‘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]