By Edward Cline
Joseph Conrad, the writer, was astonished to learn early in the 20th century that Britain, his adopted country, had a “Censor of Plays.” In a 1907 essay* he wrote about the character of an individual who would assume the power and harbor the hubris as the supreme arbiter of what appeared on the British stage. Needless to say, he does not “appreciate” the existence of a censor:
