SOURCE: Pritchard, Allan. “Abuses Stript and Whipt and Wither's Imprisonment.” The Review of English Studies n.s. 14, no. 56 (November 1963): 337-45.

In the following essay, Pritchard explores the reasons for Wither's 1614 incarceration in the Marshalsea prison for his essay Abuses Stript and Whipt.

George Wither's imprisonment in 1614 for his authorship of Abuses Stript and Whipt stirred considerable attention among his contemporaries, winning him the sympathy of such fellow poets as William Browne of Tavistock, Christopher Brooke, and Richard Brathwait,¹ and it has an enduring claim to interest as the occasion of The Shepheards Hunting, perhaps his finest work, which he composed within the walls of the Marshalsea. Yet the reason for his punishment has never been satisfactorily explained. Abuses was passed by the official licenser, Taverner, before it was entered, on 16 January 1613, in the Stationers' Register,² and Wither was not arrested until more than a year later, when it...