Histriomastix
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There are two early modern works entitled Histriomastix.
The first is a play by John Marston, written in around 1597. This play is a moral allegory about human nature, which shows, through a series of symbolic scenes, how society is led into war and destruction through human pride, greed and sloth. This play was probably performed either by the boy players of the St. Paul's private theatre or by the law students at the Middle Temple. It may lampoon Ben Jonson in the character of the scholar playwright Chrisoganus, and have led to the hostility between Marston and Jonson known as the War of the Theatres. Some critics have argued that Histriomastix was not all Marston's own work: it may have been a rewriting of an older play.
The second work is Histriomastix by William Prynne, which was published in 1632, although it had been in preparation by its author for almost ten years prior to its final printing. It represents the culmination of the Puritan attack on the Elizabethan theatre. Running to over a thousand pages, and with a main title of 43 lines, it marshals a multitude of ancient and medieval authorities against the "sin" of dramatic performance.
Its Puritan theology was in any case unwelcome to the ecclesiastical authorities led by the Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud, but its attack on women actors as "notorious whores" was taken as a direct reference to Queen Henrietta Maria who was appearing in a play at court. Prynne had to appear before the Star Chamber and was sentenced in 1633 to be pilloried, branded, imprisoned for life and was fined £5,000.
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[edit] Further reading
- The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theater in Early Modern England by Michael O'Connell ISBN 0-19-513205-X contains an attempt to shed light on the Puritans' fanatical opposition to the theatre
