Civic Institutions and Precarious Masculinity in Dekker’s The Honest Whore
Howard, Jean E.
Early Modern Culture, No. 1 (2000)
Abstract
In 1604 Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker published The Honest Whore, a play that contradicts Overbury’s assertion that prostitutes never reform until a stay in a hospital thrusts shame and repentance upon them. Bellafront, the honest whore of the play’s title, renounces her life of dissolution in Act II, and then through this play and the sequel, The Honest Whore, Part II, she stays chaste despite numerous temptations to return to her life of sin. Reformed whores aren’t common in city comedy, but unreformed ones are, especially in a group of plays staged soon after 1603 , the year of James I’s accession to England’s throne. To my knowledge, only The Dutch Courtesan (1605) joins The Honest Whore in giving the prostitute top billing in its title; but whores or bawds are important charcters in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1604), Westward Ho (1604), Eastward Ho (1605), Northward Ho (1605), and in a number of other plays written during these two years.
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