A critique of the fashionable theory combining the stage (the performing arts) with obscenities, understood as “something that cannot be presented on stage.” The folk etymology of the Latin word obscena, -orum, propagated by Lynda Nead or Carmela Bene, leads to D.H. Lawrence and – even more remotely – to Havelock Ellis and the Latin expression po(st)scenia, meaning “behind the scenes” or (according to Lucretius) “the secret part of life”. Etymological relationship between the obscene...