Shakespeare and Costume

Patricia Lennox, Bella Mirabella, Patricia Lennox, Bella Mirabella

• Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781472532503
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire de Shakespeare

Inspired by new approaches in performance studies, theatre history, research in material culture and dress history, a rich discussion of the many aspects of costume in Shakespearean performance has begun. Shakespeare and Costume furthers this research, bringing together varied and stimulating essays by leading scholars that consider costume from literary, dramatic, design, performative and theatrical perspectives, as well as interviews with renowned theatre practitioners Jane Greenwood and Robert Morgan. The volume amply demonstrates how an analysis of the meaning of costume enriches our understanding of Shakespeare's plays. Beginning with an overview of the stage history of Shakespeare and costume, the volume looks at the historical context of clothing in the plays, considering topics such as royal self-fashioning, festive livery practices, and conceptions of race and gender exhibited in clothing choice, as well as costume in performance. Drawing on documentary evidence in designers' renderings, illustrations in periodicals, paintings, photographs, newspaper reviews and actors' memoirs, the volume also explores costume designs in specific Shakespeare productions from the re-opening of the London theatres in 1660 to the present day.

PART ONE

Dressing Shakespeare in His Own Time – Theatre, Fashion and Social Practice

‘The Compass of a Lie’? Royal Clothing at Court and in the Plays of Shakespeare, 1598–1613

Maria Hayward

Introduction

In 1582 Stephen Gosson, satirist, complained that an actor or ‘a meane person’ could ‘take vpon him the title of a Prince with counterfeit porte, and traine’ and ‘by outwarde signes to shewe them selues otherwise then they are, and so with in the compasse of a lye’.1 In turn Thomas Dekker’s comment that an actor could be ‘stript out of [their] borrowed Majestie’ emphasized how important clothes were in creating the fictive sense of a royal persona in the theatre.² Elizabeth I and James VI and I also fashioned their regal image with clothing. Equally, both monarchs knew their public lives were a performance and that their words, deportment and behaviour were central in creating a monarchical identity, and they drew parallels between their own lives and the theatre. Elizabeth I stated that ‘We princes, I tell you, are set on stages, in sight and view of all the world’.³ James echoed this view, observing that ‘A King is as one set on a stage, whose smallest actions and gestures, all people gazingly doe behold’.⁴ While neither Elizabeth nor James mentioned clothes specifically, the public gaze would have focused upon their physical appearance or, more specifically, their clothed body.

Clothing was essential for Elizabeth and James to fabricate a visual self, just as a costume was for an actor playing a part in one of Shakespeare’s History plays.⁵ While no costumes have survived and there is very little evidence of what actors wore when performing specific roles in Shakespeare’s plays, snippets can be gleaned from sources such as the papers of the theatrical entrepreneur Philip Henslowe, the revels’ accounts and actor’s wills.⁶ In spite of this, written sources reveal that royal power, real and imagined, was often expressed visually in London. It was frequently criticized there too, both at court and in the theatre, with a lack of magnificence being as bad as extravagant conspicuous consumption. With these thoughts in mind, this chapter considers how Shakespeare used language to create an image of royalty for his audiences in comparison with how Elizabeth I and James I dressed in reality. It asserts that all displays of royal power, whether at court or in the theatre, were ‘counterfeit’ at some level, as Gosson claimed. Shakespeare’s presentation of ‘This new and gorgeous garment, majesty’ (2H4, 5.3.44) is discussed under five headings: conspicuous consumption, magnificence, symbols of power, kingship and female rule, and disguisings and disguise.

Conspicuous consumption

The appropriate use of conspicuous consumption was essential for a monarch, and this started with their clothes. Most of Elizabeth’s and James’ clothing needs were supplied by the Great Wardrobe, which was a sub-section of the royal household. The monarchs wore bespoke clothing, the product of the royal tailor and a group of craftsmen and women, who worked predominantly but not exclusively for the crown.⁷ This was expensive, as reflected by James’ first warrant for the wardrobe of the robes dating from September 1603, which came to £15,255 3s 9¼d.⁸ Including items for Anne of Denmark, Prince Henry and others participating in the coronation, the cost was considerably more than under Elizabeth I. Her annual expenditure averaged at £2,418 with her spending ranging between £1,030 16s 10½d in 1566–7 and £4,130 3s 9½d in 1578–9.⁹ Even so, both monarchs aimed to outspend the nobility, thus making the clothed royal body unique in the richness of its apparel.

FIGURE 1 George Gower. The Plimpton ‘Sieve’ portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. Oil on panel, 1579. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

The result was substantial royal wardrobes. When Elizabeth’s clothing was inventoried in 1600 she owned 102 French gowns, sixty-seven round gowns, 100 loose gowns, 125 kirtles, 136 foreparts, ninety-nine mantles and ninety-nine cloaks.10 Even so, this was just a percentage of the clothes made for her during her lifetime. While there are no comparable inventories for James I, he ordered sixty-five suits in 1603–4 and fifty-one in 1613–14.¹¹ In contrast, Elizabeth’s accounts for the period 1598–1603 reflect a very different pattern. While ordered on a biannual pattern, her tailor, William Jones, made very few new outer garments for her – just four doublets, one high-bodied gown, one kirtle and three round kirtles.¹² However, these were accompanied by vast numbers of new underpinnings and linen items including seventy-two petticoats, forty-two stomachers and forty-three pairs of flannel sleeves.¹³ Jones also undertook numerous repairs and alterations, as well as relining and refashioning gowns, doublets, mantles, sleeves and kirtles.¹⁴

Elizabeth ordered less from her tailor because gift-giving shaped the queen’s wardrobe by the end of her reign. The four extant New Year’s gift rolls for 1598–1603 reveal that she received twenty-one doublets, four gowns, twenty loose gowns, thirty-seven round kirtles and twenty-two mantles.¹⁵ A sense of the quality can be gleaned from the ‘gowne with a Trayne of pynke Colored taffeta florished all over with lawne Cutworke lyke roses and leaves florished with venys sylver’ from the earl of Northumberland in 1599.¹⁶ In contrast, James received fewer items of clothing as gifts. The 1606 roll recorded eighteen pairs of gloves, a handkerchief, a pair of mittens, a nightcap, a pair of pantofles (high-heeled slippers) and a shirt.¹⁷ These were mostly small, relatively cheap items and they were given to the king by men and women who sold these types of accessories to him during the rest of the year. For instance, Alexander Howme, one of the king’s shoemakers, gave him a pair of pantofles embroidered with Venice gold.¹⁸ This short comparison of how Elizabeth and James used clothing to fashion their image reveals two very different ways of using conspicuous consumption. While Elizabeth actively used clothing to assert her position as queen, she did so using a relatively modest budget and the gift-giving process to ensure that others bore part of the cost. In contrast, James spent extravagantly on his appearance. However, cost alone could not compensate for his lack of interest in what he wore or how he wore it.¹⁹

Royal clothing was made from the best available materials but it still incorporated elements of fakery. This was most readily apparent in Elizabeth’s case. The queen’s body was shaped and moulded using bum-rolls and farthingales; it was embellished with fantastic gowns and her own hair was augmented with hair pieces and wigs.²⁰ Her wardrobe account for Michaelmas 1600 included ‘Six fayre lardge heddes of heair’ and for Lady Day 1602 another ‘six heades of haire’.²¹ In contrast, James’s appearance was less deceptive, although his doublets were padded with bombast to create the fashionably rounded peasecod belly. Real royal conspicuous consumption was all about out-spending the nobility and using all available methods to make the monarch appear magnificent.

Magnificence

Shakespeare would have been familiar with the concept that a monarch should be magnificent and that clothing was essential for creating the required look of legitimate royal authority.²² As a result, enterprising royal officials made money showing the royal wardrobe to visitors. In 1598 the German traveller Paul Hentzner went to the Tower of London, where much of Elizabeth’s clothing was kept. After leaving his sword at the gate, he recorded seeing ‘some royal dresses so extremely magnificent, as to raise any one’s admiration at the sums they must have cost’.²³

The sumptuary legislation of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I supported this idea by stressing the monarch’s place at the top of society and defined that space by the wearing of, for example, purple silk, cloth of tissue and sable. However, magnificence was an ideal and it evolved under Elizabeth to include women, so allowing her to control potential rivals.²⁴ As such, royal dress was supposed to define and identify the monarch, and Shakespeare drew on this idea when he described:

The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,

The farced title running ’fore the king,

(H5, 4.1.258–9)

These lines from Henry V encapsulate the richness of royal clothing, which announced the king to his subjects without the need for words. The lines also drew on fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century views of magnificence that fabrics incorporating metal thread, rare furs and large quantities of jewellery were necessities of royal life. This concept was rather outmoded by the time Shakespeare was writing, but it was pertinent for many of the Plantagenet, Lancastrian and Yorkist kings that he wrote about. Purple silk, for example, was seen as a royal prerogative in the sumptuary legislation of Henry VIII and Elizabeth.²⁵ This reflected the cost of purple dyes as well as the imperial and religious connotations of the colour.²⁶ However, Elizabeth and James rarely wore purple except on occasions of state, and Shakespeare only made a few negative references such as the allusion to ‘Dives that lived in purple’ and then burnt in hell in the same robes (1H4, 3.3.32).²⁷ In spite of this, Henslowe’s inventory suggests that this colour was sometimes worn by actors because he had a pair of French hose of ‘purple velvet cut in dimonds Lact [lace] & spangels’ and another pair of ‘purpell velvet lact with gould spanish’.²⁸

From the chronicles that he drew upon, Shakespeare would have been aware of monarchs who failed to be magnificent – the best-known example being Henry VI’s appearance in an old blue robe.²⁹ While this robe might have stressed Henry VI’s piety, worn as it was on Maundy Thursday 1471, and blue being the official colour of royal mourning in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, it failed to assert his political strength as king.³⁰ As the author of the Great Chronicle noted, it was ‘More lyker a play than the shewing of a prynce to wynne mennys hertys’.³¹ Shakespeare could have observed James’s sartorial failures personally. Giovanni Scaramelli, the Venetian ambassador, observed that ‘from his dress he would have been taken for the meanest among his courtiers, a modesty he affects, had it not been for a chain of diamonds round his neck and a great diamond in his hair’.³² James, who chose not to compete with Elizabeth’s flamboyant dress, used jewelled accessories to signal his status and offset his rather simple clothes with magnificent diamonds.

Jewellery was a mark of status and wealth at the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts.³³ After attending a Jacobean masque, Orazio Busino, chaplain to the Venetian ambassador to London, noted that the women in attendance had ‘strings of jewels on their necks and bosoms and in their girdles and apparel in such quantity that they looked like so many queens’.³⁴ While these might have been genuine and their own, they may also have been borrowed, hired or fake. However, they evidently impressed Busino and that was the intention, as these women sought to emulate the queen’s opulence. While there were no references to jewellery in Henslowe’s list, there were numerous doublets, sleeves, cloaks and hose decorated with metal lace.³⁵ This would have conveyed a sense of wealth (altho...