Sorrow Song Death Poverty
Sorrow, Poverty and Death are in black and white. Song wears white with bands of blue, and a wreath of white flowers in her hair. The Followers have costumes cut exactly like those of their leaders, but of gray instead of white. The Followers of Song carry long silver trumpets.
Ruth Claus The Children Chorus B
Ruth wears a white jacket over a red bodice and a gray skirt over a black-and-white striped under-skirt. Claus has high boots, a red jerkin edged with white fur and a red cap also edged with white fur. There should be no green trimming on his jerkin. His costume and Ruth’s should be extremely ragged and the two children should be roughly wrapped in rags. Chorus B wears a short red coat with white bands and a design of spear-heads on the shoulders. When this coat is removed at the end of the Masque, the white coat of Chorus A is seen. This bears a tree in green on either shoulder.
Nearly all the other costumes consist of a simple, cloak-like undergarment, over which are worn tunics and robes to characterize the Host of Herod, the Shepherds, the Followers of the Three Kings, or the Outcasts. There is nothing realistic in these clothes: they merely suggest the characters, broadly, as if they were made by children for a child’s play. They may be carried out by any dressmaker in inexpensive materials—muslin, cambric, cheesecloth, flannel—keeping always to a few brilliant, flat colors: strong red, strong blue, black and white, gray, and orange.
Make these costumes yourselves: use your own ingenuity in cutting and draping them: wear them with a sense of what each costume means. Then your ceremony will be beautiful.
New York,
September, 1917.