ACTRESSES AS WORKING WOMEN the institutions licensed through the new metropolitan county councils At the instigation of the anti-music hall campaign, reformers explicitly stated their intention of extending the campaign to theatres once they were successful with the halls A leader in the Vigilance Record in 1889 claimed: After the music-halls will come the theatres The Lord Chamberlain’s shadowy jurisdiction, which is exercised with such timidity, will have to be reinforced before long by the more vigorous authority of a Licensing Committee which will simply crush by its veto every theatre where the acting, the dresses, or the plays are an offence to public decency.56 But a concerted anti-theatre campaign never materialized Theatre managers effectively countered by pointing out the absurdity of the licensing system that required every dramatic script to undergo official scrutiny while music hall programmes were officially checked only once a year in anticipation of the Committee sessions.57 Theatre managers knew enough about the Examiner of Plays’ criteria to predict which plays would not pass the inspection, and either withheld them entirely or commissioned alterations before submitting texts for licensing The famous blue pencil sought passages likely to cause religious controversy, political embarrassment, or moral indignation Several scripts from the 1890s, in the musical comedy genre William Archer called ‘the real New Drama’,58 demonstrate how far the Examiner of Plays could be pushed, and how blind his office was to scenarios that reinforced notions about theatre as a sexual marketplace Internal memoranda from E.F.Pigott (Examiner of Plays) to his supervisor Sir Spencer Ponsonby-Fane (Vice-Lord Chamberlain) regarding a licence for A Gaiety Girl in 1893 focus on the compromising depiction of the character of a divorce court judge.59 What remains in the amended script is a study of Society’s changing mores, centering on musical comedy actresses’ irresistibility for men and their challenge to ‘respectable’ women’s values The Gaiety Girls’ first words proclaim that they circulate in the highest circles and behave according to the reigning moral code: Here come the ladies who dazzle Society, Leaders of etiquette, pinks of propriety, Crème de la crème of the latest variety End of the century girls! 158