The Society was revived for a period in 1757, and was recognised by George II. A later successor was William Wilberforce's Society for the Suppression of Vice, founded following a Royal Proclamation by George III in 1787, "For the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue, and for the Preventing and Punishing of Vice, Profaneness and Immorality".
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George Edward Cokayne Complete Baronetage Volume 1 1900 Philipps was returned unopposed as Member of Parliament for Pembroke Boroughs at the 1695 general election. From a nonconformist background, he spent a great deal of time in Parliament speaking and creating legislation against profaneness, immorality, debauchery and gambling. In 1697, he became Custos Rotulorum of Pembrokeshire on the death of his father.
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He was attacked on both counts, and was one of the prime targets of Jeremy Collier's Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. In his architectural career, he created what came to be known as English Baroque. His architectural work was as bold and daring as his early political activism and marriage-themed plays, and jarred conservative opinions on the subject.
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Although popular with the public, Dryden's play was attacked by Jeremy Collier in his 1698 pamphlet entitled "A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage" for undermining social mores and attacking the political values of his day. The work was later altered significantly by John Hawkesworth for a production in 1756, with him removing what he considered the morally objectionable material.
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Jeremy Collier attacked the play on both counts in his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, published in 1698. Comparing Ophelia to Electra, he condemns Shakespeare for allowing his heroine to become "immodest" in her insanity, particularly in the "Flower Scene". Collier's attack occasioned a widespread, often vituperative controversy. Hamlet in general and Ophelia in particular were defended by Thomas D'urfey and George Drake almost immediately.
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By the eighth season, the Dodge had passed one million miles. Al's Dodge actually appears to be a 1972 Plymouth Duster in one early episode, however it is only referred to as "The Dodge" and is supposedly constructed of the various parts of other wrecked and mangled Dodges. The producers originally wanted to cast comedian Sam Kinison as Al Bundy. However, they ultimately chose not to, due to the profaneness of Kinison's comedy routines.
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He complained that the college and university authorities would not give proper recommendations to strong Calvinist graduates, but gave good recommendations to "men notorious for nothing so much in their day as profaneness, debauchery, and all kind of riotous living." This could clearly be taken as a reference to his own appointment. He argued that the Church of England needed reform as much as the Church of Rome. In the summer of 1831 Bulteel toured the west of England.
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In answer to a sermon preached by Edward Oliver, M.A., before Sir Humphry Edwin. By a Lover of Unity. A book called The Stage Condemned, in support of Jeremy Collier's Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, appeared in September 1698, and the author of a reply, The Stage Acquitted, says it was by Mr. R[idpa]th, the formidable author of a scandalous newspaper, and the wretched retailer of mad Prynne's enthusiastic cant.
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Collier, instead, preferred his restrictions imposed on comedy (e.g. his rigid Neoclassical notions of dramatic decorum) and in doing so he followed the same twisted moral logic found in the work of other critics who had imposed the law of poetic justice on tragedy (e.g. Thomas Rymer and his A Short View of Tragedy (1693)). A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage is often credited with turning the tide against the sexually explicit nature of Restoration comedy, but the tide had already begun turning; Collier’s pamphlet was only “swimming” with the “tide” of public opinion. The truth was that Restoration comedy was over; it had been worn down by external factors, such as the Glorious Revolution and William and Mary’s bête-noire for theatre. Maybe the most obvious sign of Restoration theatre’s death came with the nolle prosequi (immunity from prosecution for earlier offenses) granted to Collier by William III (for A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage).
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The Idle 'Prentice Executed at Tyburn - plate 11 and The Industrious 'Prentice Mayor of London - plate 12 in Industry and Idleness (1747) by William Hogarth The last scheme of Andrew Moreton aims to prevent street robbery “first by heavenly, and then by earthly means”. The former consist in “enforcing and encouraging a reformation of manners, by suppressing of vice and immorality, and punishing profaneness and licentiousness”. Widespread immoral habits are the reading of lustful ballads, swearing, and alcohol abuse. The latter include the introduction of an efficient system of surveillance and lighting of the streets.
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He goes on, in great detail—despite the title—to give his evidence. For Collier, the immorality of the title stems from Restoration comedy’s lack of poetic justice. With his exhaustively thorough readings—in a sense, pre-close reading close readings—he condemns the characters of Restoration comedies as impious and wicked and he condemned their creators (the playwrights) for failing to punish the playwrights’ wicked “favorites.” As the title suggests, Collier also charges the playwrights with profaneness, supporting his allegations with a number quotations from the plays (i.e.
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Sentimental comedy was a reaction to the bawdy restoration comedy of the 17th and 18th centuries. Many believed that the sexually explicit behavior encouraged by Charles II on the stage led to the demoralization of the English population outside the theater. Many felt that restoration comedies, which started out ridiculing vice, appeared to support vice instead therefore becoming one of the leading causes of moral corruption. One of the leading environmental factors that made way for this new genre was Jeremy Collier's Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, published in 1698.
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Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg was one of the most influential set designers of the time because of his use of floor space and scenery. Because of the turmoil before this time, there was still some controversy about what should and should not be put on the stage. Jeremy Collier, a preacher, was one of the heads in this movement through his piece A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. The beliefs in this paper were mainly held by non-theatre goers and the remainder of the Puritans and very religious of the time.
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The second edition of Collier's Short View. In March 1698, Jeremy Collier published his anti-theatre pamphlet, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage; in the pamphlet, Collier attacks a number of playwrights: William Wycherley, John Dryden, William Congreve, John Vanbrugh, and Thomas D’Urfey. Collier attacks rather recent, rather popular comedies from the London stage; he accuses the playwrights of profanity, blasphemy, indecency, and undermining public morality through the sympathetic depiction of vice. Collier begins his pamphlet with this conclusion: “[N]othing has gone farther in Debauching the Age than the Stage Poets, and Play-House” (Collier A2).
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Collier would later fire back with his Defence of the Short View in 1699 and Edward Filmer would go on to defend Restoration theatre in 1707 with A Defence of Plays. Yet, by the end of the 17th century, the Restoration comic style had collapsed: the satiric presentation of English life gave way to the sentimental portrait (beginning in 1696 with Colley Cibber’s Love's Last Shift) (Bernbaum 72). A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage only signaled the swelling of public opposition to the real or imposed indecency of the plays staged over the last three decades.
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Gray, Tony: The > Orange Order Bodley Head, London, 1972, p.87 Ensuing out of the anti-Catholic landowner slogan "To Hell or Connaught" after the Battle of the Diamond in 1795,Gray, Tony: pp.50–52 the "No Popery"originated from the solemn League and Covenant of 1643, which was a formal agreement to reform religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland and to endeavour the extirpation of popery, prelacy . . . . superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness and what ever shall be found to be contrary to sound doctrine and the power of godliness: Lewis, Goeffrey: Carson – the Man who divided Ireland, p.
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In regard to the same matter, Herbert addressed a 21 October letter to Edward Knight, the "book-keeper" or prompter of the King's Men, on the subject of "oaths, profaneness, and public ribaldry" in the company's plays.Halliday, p. 268. Herbert's reaction to the play, which may have been caused by accusations of leniency from his superiors, specifically the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, caused tension between the acting companies and the censor. Herbert's intervention in the performance that day resulted in a greater focus on the re-licensing of old plays that were being revived at the time.
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The city had been built for seafaring transit and trade, and Manhattan's only connection to the mainland was the narrow, wooden King's bridge over the Harlem River, nearly 11 miles north of the city and ferries across the North (Hudson's) River. Most of the population of 20,000 was crowded into an area of less than a square mile near the East River wharves and the New York Harbor. The city's traders, stock brokers, and mariners brought with them great wealth. Henry Knox wrote his wife admiring New Yorkers' "magnificent" horse carriages and fine furniture, but condemning their "want of principle," "pride and conceit," "profaneness," and "insufferable" Toryism.
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The Society also brought lawsuits against playwrights whose plays were perceived to contain insufficient moral instruction. The new attitude to the theatre may be judged from the anti-theatre pamphlet Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage by Jeremy Collier, from 1698, who attacked the lack of moral instruction contained in contemporary plays, such as Love For Love (1695) by William Congreve and The Relapse (1696) by John Vanbrugh, signalling the end of the popularity of Restoration comedy. The Society flourished until the 1730s, with 1,363 prosecutions in 1726-7.Commentary on Conjugal Lewdness (1727) by Daniel Defoe, from the Literary Encyclopedia.
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In 1698, Vanbrugh's argumentative and sexually frank plays were singled out for special attention by Jeremy Collier in his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, particularly for their failure to impose exemplary morality by appropriate rewards and punishments in the fifth act. Vanbrugh laughed at these charges and published a joking reply, where he accused the clergyman Collier of being more sensitive to unflattering portrayals of the clergy than to real irreligion. However, rising public opinion was already on Collier's side. The intellectual and sexually explicit Restoration comedy style was becoming less and less acceptable to audiences and was soon to be replaced by a drama of sententious morality.
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In the history of English drama, Collier is known for his anti-theatrical attack on the comedy of the 1690s in his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698), which draws for its ammunition mostly on the plays of William Congreve, John Vanbrugh, John Dryden, and Thomas D'Urfey. At the start of the English Civil War (1642) theatres were closed and in 1647 a law was passed to punish anyone who participated in or viewed drama. After the war, and during the English Interregnum, the Puritans, under Oliver Cromwell, had control of most of the English government. They placed heavy restrictions on entertainment and entertainment venues that were perceived as being pagan or immoral.
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For instance they held that: > Even if it is true that those who are adept in the habit of faith and > holiness can only with difficulty fall back to their former profaneness and > dissoluteness of life, yet we believe that it is entirely possible, if not > rarely done, that they fall back little by little and until they completely > lack their prior faith and charity. And having abandoned the way of > righteousness, they revert to their worldly impurity which they had truly > left, returning like pigs to wallowing in the mud and dogs to their vomit, > and are again entangled in lusts of the flesh which they had formerly, truly > fled. And thus totally and at length also they are finally torn from the > grace of God unless they seriously repent in time.
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The tolerance for Restoration comedy even in its modified form was running out at the end of the 17th century, as public opinion turned to respectability and seriousness even faster than the playwrights did. Interconnected causes for this shift in taste were demographic change, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, William's and Mary's dislike of the theatre, and the lawsuits brought against playwrights by the Society for the Reformation of Manners (founded in 1692). When Jeremy Collier attacked Congreve and Vanbrugh in his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage in 1698, he was confirming a shift in audience taste that had already taken place. At the much-anticipated all-star première in 1700 of The Way of the World, Congreve's first comedy for five years, the audience showed only moderate enthusiasm for that subtle and almost melancholy work.
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Greatly concerned by what he perceived to be the degeneracy of British society, Wilberforce was also active in matters of moral reform, lobbying against "the torrent of profaneness that every day makes more rapid advances", and considered this issue and the abolition of the slave trade as equally important goals. At the suggestion of Wilberforce and Bishop Porteus, King George III was requested by the Archbishop of Canterbury to issue in 1787 the Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice, as a remedy for the rising tide of immorality. The proclamation commanded the prosecution of those guilty of "excessive drinking, blasphemy, profane swearing and cursing, lewdness, profanation of the Lord's Day, and other dissolute, immoral, or disorderly practices". Greeted largely with public indifference, Wilberforce sought to increase its impact by mobilising public figures to the cause, and by founding the Society for the Suppression of Vice.
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The Provoked Wife is something of a Restoration problem play in its attention to the subordinate legal position of married women and the complexities of "divorce" and separation, issues that had been highlighted in the mid-1690s by some notorious cases before the House of Lords. The tolerance for Restoration comedy even in its modified form was running out by the end of the 17th century, as public opinion turned to respectability and seriousness even faster than the playwrights did.Interconnected causes for this shift in taste were demographic change, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, William's and Mary's dislike of the theatre, and the lawsuits brought against playwrights by the Society for the Reformation of Manners (founded in 1692). When Jeremy Collier attacked Congreve and Vanbrugh in his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage in 1698, he was confirming a shift in audience taste that had already taken place.
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On 21 October, Herbert addressed a letter to Edward Knight, the "book-keeper" or prompter of the company, on the subject of the "oaths, profaneness, and public ribaldry" in their plays. And on 24 October, John Lowin and Eliard Swanston apologised to Herbert for giving offence. (Joseph Taylor and Robert Benfield were reportedly present at the meeting, but were uninvolved in either the offence or the apology; apparently Swanston and Lowin were in the cast of The Woman's Prize but Benfield and Taylor were not.) After this incident, the King's Men had their old play texts re-examined by Herbert for new productions, something that was previously not required. This meant more fees paid to Herbert. The text of Fletcher's play was repaired adequately by the next month, when the company performed The Taming of the Shrew and The Woman's Prize before the King and Queen at St. James's Palace on 26 and 28 November 1633.
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During the Commonwealth and Protectorate, English religious laws, including on blasphemy, were applied to Ireland by the Rump Parliament in 1650"December 1650: Commissions and Instructions"; Firth & Rait 1911, pp.494–495 and the Third Protectorate Parliament in 1659."July 1659: An Act giveing severall powers to the Comrs. for Ireland within named and declareing severall Laws, Ordinances, and Acts of Parliament to be in force in Ireland"; Firth & Rait 1911, pp.1298–1299 Six bills to suppress "blasphemy and profaneness" were introduced in the Parliament of Ireland between 1697 and 1713, but none was passed into law. There was a prosecution in the Kingdom of Ireland for blasphemous libel in 1703: Thomas Emlyn, a Unitarian minister, was fined £1,000 and imprisoned for one year for denying the Divinity of Christ.Keane 1991, §14 Emlyn later argued that his action was not blasphemy but heresy, which was not a crime in common law or Anglican canon law (though it was so in Catholic canon law).
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They set up a commission "for promoting the knowledge of true religion, suppressing Popery and profaneness ... (having) particular regard to such parishes in South Uist, Small Isles, Glenco, Harris, the countries of Moidart, Glengary and the other parishes of the Synods Glenelg and Argyle ... (affected) by the prevalency of Popery and ignorance". Missionaries were to be sent, who would be persons of "undoubted loyalty to his Majesty and of competent skills in the principles of Divinity, and particularly in Popish controversies" (p13) and they were to "teach the principles and duties of the true Christian Protestant religion, and the obligations they are under to duty and loyalty to our Sovereign King George, and obedience to the laws". This Committee was empowered to call on the Government for help, if need be. This was an annual commission, as were other commissions to "enquire into the publishing of books and pamphlets, tending towards the promoting of opinions of any kind , inconsistent with our Confession of Faith", and it was to contribute what it could to the suppression of vice and immorality.
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