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Whilst the 'Histriomastix' rendered the author ridiculous to mere men of pleasure, it roused fierce animosities by the truth and fearless completeness of its assertions; but to no order of society was the famous attack on the stage more offensive than to the lawyers; and of lawyers the members of Lincoln's Inn were the most vehement in their displeasure.
The most famous victim of the Star Chamber was William Prynne, whose work Histriomastix, or the Player's Scourge, directed against the sinfulness of play-acting, masques, and revels, aroused the indignation of the Court.
The storm of indignation which followed the appearance of the 'Histriomastix' was directed by the members of the Four Inns, who felt themselves bound by honor no less than by interest, to disavow all connexion with, or leaning towards, the unpopular author.
Prynne, in his 'Histriomastix, may have pushed a little too far the argument drawn from the prohibition in the Mosaic law: yet one would fancy that the practice was forbidden by Moses' law, not arbitrarily, but because it was a bad practice, which did harm, as every antiquarian knows that it did; and that, therefore, Prynne was but reasonable in supposing that in his day a similar practice would produce a similar evil.
In 1633, the Puritan hatred to the theatre had blazed out in Prynne's Histriomastix, and as a natural consequence, the loyal and cavalier portion of society threw itself into dramatic amusements of every kind. It was an unreal revival of the Mask, stimulated by political passion, in the wane of genuine taste for the fantastic and semi-barbarous pageant, in which the former age had delighted.
If "SHAKES his furious SPEARE" in Histriomastix refers to Shakespeare in connection with Cressida, while, in 1599, Dekker and Chettle were doing a Troilus and Cressida for a company not Shakespeare's, then there were TWO Troilus and Cressida in the field.
If so, it is the first that achieved a distinction which is generally claimed for Prynne's Histriomastix . The fact of the mere burning is of itself likely enough, for Thomas wrote very freely of the clergy at Rome and of Pope Paul III.: "By report, Rome is not without 40,000 harlots, maintained for the most part by the clergy and their followers."
The next to feel the grip of the Star Chamber was the famous William Prynne, barrister of Lincoln's Inn, and one of the most erudite as well as most voluminous writers our country has ever produced. He was only thirty-three when in 1633 he published his Histriomastix; or, the Player's Scourge.
In the reign of Charles I. the Puritans had raised a violent clamour against the drama, which they considered as an entertainment not lawful to Christians, an opinion held by them in common with the Church of Rome; and Prynne published "Histriomastix," a huge volume in which stage-plays were censured.
Rome herself had no more potent device for the maintenance of intellectual tyranny. The task of perusal was generally deputed to the Archbishop's chaplain, who, as in the case of Prynne's Histriomastix, ran the risk of a fine and the pillory if he suffered a book to be licensed without a careful study of its contents.
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