustc fat chOiN
Ponr monter sur le trOne ct nous dOnner ses lois
would been voted Seditious. Corneile would
have been set down as a Republican. Look
what happened to Ponsard. Before the Second
Empire he wrote Lucrece, his best work by
far; but Lucrece' contained this passage
.Enhn Rome meurt ST. par un brusque effort,
Ine Crise ne Went Para cher a la mort,
Pour la regenerer ct lu rendre Tame,
DE De son orgueil eteint pour ranner Ia homme.
Pour quee sante renOrir en- ellie sa puberte
ii my quun seul mOyen, ct C'est Ia libGrtel'
And so Lucrece j. no longer played Turn
ing now to Moliere, he would have been in as
bad way as Corneille had he hoUrished
nowadays. What chance would his ''Iartuffe
have had of being accepted when, only few
monthsag the Censure cut Victorien Sardou's
Devote to pieces and made him change the
title of 1t into 'Seraphine'? If Tartufie is
occasionally played now at the Francais and
the Odeon, il is because it is more than 200
years old, and because everybody knows it
by heart And what do you conclude from
all this?" / asked. II conclude this, replied
Cocasse, that if the French stage is more
corrupt at present than it ever was before,
the fault is not ours, but the Governments.
The Censure leaves us no choice of subjects.
If we attack oppression, superstition, or hy-
pocrisy, it comes down ON us in the name of
order and religion. If we write drama to
prove the necessity of divorce, it upbraids us
Tor immortality. If we denounce ioint-stock
robberies, it throws our plays into
the waste-paper basket as calculated to
cause perturbation in commercial circles.
The only themes it leaves us to develop as we
please are seduction and adultery. These are
the sops it throws u.s. BE as immoral as YOU
please, say the censOrs, rail at virtue, sneer
at prOpriety, make light of family ties, but
don tssneer at us or our gendarmes. And the
consequence of ali this is that we do what you
see. Those of us who have genius, like Emile
Augier, Alexandra Dumas the younger, orVic-
torien SardOu, make themselves the apostles
of adultery, and write Paul Forestier,' Les
Idees de Madame Aubray, or 'NTaison Neuve,
by way of provingssthat women who have for
gotten the seventh commandment are mostly
victims to be esteemed and pitied. The lesser
stars of the profession, like myself, content
ourselves with relating the connubial woes of
Balancher. to which the Censure gives full
assent so long only as Balancher is not called
a deputy or a knight of the Legion of Honor.
Here Cocasse threw down his cigarette and
laughed Give me the manuscript he
cried; ''I'll make Of Balancher Chinese man
DARN and-la morale sera sauve."