The Puritan Attack (III): William Prynne

According to Figueroa-Dorrego, William Prynne (1600-1669) had in the English Renaissance launched "the most explicit and extensive rejection of laughter and whatever actions or words may produce it in plays" (183). In his work Histrio-Mastix: The Players Scourge, or Actors Tragedie (1633), he claims that "[t]he last unlawful concomitant of stage-plays is profuse lascivious laughter, accompanied with an immoderate applause of those scurrilous plays and actors, which Christians should rather abominate than admire" (Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 284).

(portrait taken from: http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/441.php. The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Daily entries from the 17th century London diary. November 18, 2010.)

The following 6 points are made with quotes from Histrio-Mastix by Figueroa-Dorrego in the hope of summing up Prynne's attitude toward and attack upon laughter and the comedy:

1. "in regard of the original efficient cause of it, which is commonly some obscene, lascivious sinful passage, gesture, speech, or jest (the common object of men's hellish mirth) which should rather provoke the actors [and] the spectators to penitent sobs than wanton smiles." Following classical and patristic sources, Prynne argues that laughter is produced by "filthy scurrilous objects" and therefore is evil, "discovering nothing but a graceless heart, delighting only in ribaldry, in uncleanness," which are improper for a Christian (end of 183).
2. As Gosson maintained, theatrical laughter must be sinful also "in regard of its excess, it being altogether boundless beyond the rules of modesty, temperance, Christianity, sobriety, by which it should be regulated."
3. Because its end is "only to satiate men's fleshly lusts with secular jollity and delights of sin, to pamper, to arm the rebellious flesh against the spirit," and therefore it is incompatible with Christian repentance, sorrow, and humility.
4. Profuse laughing, especially at the actions and words of a ribald play, is "altogether inconsistent with the gravity, modesty, and sobriety of a Christian," who should bewail his and other people's sins, following the example of Christ, the Apostles, and the Fathers of the Church, rather than laugh.
5. As Prynne has argued before, theatrical laughter also implies "a public approbation to all the ribaldry and profaneness that is either personated or perpetrated on the stage, and so makes these laughers deeply guilty of it."
6. It has sinful consequences such as impudence, effeminacy, incivility, looseness, and "indisposition to every holy duty."*

*Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 183-184.