SHAKESPEARE AND CLOTHES
There are not so many allusions to Elizabethan dress in the plays of Shakespeare as one might suppose upon first thought. One has grown so accustomed to Shakespeare put on the stage in elaborate dresses that one imagines, or one is apt to imagine, that there is a warrant for some of the dresses in the plays. In some cases he confounds the producer and the illustrator by introducing garments of his own date into historical plays, as, for example, Coriolanus. Here are the clothes allusions in that play:
‘When you cast your stinking greasy caps,
You have made good work,
You and your apron-men.’
‘Go to them with this bonnet in your hand.’
‘Enter Coriolanus in a gown of humility.’
‘Matrons fling gloves, ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers.’
‘The kitchen malkin pins her richest lockram[A] ’bout her reechy neck.’
‘Our veiled dames.’
‘Commit the war of white and damask in their nicely gawded cheeks to the wanton and spoil of Phœbus’ burning kisses.’
‘Doublets that hangmen would bury with these that wore them.’
I have not kept the lines in verse, but in a convenient way to show their allusions.
In ‘Pericles’ we have mention of ruffs and bases. Pericles says:
‘I am provided of a pair of bases.’
Certainly the bases might be made to appear Roman, if one accepts the long slips of cloth or leather in Roman military dress as being bases; but Shakespeare is really—as in the case of the ruffs—alluding to the petticoats of the doublet of his time worn by grave persons. Bases also apply to silk hose.
In ‘Titus Andronicus’ we have:
‘An idiot holds his bauble for his God.’
Julius Cæsar is mentioned as an Elizabethan:
‘He plucked ope his doublet.’
The Carpenter in ‘Julius Cæsar’ is asked:
‘Where is thy leather apron and thy rule?’
The mob have ‘sweaty night-caps.’
Cleopatra, in ‘Antony and Cleopatra,’ says:
‘I’ll give thee an armour all of gold.’
The ‘Winter’s Tale,’ the action of which occurs in Pagan times, is full of anachronisms. As, for instance, Whitsun pastorals, Christian burial, an Emperor of Russia, and an Italian fifteenth-century painter. Also:
‘Lawn as white as driven snow;
Cyprus[B] black as ere was crow;
Gloves as sweet as damask roses;
Masks for faces and for noses;
Bugle-bracelet, necklace amber,
Perfume for a lady’s chamber;
Golden quoifs and stomachers,
Pins and polking-sticks of steel.’
So, you see, Autolycus, the pedlar of these early times, is spoken of as carrying polking-sticks with which to stiffen ruffs.
Shylock, in ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ should wear an orange-tawny bonnet lined with black taffeta, for in this way were the Jews of Venice distinguished in 1581.
In ‘The Tempest’ one may hear of rye-straw hats, of gaberdines, rapiers, and a pied fool’s costume.
In ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ we hear:
‘Why, then, your ladyship must cut your hair.’
‘No, girl; I’ll tie it up in silken strings
With twenty odd conceited true-love knot;
To be fantastic may become a youth
Of greater time than I shall show to be.’
Also:
‘Since she did neglect her looking-glass,
And threw her sun-expelling mask away.’
Many ladies at this time wore velvet masks. ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ gives us a thrummed hat, a muffler or linen to hide part of the face, gloves, fans. Falstaff says:
‘When Mistress Bridget lost the handle of her fan,
I took it up my honour thou had’st it not.’
Also:
‘The firm fashion of thy foot would give an excellent motion to thy fait in a semicircled farthingale.’
‘Twelfth Night’ is celebrated for us by Malvolio’s cross garters. Sir Toby, who considers his clothes good enough to drink in, says:
‘So be these boots too: an they be not, let them hang themselves in their own straps.’
Sir Toby also remarks to Sir Andrew upon the excellent constitution of his leg, and Sir Andrew replied that:
‘It does indifferent well in a flame-coloured stock.’
The Clown says:
‘A sentence is but a cheveril[C] glove to a good wit.’
In ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ we learn of one who lies awake ten nights, ‘carving the fashion of his doublet.’ Also of one who is
‘in the shape of two countries at once, as a German from the waist downwards all slops, and a Spaniard from the hip upward, no doublet.’
‘Cloth of gold, and cuts, and laced with silver set with pearls down sides, side sleeves, and skirts, round under borne with a bluish tinsel.’
In ‘As You Like It’ one may show a careless desolation by ungartered hose, unbanded bonnet, unbuttoned sleeve, and untied shoe.
‘The Taming of the Shrew’ tells of serving-men:
‘In their new fustian and their white jackets.... Let their blue coats be brushed, and their garters of an indifferent knit.’
Also we have a cap ‘moulded on a porringer.’
‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ tells of:
‘Your hat penthouse-like o’er the shop of your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin belly doublet like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in your pocket like a man after the old painting.’
‘All’s Well that Ends Well’:
‘Why dost thou garter up thy arms o’ this fashion? Dost make a hose of thy sleeves?’
‘Yonder’s my lord your son with a patch of velvet on’s face: whether there be a scar under’t or no, the velvet knows.... There’s a dozen of ’em, with delicate fine hats and most courteous feathers, which bow the head and nod at every man.’
In ‘Henry IV.,’ Part II., there is an allusion to the blue dress of Beadles. Also:
‘About the satin for my short cloak and slops.’
‘The smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes, and bunches of keys at their girdles.’
‘To take notice how many pair of silk stockings thou hast, or to bear the inventory of thy shirts.’
There are small and unimportant remarks upon dress in other plays, as dancing-shoes in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and in ‘Henry VIII.’:
‘The remains of fool and feather that they got in France.’
‘Tennis and tall stockings,
Short blistered breeches and those types of travel.’
But in ‘Hamlet’ we find more allusions than in the rest. Hamlet is ever before us in his black:
‘’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black.’
‘Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
No hat upon his head; his stockings fouled,
Ungartered, and down-goes to his ancle;
Pale as his shirt.’
‘Your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine.’[D]
‘O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion into tatters.’
‘With two provincial roses on my ragged shoes,
My sea-gown scarfed about me.’
Having read this, I think it will be seen that there is no such great difficulty in costuming any play, except perhaps this last. There have been many attempts to put ‘Hamlet’ into the clothes of the date of his story, but even when the rest of the characters are dressed in skins and cross-gartered trousers, when the Viking element is strongly insisted upon, still there remains the absolutely Elizabethan figure in inky black, with his very Elizabethan thoughts, the central figure, almost the great symbol of his age.