RALPH:  Hamlet’s attacks on Gertrude’s second marriage are pretty fierce – and perhaps the harshest moment is when he suggests that in marrying Claudius she’s taking the rose off the innocence of her previous marriage and replacing it with a blister or a burn, which may be an indirect reference to prostitution.

SARAH:  Prostitutes in Elizabethan England could be punished by branding them on the forehead with a hot iron, a horrible and permanent marking that visibly announced that person’s crime.

RALPH:  Shakespeare makes numerous references to prostitution, which was certainly common enough in the world around him. The Globe theater was located in the red light district of London, and city authorities frequently argued for the closing of the theaters because theater audiences supposedly provided an excellent source of clientele for prostitutes.

SARAH:  It seems that in many people’s minds at the time, the theater and prostitution weren’t that far apart on the moral spectrum of entertainment. There were several famous pamphlets which attacked the theatre for its encouragement of immorality and vice.

RALPH:  And these attacks weren’t completely without foundation:  Philip Henslowe, one of the most successful theatrical entrepreneurs, and Edward Alleyn, the most acclaimed actor of the period, also owned brothels.

SARAH:  Critics like Bryan Reynolds have pointed out that it wasn’t simply the geographical proximity of brothels and theaters – there were all sorts of overlapping social groups and social practices that brought the theatre and the worlds of criminalized sexuality together – this included not only prostitution, but also homosexuality and transvestism.