The essay examines how corporal punishment and other rough treatments have figured in social relations and the history of literature, tracing these practices from the early modern period onward. It assembles anecdotes and documentary examples to show how poets and playwrights were often subordinate to troupes or patrons and subjected to public humiliations and coercion. The narrative connects these rituals of domination with the economics of patronage and the everyday condition of men of letters. It concludes that mapping this uncomfortable history helps explain the gradual improvement of writers’ social standing and the growing respect afforded to intellectual labor.