Fallen Angels by Noël Coward was first staged in London in 1925. The play, featuring two strong female leads driven by sexual desire and wit, was socially and culturally controversial during its time. During the time of writing, post–World War I social shifts were underway. Women had experienced greater autonomy during the war because their husbands were out fighting for the country while they stayed home and provided for their families. Fallen Angels put female sexual agency and marriage boredom at its center: two married women discuss past lovers and contemplate rekindling passion, topics rarely voiced publicly. Male characters in the play are comparatively conventional, exposing a double standard: women facing scandal for desires that men easily rationalize. When we examine the initial impact of Fallen Angels, the tension in 1920s British culture between evolving private realities and conservative public expectations is revealed.   

Censorship and the Lord Chamberlain’s Office.

In 1925 all plays in Britain had to be licensed by the office of the Lord Chamberlain. The role of a formal royal censor had been in place since 1545 – first in the shape of “Master of Revels” whose responsibilities evolved from reviewing themes and content of entertainment ahead of its presentation to monarchs to that of censor keeping anti-Church of England sentiment at bay. With a transition of power in 1688, the Master of Revel’s duties were transferred to the Lord Chamberlain. The next milestone in the Lord Chamberlain’s expansion of power came with the Licensing Act of 1737, which was ushered into Parliament by Prime Minister Rober Walpole whose ministry had been satirized by many playwrights, most notably Henry Fielding. This law gave the office of the Lord Chamberlain power to license both plays and theatres and required that new plays be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for his inspection at least fourteen days before their first scheduled performances. While the limits around how many theatres could be operational were lifted by 1843, previewing and censorship of material continued. As reported in an overview of the office by curator and archivist Kathryn Johnson for the British Library, the rules by which plays were judged fit or unfit came about as a result of the 1909 Joint Select Committee on the theatre. The Committee suggested that the Lord Chamberlain should license any play submitted to him unless he considered it:

• To be indecent.
• To contain “offensive personalities”.
• To represent on the stage in an invidious manner a living person, or a person recently dead.
• To do violence to the sentiment of religious reverence.
• To be calculated to conduce to crime and vice.
• To be calculated to impair friendly relations with any Foreign Power.
• To be calculated to cause a breach of the peace. 

These criteria were never formally codified, but seemed to have been used as a general guidance. Which makes it unsurprising that Coward’s play about women discussing a pre-marital affair and openly expressing dissatisfaction with aspects of married life would raise a reader’s eyebrow in 1925. While Coward was required to make some edits, Lord Cromer – the man in the role of Lord Chamberlain at the time – ultimately allowed the play to be produced. As recounted in Philip Hoare’s biography of Coward, it had been a subordinate who had believed the loose morals of the female leads would “cause too great a scandal.” Cromer didn’t seem to think the women’s story was believable enough to cause such a scandal stating, “I take the view that the whole thing is so much unreal farcical comedy, that subject to a few modifications in the dialogue it can pass.”  

It wouldn’t be until 1968 that Britain would put an end to official censorship of its theatrical output. Time Magazine reported in “The London Stage: Exit the Censor” that the folk-rock musical Hair became the first play publicly staged in London without a license since the beginning of the 17th century. 

Theatrical Expectations and Farcical Infusion.

While the Lord Chamberlain’s office is a small piece of the story of Fallen Angels, it’s indicative of the world for whom Coward was writing. In the 1920’s British audiences and critics expected respectable, decorous social comedy: where sexual matters were hinted at, not discussed. In a blog post for the Coward Foundation, Robert Hazle notes that despite Lord Chamberlain’s approval, The Public Morality Council campaigned to revoke the license for Fallen Angels, “a revolting sex-play” in their words. At one performance, a Mrs. Charles Hornibrook went so far as to interrupt the second act to announce “Ladies and Gentlemen, I wish to protest. This play should not go unchallenged.”  

English theatre was relatively conservative compared to Continental farce. The frank sexual talk and tipsy heroines of Fallen Angels challenged that decorum. Coward’s decision to borrow style and tone from French farce was noted by Ivor Brown in the Saturday Review on May 9, 1925. He attributes some of the controversy to the subversion of expectations, noting:  

If Fallen Angels had been written by Sacha Guitry and brought over here as part of the family luggage, it would have been acclaimed as witty, airy, deliciously Gallic and all the rest of it. If its plain-speaking had been wiped out, its central situation had been softened, and its hard, crisp dialogue had been reduced to the language of leers and winks, it would have been acclaimed as a jolly English farce. But since it is an English essay in the French mode a cry of shocked surprise has gone up. 

Farces have entertained audiences since Ancient Greece, though the term emerged in the Middle Ages. As noted in Alley Theatre’s “History of Farce”, “There are many ways to trace the lineage of modern farce, and in truth, there’s no single point of origin. But it’s undeniable that French comedy holds perhaps the strongest influence in our modern idea of farce.” It’s French comedy and farce that established stock characters or archetypes that continue to be recognizable today. TheDramaTeacher.com provides a clear and helpful breakdown of those roles. A few can certainly trace descendants to the characters of Fallen Angels, like The Cunning Servant, The Deceived Husband, and The Scheming Wife. While farces are known for “exaggerated situations and absurd elements that aim primarily to amuse audiences rather than provoke deep thought” they can also be used as a more palatable way of exposing or exploring societal norms. Lord Cromer allowed Fallen Angels to be produced because to him its farcical attributes made it an outlandish work of fiction. Yet, just under the surface of frenemy spats, revolving doors, and physical comedy is a truth about the actual desires of women in a world that wanted to ignore them.