New Prison: Representing the Female Actor in Shirley's The Bird in a Cage (1633)

n 1634 William Prynne was tried and severely punished for the publication of Histriornastix or The Players’ Scourge. That wella known seventeenth century event has been discussed in the context of Charles 1’s absolutism and the rise of Arminianism as well as in relation to the anti-theatrical prejudice and state censorship. In this essay I would like to contextualize the affair in a rather different way, by reading it against a less widely-known text, a play by James Shirley called The Bird in a Cage-and in particular, the play within the play. And I want to suggest that the politics of gender is at issue. Histriomastix, subtitled The Players Scourge or Actors Tragedie, was written, on Prynne’s account, over a number of years in the 1620s. Part of it was licensed by Buckner in the Stationers’ Register on October 16, 1 6 3 0 . ~ In 1632 Prynne saw it through the press; the index was being printed in November 1 6 3 2 , ~ and it reached the booksellers soon after. It was at this point that it was brought to the attention of the court-initially in relation to the index’s reference to “WomenActors, notorious whores.”4 The potential sensitivity ofPrynne’s anti-