Though the physical health of the public was the initial reason for monitoring of theaters, fear shifted from physical to moral corruption in the 1590s. As Joseph Lenz argues in his essay “Base Trade: Theater as Prostitution,” the theater “came to be seen with prostitution-seeking eyes”[19] because the audience went to Southwark, and to playhouses especially, seeking prostitutes. Perhaps the most obvious similarity between playhouses and brothels is the voyeurism associated with the two.

According to John Northbrooke, an opponent of the theater in the 1500s, the aesthetics of the theater and the strutting of players is analogous to the strutting of prostitutes on the street. Northbrooke contended that “men watching play commit adultery in their minds,” a common sentiment that led many to urge the Common Council to abolish theaters. They argued that, “like a brothel, the theater houses some lewd intrigue of fornication; like a bawd, it advertises its product with effeminate gesture and costly apparel; like a prostitute, the motive is the same – money.”[19]

Churchmen denounced the theatre for its immorality, contending that the plague was a tangible sign of the heavens cursing the ungodliness of plays. A public opponent of the theatre, satirist Stephen Gosson, wrote an appeal to the Queen’s council, requesting that plays be banished for their impropriety in a Christian commonwealth. In his 1582 petition, Gosson calls plays the work of the devil, calling even the best plays, merely a mixture of good and evil:

The argument of Tragedies is wrath, crueltie, incest, iniurie, murther eyther violent by sworde, or voluntary by poyson. The persons, Gods, Goddesses, furies, fiendes, Kinges, Quenes, and mightie men. The ground worke of Commedies, is loue, cosenedge, flatterie, bawderie, slye conneighance of whordome. The persons, cookes, queanes, knaues, baudes, parasites, courtezannes, lecherouse olde men, amorous yong men.

The best play you can picke out, is but a mixture of good and euill, how can it be then the schoolemistres of life? The beholding of troubles and miserable slaughters that are in Tragedies, driue vs to immoderate sorrow, heauines, womanish weeping and mourning, whereby we become louers of dumpes, and lamentation, both enemies of fortitude. Comedies so tickle our senses with a pleasanter vaine, that they make vs louers of laughter, and pleasure, without any meane, both foes to temperance, what schooling is this?

Playes are the inuentions of the deuil, the offrings of Idolatrie, the pompe of worldlinges, the blossomes of vanitie, the roote of Apostacy, the foode of iniquitie, ryot, and adulterie. detest them. Players are masters of vice, teachers of wantonnesse, spurres to impuritie, the Sonnes of idlenesse, so longe as they liue in this order, loath them. God is mercifull, his winges are spred to receyue you if you come betimes, God is iust, his bow is bent & his arrowe drawen, to send you a plague, if you stay too longe.[13]

Gosson had written plays of his own earlier in his career, but because he believed that his own plays were morally acceptable, he excluded them from his general censure of the stage. In this passage, Gosson divides the stage into two genres, tragedy and comedy, attacking each from a Puritanical viewpoint. It is telling that Gosson writes that tragedies cause "womanish" reactions because much of the controversy surrounding theatres had to do with the lewdness and impropriety that plays produced; these vices were also largely associated with women and their immoral enticement of men.