Table of Contents
The dominant notion of blasphemy in Britain today is built upon a perception of what is offensive to the Christian religion. Derived from common law and fashioned by the dynamics of public opinion, this view has been employed to powerful effect in the Gay News trial of 1977 and, most recently, in charges against the BBC broadcast of Jerry Springer the Opera in 2005.[2] It would appear that the exclusively religious conception of blasphemy as a sin against God, punishable by God or His intermediaries, has been displaced by a more secular, politicised view which focuses on the relationship between human agents. The paradigm created by a broadly secular western democracy invariably places artistic representations of the sacred within a polarised debate between religious sensibilities and freedom of expression. In such a context, the need to negotiate the sacred becomes imperative to maintaining a modus vivendi. Practically, a model of upholding individual rights without risking a breach of the peace is one to be defended. However, if our intellectual discussions of the sacred become limited by such a framework, then we restrict our understanding of beliefs that are not similar to our own. It should be clarified that there are other, more profoundly religious, perceptions of blasphemy, and to conflate them with the notion dominant in Britain threatens the potential for us to negotiate the sacred successfully. By using an historical case study, this chapter will explore an exclusively religious context to blasphemy and, in so doing, reveal what might cause a devotedly religious individual to make the charge of blasphemy. Here, the application of history becomes particularly useful, because we can escape immediate bias that the charge of blasphemy is only made by cranks or fanatics, as well as preconceptions concerning the right of freedom of expression.[3] Let us, then, consider the reaction of pious Christians to the activities of the theatre, within the context of a devoutly Christian society.
The only legislation ever passed with Royal Assent against blasphemy in England was the Blasphemy Act of 1698.[4] Political wrangling had limited the scope of the Act to a denunciation of anti-trinitarian conceptions of God; however, it was sold to the public as a realisation of King William III’s personal commitment to ‘discourage profaneness and immorality’.[5] The necessity of this presentation was borne out of a belief among growing numbers of Protestants that England was plagued by immorality and vice on a scale that risked divine punishment. At this time, England was a devoutly Christian society, and a belief in God’s providence was virtually universal. Indeed, all major events were interpreted providentially and nationwide fasts were often instigated by the regime to appease the Almighty in times of perceived crisis. Furthermore, the most pious individuals believed that God shaped the very nature of human happiness and misery.[6] Those seized by the belief that vice plagued the nation had to look no further than the earthquake of 1692 for confirmation: God was angry. For zealous reformers, one of the most public and institutionalised centres of vice was the playhouse; for it had a ‘natural and unavoidable tendency to that which [was] sinful and unlawful’.[7] Unlike the tavern or the whore-house, the theatre stimulated the mind as well as the body. It could promote many different vices to a diverse audience, who shared the experience together in place and time.[8] The playhouse was not simply a venue where vice was represented and then imitated by vulnerable members of the audience;[9] it was a place where playwright, player and audience met to collude in sin. Given that the state had seemingly failed to provide adequate direction on the matter, it was therefore timely that the pious clergyman Jeremy Collier published A short view of the immorality and profaneness of the English stage in 1698.[10]
Collier’s work proved popular as most upstanding Christians would have probably acknowledged that some stages, particularly those at the annual Bartholomew Fair, attracted disreputable characters and promoted vices such as profane swearing, mocking of religion, lewdness and drunkenness.[11] As well as attacking these vices, however, Collier posited a much more unpalatable argument that the theatre as an institution was fundamentally evil. Within the pages of his substantial book he exposed specific plays as immoral, profane, and blasphemous; furthermore, he lambasted audience appreciation of these plays as tantamount to worshipping the Devil.[12] The ensuing controversy, which has become known to literary scholars as ‘the stage debate’, questioned the very existence of the playhouse in a godly society, and served as a searing indictment of past and contemporary regimes for their failure to define and condemn blasphemy in all its forms.
In 1698, there were two professional, permanent theatres in London, one in Drury Lane and the other in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and they were attended by a wide cross-section of society.[13] The Drury Lane theatre was known as the ‘Royal’, being patronised by the monarch, and its actors assumed the title of ‘His Majesties Servants’. The idea that these playhouses could harbour evil was seen by many contemporaries as preposterous. While there was general support for Collier’s call to reform the stage, few reformers endorsed his specific charges of profanity and blasphemy. By 1699 it became clear that parliament would not sanction any reform of the theatre, and support for the cause gradually waned. Indeed, most contemporaries would have probably forgotten all about Collier’s charges of blasphemy had it not been for another providential act of God, and an astonishing historical accident.
On the evening of 26 November 1703, a great storm hit England which caused widespread damage and thousands of deaths.[14] The event was universally acknowledged by the nation’s Protestants as a sign of God’s wrath. To mark the severity of the situation, Queen Anne declared that a general fast be observed as public penance on 19 January 1704. Amidst the national distress, it was reported that a group of actors had only days after the storm performed a version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.[15] The failure of the playhouse to cancel this production in the aftermath of the storm caused pious campaigners once again to take up the pen and attack the stage, this time with a clear mandate from the Almighty. Collier quickly published a short, cheap summation of A short view which, along with a number of other zealous anti-stage publications, were bought and distributed in significant numbers as part of a massive propaganda campaign by the newly formed Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK). In the following months, two prominent journalists, John Tutchin and Daniel Defoe, joined the fray by attacking the stage in their respective publications: The Observator and A Review. Two years later, the zealous clergyman Arthur Bedford capitalised on the momentum of the renewed campaign and published The evil and danger of stage-plays which claimed to list approximately 1400 examples of ‘swearing, cursing and blasphemy’ in plays of the previous two years alone.[16] Despite the ideological differences that would have existed between them, Collier, Bedford, Tutchin, and Defoe shared a common bond by stressing the profanity and blasphemy of the theatres, re-igniting the belief that playhouses were the ‘Devil’s centres of operation’.[17] The rest of this chapter will investigate why these men considered certain plays to be blasphemous. It will be shown that, far from a one-dimensional notion of offensiveness, the charge of blasphemy articulated complex and deeply held theological anxieties.
[1] T.C. Curtis and W.A. Speck, 1976, ‘The Societies for the Reformation of Manners: a case study in the theory and practice of moral reform’, Literature and History, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 45-64, at p. 49. I would like to thank my supervisor, Mark Goldie, for his comments and advice throughout the writing of this paper. I am also grateful for the travel grants given to me by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Clare College, University of Cambridge, which enabled me to attend the ‘Blasphemy and Sacrilege in the Arts’ conference.
[2] For a valuable introduction to the development of this form of blasphemy see: David Nash, 1999, Blasphemy in Modern Britain 1789 to the Present, Aldershot: Ashgate.
[3] I would suggest that the Salman Rushdie affair, for example, has introduced significant challenges to a constructive debate of blasphemy.
[4] 9 & 10 Guill. III. c. 32.
[5] Journal of the House of Lords, vol. XVI, p. 175: opening of the ninth session of Parliament, December 3, 1697.
[6] John Spurr, ‘Virtue, Religion and Government’: the Anglican Uses of Providence’ in Tim Harris; Paul Seaward and Mark Goldie (eds) 1990, The Politics of Religion in Restoration England, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 29-47.
[7] John Edwards, 1705, The preacher discourse shewing what are the particular offices and employments of those of that character in the Church, (part 1), London. p. 100.
[8] I would suggest that fundamental similarities between the mechanisms employed by the theatre and church provide a significant sub-plot to the whole controversy which has yet to be acknowledged by scholars. For an introduction to some of the main themes from another period, see Bryan Crockett, 1995, The Play of Paradox: Stage and Sermon in Renaissance England , Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
[9] This view is implicit in another contemporary argument that the theatre glorified vice and downplayed virtue. See John Dunton, The Athenian Mercury, vol. 6, no. 17 (22 March 1692); vol. 8, no. 25 (22 Nov. 1692); vol. 12, no. 7 (14 Nov. 1693).
[10] For an excellent and seemingly ignored study of Collier’s life and work see E.A. Ewan, 1961, ‘A Study of the Works of Jeremy Collier’ (D.Phil thesis, Oxford University). A short view went through four editions in the first eighteen months and evoked about twenty replies in the same period, see Robert D. Hume, 1999, ‘Jeremy Collier and the Future of the London Theatre in 1698’, Studies in Philology, vol. 96, no. 4, pp. 480-511, p. 495.
[11] Sybil Rosenfeld, 1960, The theatre of the London fairs in the 18th century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[12] Jeremy Collier, A short view (London, 1698), unpaginated preface and contents pages.
[13] Richard Burridge, A scourge for the play-houses: or the character of the English-stage (London, 1702); Harold Love, 1980, ‘Who were the Restoration Audience?’, The Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 21-44.
[14] Daniel Defoe, The storm: or a collection of the most remarkable casualties and disasters which happen’d in the late dreadful tempest both by sea and land (London, 1704).
[15] The Tempest was played on 1 December at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre, see: Emmett L. Avery (ed.) 1960, The London Stage 1660-1800, vol. 2, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press, pp. 49-50.
[16] Arthur Bedford, The evil and danger of stage-plays (Bristol, 1706), p. 81.
[17] Curtis and Speck, ‘The Societies for the Reformation of Manners’, p. 49.