is hateful to him. An idea strikes him. He will assault
the duenna, and get ignominiously expelled from the palace by his
indignant father-in-law. To his horror, when he proceeds to carry out
this stratagem, the duenna, far from raising an alarm, is flattered,
delighted, and compliant. The assaulter becomes the assaulted. He flings
her angrily to the ground, where she remains placidly. He flies. The
father enters; dismisses the duenna; and listens at the keyhole of
his daughter's nuptial chamber, uttering various pleasantries, and
declaring, with a shiver, that a sound of kissing, which he supposes to
proceed from within, makes him feel young again.

In deprecation of the scandalized astonishment with which such a story
as this will be read, I can only say that it was not presented on the
stage until its propriety had been certified by the chief officer of the
Queen of England's household.

Story number two. A German officer finds himself in an inn with a French
lady who has wounded his national vanity. He resolves to humble her by
committing a rape upon her. He announces his purpose. She remonstrates,
implores, flies to the doors and finds them locked, calls for help
and finds none at hand, runs screaming from side to side, and, after
a harrowing scene, is overpowered and faints. Nothing further being
possible on the stage without actual felony, the officer then relents
and leaves her. When she recovers, she believes that he has carried out
his threat; and during the rest of the play she is represented as vainly
vowing vengeance upon him, whilst she is really falling in love with
him under the influence of his imaginary crime against her. Finally she
consents to marry him; and the curtain falls on their happiness.

This story was certified by the present King's Reader, acting for the
Lord Chamberlain, as void in its general tendency of "anything immoral
or otherwise improper for the stage." But let nobody conclude therefore
that Mr Redford is a monster, whose policy it is to deprave the theatre.
As a matter of fact, both the above stories are strictly in order from
the official point of view. The incidents of sex which they contain,
though carried in both to the extreme point at which another step would
be dealt with, not by the King's Reader, but by the police, do not
involve adultery, nor any allusion to Mrs Warren's profession, nor to
the fact that the children of any polyandrous group will, when they grow
up, in