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

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dc.contributor.authorSemple, Edel
dc.date.accessioned2026-02-18T11:50:01Z
dc.date.available2026-02-18T11:50:01Z
dc.date.issued2015
dc.description.abstractThis 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 en
dc.description.versionPublished Version
dc.format.extent18
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.authororcidSemple, Edel§0000-0002-1708-5288
dc.identifier.citationSemple, E 2015, 'Playing the whore: performing and contextualising prostitution in The Three Ladies of London', Paper presented at Performance as Research in Early English Theatre Studies: The Three Ladies of London in Context, Hamilton, Canada, 23/06/15 - 25/06/15.
dc.identifier.otherBibtex: semple2015playing
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/18541
dc.language.isoen
dc.relation.urihttps://threeladiesoflondon.humanities.mcmaster.ca/contexts/love.htm
dc.relation.urihttps://threeladiesoflondon.humanities.mcmaster.ca/home/index.htm
dc.rights© 2015, the author and Performance as Research in Early English Theatre Studies: The Three Ladies of London in Context post-conference website. Published as: Semple, E. (2015) 'Playing the whore: performing and contextualising prostitution in The Three Ladies of London', Performance as Research in Early English Theatre Studies: The Three Ladies of London in Context, the John Douglas Taylor Conference, McMaster University, Hammilton, Ontario, Canada, 23-25 June 2015.
dc.rights.accessrightsopen access
dc.statusPeer reviewed
dc.subjectEarly modern drama
dc.subjectPerformance as research
dc.subjectSex workers
dc.subjectEarly modern England
dc.titlePlaying the whore: performing and contextualising prostitution in The Three Ladies of Londonen
dc.typeConference item
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