Today I’ve spent some time browsing through the documents held online at JISC. It’s an absolutely brilliant database of written work that spans the centuries, covering everything from political insights to cookery books and guides to romance. While it’s fascinating to discover its countless works that are heartfelt and thoughtful, there’s nothing quite like stumbling across a piece that’s completely (and often unintentionally) hilarious.
The Ranters Ranting, a pamphlet that I came across today, fits this bill perfectly. To get some idea of its content, look no further than the image on its cover:
I’m sure I’ve been to some parties like this.
With revelry, nakedness and buttock-kissing splashed across its front page, this pamphlet clearly deals with a pretty wild affair. As if that wasn’t bad enough, its content is made all the more shocking when you learn that it was printed in 1650, when Puritanism was in its prime and an ascendant English Parliament was trying to legislate this sort of immoral behaviour out of existence.
Don’t let this racy image fool you, however; far from encouraging your inner hedonist, the author wants you to be scandalized. As your eyes turn to read the headline, you discover that this is a depiction of criminal activity, and that the pamphlet concerns a group of partygoers that have been charged for committing precisely these improper acts.
Of course, it’s not enough to just know that these men and women have been charged. What you want, and what the pamphlet promises, is a full account of all the naughty things they got up to. With a twisted mix of outrage and morbid fascination, the author invites the reader to ‘’set forth for the further discovery of this ungodly crew’, offering up a full-blown name and shame, no holds barred.
After this substantial build-up, The Ranters Ranting finally spills out the salacious details over the course of a nifty six pages. In painstaking detail, the author recounts that the partygoers sang bawdily, swore, drank, ate sloppily and stayed up until 10AM. One guy even got his bum out and farted.
While this all seems incredibly tame for us nowadays, for 17th-century readers this event had all the makings of a minor scandal. The rude verses that the revellers sang were blasphemously set to psalm music, the swearing made a mockery of God and toasts were made with a complete disdain for religion. For a society where Faith was a key pillar of everyday life and order, these acts were both insulting and wildly dangerous.
While the party itself has its merits as a slightly amusing little occasion, it’s in the pamphlet’s handling of the topic that the whole piece becomes comedy gold. While it’s made abundantly clear that we readers ought to feel outraged by the events of the party, the author also takes great pains to see which of the worst details he can get away with printing. Included in The Ranters Ranting is a protracted account of one of the offenders and her attempt to seduce a Gentleman, for example. Starting with some clever innuendo on the woman’s part (which of course, is shared in full), the situation ends when she puts her seduction into overdrive. immodestly disrobes and starts slapping her thighs, an action that upsets this ‘Gent of Quality’ so much that he flees the scene. As if this wasn’t bad enough, our author almost reaches the level of parody when he declares that ‘they fell to filthy songs and catches which are not fit to be published, yet, for satisfaction’s sake, I shall give one of their songs to the first scene…’
As much as his writing is ridiculous, we can’t blame the poor author of The Ranters Ranting for treading this fine line between honest reporting and dubious attention-seeking. Although his denunciations and angry tone seem to jar with his readiness to divulge even the most intimate of facts, his sort of work certainly has an all-too familiar feel to it. In fact, it’s no great stretch to link The Ranters Ranting to hack writing today, where journalists readily cater to an audience that’s just waiting to be outraged. 17th-century writers clearly knew how to draw in the crowds just as well as their 21st-century counterparts, using attention-grabbing front pages and dirty details to fan the flames of moral revulsion while making a quick buck. Credit where it’s due, The Ranters Ranting certainly caught my eye, even if not for the reasons it intended. Here’s hoping that, in another 350 years, today’s headline-grabbers will get a similar reaction!
The Adventures of A Feign'd Hero 