DAE what it means to "commit licence"?

I'm reading Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter, and she uses this weird phrase in a passage, reproduced here in full:

Little Ivan's relations with the clowns went thus: first, he was afraid of them; then, he was entranced by them; at last he wished to become as they, so that he, too, could terrify, enchant, vandalise, ravage, yet always stay on the safe side of being, licensed to commit licence and yet forbidden to act [...]

I have no idea what it means to "commit licence". Searching the phrase up on Google turns up nothing apart from quotes of this very passage which do nothing to explain the phrase. With that, it's definitely not a typo in my edition, since everyone quotes the passage just as I have here.

Am I just being dim and not getting some clever wordplay? What does this mean?