Histrio-Mastix : The players scourge, or, Actors Tragaedie, divided into two parts : wherein it is largely evidenced, by divers Arguments ... that popular stage-playes ... are sinfull, heathenish, lewde, ungodly spectacles, and most pernicious corruptions ... and that the profession of play-poets, of stage players, together with the penning, acting, and frequenting of stage-playes, are unlawfull, infamous and misbeseeming Christians
Histrio-Mastix is a 1633 London polemic by the Puritan writer William Prynne, printed for the bookseller M. Sparke, attacking stage plays and actors as sinful. Its four pictures are decorative woodcut initials, a large R with leafy scrollwork and two ornamental capital I or T letters with flowers and spirals, plus a dark leather binding with a gilt diamond cartouche; a designer could take bold, dense black-line ornament and interlaced foliage as models for display lettering and borders.
