ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses dramatists such as Thomas Dekker, John Marston and Thomas Middleton, who begins to depict prostitution as a social problem in need of a social solution. Dramatists could achieve what the authorities could not by converting the courtesan into a wife, or revealing her as truly innocent, but doing so allowed these equivocations to persist. Dekker presents his audience that prostitution was first and foremost a moral problem, addressed theologically with a tale of conversion, and it has become a social problem that raises evident scepticism about the city's practical capabilities for regulation. Shakespeare introduces what might be called 'local' prostitution in the two parts of Henry IV, at the end of which Doll Tear-sheet and Mistress Quickly are carried off to 'whipping cheer' in 'base durance and contagious prison'. All of these plays, like Marston's Dutch Courtesan, were written for companies of boy players, and Middleton filled them with bawdy jokes and innuendo.
