Everybody will, I hope, admit that this state of things is intolerable; that the subject of Mrs Warren’s profession must be either tapu altogether, or else exhibited with the warning side as freely displayed as the tempting side.  But many persons will vote for a complete tapu, and an impartial sweep from the boards of Mrs Warren and Gretchen and the rest; in short, for banishing the sexual instincts from the stage altogether.  Those who think this impossible can hardly have considered the number and importance of the subjects which are actually banished from the stage.  Many plays, among them Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, have no sex complications:  the thread of their action can be followed by children who could not understand a single scene of Mrs Warren’s Profession or Iris.  None of our plays rouse the sympathy of the audience by an exhibition of the pains of maternity, as Chinese plays constantly do.  Each nation has its own particular set of tapus in addition to the common human stock; and though each of these tapus limits the scope of the dramatist, it does not make drama impossible.  If the Examiner were to refuse to license plays with female characters in them, he would only be doing to the stage what our tribal customs already do to the pulpit and the bar.  I have myself written a rather entertaining play with only one woman in it, and she is quite heartwhole; and I could just as easily write a play without a woman in it at all.  I will even go so far as to promise the Mr Redford my support if he will introduce this limitation for part of the year, say during Lent, so as to make a close season for that dullest of stock dramatic subjects, adultery, and force our managers and authors to find out what all great dramatists find out spontaneously:  to wit, that people who sacrifice every other consideration to love are as hopelessly unheroic on the stage as lunatics or dipsomaniacs.  Hector is the world’s hero; not Paris nor Antony.

But though I do not question the possibility of a drama in which love should be as effectively ignored as cholera is at present, there is not the slightest chance of that way out of the difficulty being taken by the Mr Redford.  If he attempted it there would be a revolt in which he would be swept away in spite of my singlehanded efforts to defend him.  A complete tapu is politically impossible.  A complete toleration is equally impossible to Mr Redford, because his occupation would be gone if there were no tapu to enforce.  He is therefore compelled to maintain the present compromise of a partial tapu, applied, to the best of his judgement, with a careful respect to persons and to public opinion.  And a very sensible English solution of the difficulty, too, most readers will say.  I should not dispute it if dramatic poets really were what English public opinion generally assumes them to be during their lifetime:  that is, a licentiously irregular group to be kept in order in a rough and ready way by a magistrate who will stand