William Prynne's Histrio-Matrix, the Player's Scourge or Actor's Tragedie (1632), a fat book of more than a thousand pages, which forms an admirable … - Robertson Davies

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William Prynne's Histrio-Matrix, the Player's Scourge or Actor's Tragedie (1632), a fat book of more than a thousand pages, which forms an admirable compilation of all the Puritan arguments against the theatre. The work is a classic of abuse and a monument to the misplaced scholarship and zeal of its author. Unluckily for Prynne he referred to women actors as 'notorious whores' meaning a group of French actresses who had appeared at Blackfriars in 1629; the reference was taken to apply to Queen Henrietta Maria and her ladies who were about to perform a pastoral at Whitehall. She made a Star Chamber matter of it and Prynne was fined 35,000 pounds, set in the pillory, shorn of his ears, branded and imprisoned for life. The SL on his cheeks he construed as Stigmata Laudis and bore bravely; it is pleasant to know that the life sentence was revoked by the Parliament of the Commonwealth, for although Prynne was a small-souled and cantankerous zealot with a maggot about homosexuality, he was a courageous fighter and a master of invective.