Realizing the opportunity for potential customers, whores flocked to the theatres to offer their “commodities” as they referred to their merchandise. In this way, the theater was not merely associated with the brothel, but effectively became a brothel. The playhouse became a marketplace, wherein prostitutes could make business contracts with their customers. Many of this consumers also contracted venereal diseases from these interactions. John Dryden describes this phenomenon of business exchange in “Poor Pensive Punk”:

The Playhouse Punks, who in a loose undress
Each Night receive some Cullies’ soft address;
Reduc’d perhaps to the last poor half-crown
A tawdry Gown and Petticoat put on
Go to the House where they demurely sit
Angling for Bubbles in the Noisy Pit…
The Playhouse is their place of Traffic, where
Nightly they sit to sell their rotton Ware.
Tho’ done in silence and Without a Cryer
Yet he that bids the most is still the Buyer:
For while he nibbles at her am’rous Trap
She gets the Money: he gets the clap.[6]

Dryden’s assertion that the customers of these whores contracted venereal diseases was one of the strongest reasons that the playhouses, and Southwark in general, were considered base. Southwark, already associated with leprosy and disease (lepers were shipped to Southwark in 1557), was itself considered a sort of open, infectious sore, because of the presence of the “basist sort of people.”

Initial attempts to control theatres were made on the basis of protecting public health. Sores, which had historically been connected to leprosy, were now the visible effects of the plague and syphilis. These hallmarks of disease were becoming more and more common at playhouses, where the afflictions spread as people came together in close confinement. Throughout the 1580s, the Lord Mayor of England continually urged the government to suppress public plays in order to prevent the spread of disease:

"It may please your honor According to our dutie I and my brethren have had care for staye of infection of the plague and published orders in that behalf w ch we intend god willing to execute with diligence. Among other we find one very great and dangerous inconvenience of people to playes, beare bayting, fencers, and pphane spectacles at the Theatre and Curtaine and other like places to w ch doe resorte great multitudes of the basist sort of people; and many enfected with sores running on them" [19].

Though the Lord Mayor was not the only personage opposed to the perceived lack of civility that took place in the theatres, the playhouses and their operatives benefited from Queen Elizabeth's support. The companies of actors effectively belonged to the queen. Elizabeth's compromise was to forbid the establishment of playhouses within the city, thus pushing them across the Thames. Additionally, performances of plays could be regarded as merely rehearsals. The public was invited to attend these "rehearsals," which could be as frequent as the playhouse's manager desired. Despite Elizabeth's support of plays, churchmen categorically denounced plays as lewd and inviting the wrath of heaven. Puritans and Anglicans, alike, castigated the theatre for its sacreligious allowance of men to dress as women, as well as for the lawlessness encouraged in plays. Numerous condemnations of the playhouses subsequntly emerged.

[Next]