Fear of fun
In the 1700s, Boston’s Brattle Street Church minister Benjamin Colman summed up the Puritan view of actors: That “wanton man” has succumbed to bold and immodest levity. He abandons “the gravity of reason and acts the part of a frolic colt,” Colman insisted. “He roars and frisks and leaps.” Few vocations encourage roaring and frisking and leaping as much as the performing arts. There were, therefore, few callings the Puritans despised more than acting.
Source: washingtonexaminer.com