The Beleaguered Virtue: Robert Wilson’s The Three Ladies of London and the Problem of Conscience

Abstract

Taking as its focal point Conscience and her downfall, this essay argues that Robert Wilson’s late morality play The Three Ladies of London (performed 1581, printed 1592) depicts conscience as a social virtue, only to subvert such a conception at the moment of her corruption. In so doing, it departs from earlier Tudor moral literature, including social satire and morality drama, by depicting social virtues not merely as powerless, absent, or led astray, but as subject to erosion and agents of social destruction. By depicting Conscience as a social virtue, the play brings to the fore the tension between the personal and consensual motives that have always characterized conscience in order to plumb it. The play’s representation of Conscience demonstrates the reciprocity between the personal and social aspects of conscience, even as it confuses them. This essay puts the play in dialogue with other late-sixteenth-century texts and ultimately contends that Conscience was socially and morally charged, and to listen to its voice was to benefit the city.