Running to over a thousand pages, and with a main title of 43 lines, Histriomastix marshals a multitude of ancient and medieval authorities against the "sin" of dramatic performance.
In addition, his book was to be burned by the common hangman, and he was expelled from his university, prohibited from practicing law, and mutilated by the severance of his ears.
During his imprisonment, Prynne continued to produce anonymous pamphlets attacking leaders of the Anglican Church, which induced the authorities, in 1637, to inflict further mutilation: first, the surviving stumps of his severed ears were cut off, and, second, his cheeks were branded with the letters “S.L.” The letters represented the words “Seditious Libeler,” but since his biting words sometimes attacked Archbishop Laud, Prynne preferred to render them as “Stigmata Laudis,” or, “the marks of Laud.”[10][11] Not long before the execution of Charles I, which occurred on 30 January 1649, a tract began to circulate, datelined "London, printed in the year 1649," and bearing the title Mr. William Prynn His Defence of Stage Plays in a Retractation of a former Book of his called Histrio-Mastix.
Prynne responded with a “posting-bill,” or flyer, of his own under the title “Vindication,” which bore the date January 10, 1648, oddly a full year before the publication of the alleged retraction.
In 1825, the antiquarian E. W. Brayley undertook to expose the “retraction” as a hoax in a slim volume entitled An Enquiry into the Genuineness of Prynne’s “Defense of Stage Plays,” and his argument addresses, in part, the anomaly of the dates by explaining the slow acceptance of the calendar reforms of 1582.