Foreign News: Englishman was Eaten

When a play has been publicly suppressed by Great Britain’s Lord Chamberlain, it can still be privately performed before a “subscription audience.” Last week such an audience of smart Londoners assembled unblushingly, rustling with anticipation, to see sardonic Alfred Savoir’s suppressed drama The Lion Tamer or How the Englishman Was Eaten.

Two hours later the “subscription audience” went home nauseated, well punished for their peeping-tommery. The piece had been all about an Englishman who morbidly followed a French circus for years, hoping to see the lion eat the trainer. By way of grisly climax the French trainer, vexed, flung the Englishman into the lion’s cage, whereupon the stage was darkened and awful groans, snarls and tearing sounds betokened that the Englishman was being eaten.

Strongest stomached English sophisticates opined that for once the Lord Chamberlain had suppressed wisely and aright.