The Puritan Attack (I): Stephen Gosson

(screen capture: taken intact from: infoplease®.
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0821369.html. November 10, 2010 )

Yes. It is the very Stephen Gosson who dedicates his School of Abuse (1579) to Sir Philip Sidney and thus stimulates him to write in response the well-famed Defence of Poesie.

It was a time when Calvinistic Puritans mattered and detested all laughing matters. For them, laughter distracts people from proper function and hard work; laughter is by nature a distraction, a deviating act from the proper way. Laughing in excess corrupts the Protestant virtues of efficiency, diligence, order, and rationality; laughter is by ethics a degradation. Laughter is in itself a display of lack of control over the bodily function and therefore lack of civility; laughter is by courtesy a violation and indecency.*

The Puritan resentment toward laughter leads on to the Puritan attack on the theatre, especially the comedy. "Puritans believed that it [the theatre] perpetuated pagan customs, distorted truth, taught profanity, knavery and lechery, led youth into idleness, afforded meeting places for prostitutes and their customers" (Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 181). The fact that the comedy often stages cheating, cuckolding, and deriding only contributes to hinge laughter to sin (ibid).

In the second action of his pamphlet entitled Plays Confuted in Five Actions, Stephen Gosson summaries for us the Puritan attitude toward laughter and the theatre (in its original unmodernized spelling):

The argument of Tragedies is wrath, crueltie, incest, iniurie, murther eyther violent by sworde, or voluntary by poyson. The persons, Gods, Goddesses, furies, fiendes, Kinges, Quenes, and mightie men. The ground worke of Commedies, is loue, cosenedge, flatterie, bawderie, slye conneighance of whordome. The persons, cookes, queanes, knaues, baudes, parasites, courtezannes, lecherouse olde men, amorous yong men.

The best play you can picke out, is but a mixture of good and euill, how can it be then the schoolemistres of life? The beholding of troubles and miserable slaughters that are in Tragedies, driue vs to immoderate sorrow, heauines, womanish weeping and mourning, whereby we become louers of dumpes, and lamentation, both enemies of fortitude. Comedies so tickle our senses with a pleasanter vaine, that they make vs louers of laughter, and pleasure, without any meane, both foes to temperance, what schooling is this?

Playes are the inuentions of the deuil, the offrings of Idolatrie, the pompe of worldlinges, the blossomes of vanitie, the roote of Apostacy, the foode of iniquitie, ryot, and adulterie. detest them. Players are masters of vice, teachers of wantonnesse, spurres to impuritie, the Sonnes of idlenesse, so longe as they liue in this order, loath them. God is mercifull, his winges are spred to receyue you if you come betimes, God is iust, his bow is bent & his arrowe drawen, to send you a plague, if you stay too longe.**

Gosson also quotes the Bible, in particular, Luke 6:25, to support his point:

Christe giving us to understand the danger of these delights wherein wee laugh with the worlde, pronounceth a woe upon them, wo[e] bee to you that laugh nowe, for ye shall weepe and lament.

Gosson's remarks aim to disparage laughter along with the comedy, and he did "perpetuates the prejudice that laughter is foolish and consequently unacceptable" (Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 182).

*For similar observation, please confer: Sanders, Barry. Sudden Glory: Laughter as Subversive History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. 225-227.

**Gosson, Stephen. Playes confuted in fiue actions prouing that they are not to be suffred in a Christian common weale, by the waye both the cauils of Thomas Lodge, and the play of playes, written in their defence, and other obiections of players frendes, are truely set downe and directlye aunsweared. London: 1582.