The optical response of phosphorene can be gradually changed by application of moderate uni-axial compression, as the material undergoes the transition into an indirect gap semiconductor and eventually into a semimetal. Strain tunes not only the gap between the valence band and conduction band local extrema, but also the effective masses, and in consequence, the exciton anisotropy and binding strength. In this article, we consider from a theoretical point of view how the exciton sta-bility and the resulting luminescence energy evolves under uniaxial strain. We find that the exciton binding energy can be as large as 0.87 eV in vacuum for 5 % transverse strain, placing it amongst the highest for 2D materials. Further, the large shift of the luminescence peak and its linear dependence on strain suggest that it can be used to probe directly the strain state of single-layers.