Playing the whore: performing and contextualising prostitution in The Three Ladies of London

This essay explores the literary and social contexts of prostitution in Robert Wilson's The Three Ladies of London (1581). Drawing on a diverse range of texts from the sixteenth century (including sermons, moral treatises, educational tracts, and drama), I investigate how Wilson represents prostitution not only as a moral evil, but also as a particularly social and economic failing. By the conclusion of Three Ladies, each of the female characters is identified as sexually transgressive; but how exactly is Lucre identifiable as a whore, why does Conscience turn to brothel-keeping, and how does the newly-married Love degenerate into Lust? Ultimately, I suggest that Wilson drew on and helped to establish a series of interlinked social, linguistic, material, and performative markers to delineate and stage the whore and that Three Ladies thus contributed to the development of the whore as a figure of dramatic interest. This essay was commissioned for and is available on the website for the project "Performance as Research in Early English Theatre Studies: The Three Ladies of London in Context", based in McMasters University, Canada, in 2015. Read more here: https://threeladiesoflondon.humanities.mcmaster.ca/home/index.htm