Thomas Heywood in the House of the Wise-woman

In The Wise-woman of Hogsdon, Thomas Heywood deploys the bawdy space of the Wise-woman’s house not only to defend the stage by turning the puritanical association of theaters and brothels on its head, but also to envision an alternative communal authority uniquely suited to the spatial and semiotic instability of early modern urban life. Heywood’s play, while critical of both ecclesiastical and secular authorities, is ultimately traditionalist in its assertion that the kind of multivocal meaning making that is possible only in a dramatic, heterotopic space advances the cause of social stability when the normative authorities prove corrupt or impotent.