The Three Ladies of London
The Three Ladies of London is an Elizabethan comedy about usury and social corruption, likely first performed around 1581. It was published in quarto editions in 1584 and again in 1592. The play is notable for its philo-Semitic stance at a time of strong anti-Jewish sentiment in English drama and society.
The story is set in London and uses allegorical figures rather than fully developed characters. The three ladies are Lucre, Love, and Conscience. They gain control with the help of Disimulation, Fraud, Simony, and Usury, spreading greed through people’s homes and shops. Love is forced into a marriage with Disimulation; Conscience protests but is overwhelmed when Usury destroys Hospitality. Conscience is left to survive by selling brooms, while Lucre turns Conscience into a keeper of a house of ill repute. Other symbolic figures appear, such as Diligence, Simplicity, and Sincerity, along with Tom Beggar and Peter Pleaseman the parson. In the final scene, a stern judge named Nemo (which means “No one”) tries to restore order by punishing the three Ladies.
A key character is Gerontius, a Levantine Jewish moneylender who is portrayed as honest and kind. In contrast, Mercadorus, a Christian Italian who borrows and refuses to repay, is depicted as the economic villain. Interestingly, the play suggests Usury is English in origin but of Jewish descent. Some villains are shown as cosmopolitan foreigners, while the moral center is the local London community.
The verse is rough and uneven, mixing different meters. The play may have been revised after early reactions and helped provoke later works about usury, including London Against the Three Ladies and, more famously, Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The Three Ladies of London is sometimes read as an early analogue to Shakespeare’s plays.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 10:14 (CET).