CENSORSHIP OF PLAYS LIKE SPEAKEASY RAIDS

"Plays and speakeasies are under the same form of regulation today in New York City," stated Cosmo Hamilton, in an interview following his talk on play-writing in Sever Hall yesterday afternoon, Mr. Hamilton, well known as an English playwright and novelist, is in Boston to give a series of talks before the opening next Monday of "Pickwick", a dramatization of Dickens' novel, in which Mr. Hamilton collaborated with Frank Reilly.

"A show has only to offend a New York policeman in order to causes the doors of its theatre to be padlocked, and the author, producer, owner, and cast to be subject to various fines and sentences," Mr. Hamilton continued. "Yet, some form of censorship is necessary. The cities are everrun with the nouveaux-riches, who have developed into theatre-going crowds since the war, just like white worms swarm out of the ground when you lift up a big, flat stone, These people can buy $5.50 theatre tickets indefinitely to satisfy their morbid curiosity for common filth."

Believes Censorship Necessary

"They get little enjoyment out of the performances same the satisfying of this curiosity of cravings," he went on. "For them I believe censorship is necessary, even though I dislike any form of restraint or prohibition. The question is how this censorship can be most satisfactorily accomplished.

"I dislike very much the speakeasy-padlock method. Far better is the English system, under which the plays are censored before they are produced, not afterwards. The Crown appoints a Lord Chamberlain, and all prospective productions are submitted to him. Lord Cromer now holds the position. He reads all the plays and censors them not only from a moral, but from an artistic point of view. No free publicity is given to shows which have parts expurgated nor to those from which the permission of production is withheld. True, the position is a difficult one, and the man who holds it must be well chosen. Yet these disadvantages are slight when the advantages of the plan are compared with the faults of a police censorship."