The Herbal Bed (1996) is a play by Peter Whelan, written specifically for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The play is set in the year 1613 and is about Susanna Hall, daughter of William Shakespeare, who is accused of adultery with local haberdasher Rafe Smith.

Her husband, Dr John Hall, is suspicious of their relationship, but stands up for his wife when she takes her accuser to court for slander.

In the original 1996 production at The Other Place theatre, the leading role of John Hall was played by Liam Cunningham.

The accuser Jack Lane was played by David Tennant and Smith by Joseph Fiennes.

In 1998, a NYC production played at the Eugene O'Neill Theater with an all-American cast, including Armand Schultz (Rafe), Tuck Milligan (John), and Laila Robins (Susanna).

Scene one: In the herbal garden outside the Halls's residence, raffish medical student Jack Lane and pious haberdasher Rafe Smith discuss the visit of the local bishop.

Rafe says that since her husband will be away she should join him and his wife for dinner at his friend John Palmer's house.

Susanna says she is making a medical preparation for herself, but when Jack sees the medicine she has made he recognises it as a treatment for gonorrhea.

It is from an acquaintance, who tells him that Jack was mouthing off in the local inn that Susanna has gonorrhea and that she has passed it on to Rafe after meeting him at the empty Palmer residence.

Jack feels insulted that a mere tradesman is looking down on him, and draws his sword, but Rafe easily disarms him.

Though Hester loyally supports her mistress's version of events, Rafe can barely be held back from confessing.

She invokes Rafe's admiration of John, pointing out that the truth would humiliate him and probably destroy his practice.

Scene two: At the ecclesiastical court John, Rafe, Susanna and Hester wait to testify.

Goche thinks he has found an inconsistency in one detail and recalls Hester, who has been forcibly detained.

John speaks of his impotence as a doctor, believing that his inability to help Susanna's father is divine punishment.

He tells Susanna that he now understands that she believed her father to be suffering from gonorrhea, and that the treatment she was preparing was intended for him.

[2] On 15 July the Halls brought suit for slander against Lane in the Consistory Court at Worcester.

Robert Whatcott, who three years later witnessed Shakespeare's will, testified for the Halls, but Lane failed to appear.

Hall was a notable Puritan and supporter of the local vicar, Thomas Wilson, against whom Lane would later provoke a riot.

[2] In the play the principal witness Robert Whatcott does not appear in the court scene, but is named as the author of the letter to Hall outlining Lane's slanders.

The suggestion in the play that Shakespeare himself may be suffering from a venereal disease in his last years has been made by some biographers.