A bawdy-house was a brothel, whorehouse, or a house of prostitution, sometimes called a stew. As a standalone building or attached to a tavern or playhouse, a bawdy-house was the site of considerable vice, crime, and disease in early modern England. Bawds (the individuals who ran the bawdy house, whether they were male or female) and their establishments were not welcome inside the walls of The City of London and mostly inhabited outer suburbs such as Southwark and Smithfield. Despite their existence on the margins of society, bawdy-houses were a part of everyday life throughout the period.
In a brothel, men gathered to smoke, eat, drink, hear or sing lewd songs, and pay for sex. The cost to hire a prostitute in Elizabethan England ranged from sixpence to half a crown (between 4 and 20 pounds in 2023). The pervasive presence of bawdy-houses challenged England’s attitudes about morality and class separation because they flouted these conventions.
Prostitution was technically against both religious and civil law, but officials often looked the other way because they profited from it. in the 16th and 17th centuries, governments and the Church of England had concerns over rising crime and disorder, some of which was tied to the sex trade. They also worried about sexually transmitted infections, particularly syphilis which ravaged huge swaths of Europe after its spread from the New World. Finally, the rise of Puritanism prompted new urgency in efforts to close brothels due to the focus of Puritans on enforcing morality. In 1506, eighteen bawdy houses were closed along the Bankside of the Thames River (twelve would reopen not long after). By 1546, crime and disorder had grown so much than Henry VIII issued a proclamation aimed at a final closing of all stews.
These efforts did little to curb the spread of prostitution. In fact, the closure of licensed bawdy-houses had the opposite effect, for many prostitutes were scattered inside of London and became much harder to police. Unrestrained population growth during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, when London doubled in size between 1550 and 1600, dramatically increased the rate of the poorer classes moving into the swelling slums. Relative economic prosperity brought more upscale travelers who could afford the services of sex workers.
Even though bawdy houses were very much an open secret, prostitutes and their customers were subject to public scorn, shaming, and punishment. Up until Elizabeth I’s ascension, the Church held jurisdiction over sexual offenses of common people in England. Officials called summoners were sent to each parish to find offenders and bring them to
People found guilty of moral crimes could be subjected to various punishments that typically involved public humiliation:
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Shakespeare also repeatedly alludes to bawdy-houses in his work. Hamlet famously implores the innocent Ophelia to get thee to a nunn’ry
several times (3.1.120; 128–29; 136-37; 139). Critics have debated whether these are straight-forward commands to Ophelia to escape the corruption of the world by entering a convent, or whether Shakespeare implies, like Nash, that there is no escape from the world’s corruption and that Ophelia might as well go to a brothel.
Falstaff, a comedic character in several of Shakespeare’s plays, embodies the revelry and hedonism found in bawdy-houses. Inside the Boar’s-Head Tavern in the London neighborhood of Eastcheap, Falstaff is unashamed as he talks about his lifestyle:
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