Note 221 — LITERARY FORGERIES.

One of the most amusing of these tricks was perpetrated on William Prynne, the well-known puritanic hater of the stage, by some witty cavalier. Prynne’s great work, “Histriomastix, the Player’s Scourge; or, Actor’s Tragedy,” an immense quarto, of 1100 pages, was a complete condemnation of all theatrical amusements; but in 1649 appeared a tract of four leaves, entitled “Mr. William Prynne, his Defence of Stage Playes; or, a Retractation of a former Book of his called Histriomastix.” It must have astonished many readers in his own day, and would have passed for his work in more modern times, but for the accidental preservation of a single copy of a handbill Prynne published disclaiming the whole thing. His style is most amusingly imitated throughout, and his great love for quoting authorities in his margin. He is made to complain that “this wicked and tyrannical army did lately in a most inhumane, cruell, rough, and barbarous manner, take away the poor players from their houses, being met there to discharge the duty of their callings: as if this army were fully bent, and most trayterously and maliciously set, to put down and depresse all the King’s friends, not only in the parliament but in the very theatres; they have no care of covenant or any thing else.” And he is further made to declare, in spite of “what the malicious, clamorous, and obstreperous people” may object, that he once wrote against stage-plays,—that it was “when I had not so clear a light as now I have.” We can fancy the amusement this pamphlet must have been to many readers during the great Civil War.