Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

This page intentionally left blank

Costumes and Scripts in the

Elizabethan Theatres Jean MacIntyre

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA PRESS

First published by The University of Alberta Press Athabasca Hall Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6G 2E8 Copyright © The University of Alberta Press 1992 ISBN 0-88864-226-1

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Maclntyre, Jean, 1934Costumes and scripts in the Elizabethan theatres

Includes bibliographical references ISBN 0-88864-226-1 1. Costumes—History—16th century. 2. Theater— England—History—16th century. 3. English drama— Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600. I. Title. PN2o67-M32 1992 792'.026*0942 C92-091248-6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any forms or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Typesetting by The Typeworks, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Printed on acid-free paper. © Printed and bound in Canada by John Deyell Company Limited, Willowdale, Ontario, Canada

To Arthur Colby Sprague

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

Acknowledgements

ix

Preface

xi

1

THE COSTUMES QUESTION

2

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

13

3

DOCUMENTS

49 49 75

The Relevance of the Revels Accounts Costumes in the Henslowe Papers

1

4

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590S The Admiral's Men at the Rose and Fortune The Lord Chamberlain's Men

99 99 140

5

THEATRE FOR ELITES The "Little Eyases" The Court Masque

205 205

6

7

ROYAL SERVANTS Prince Henry's and Queen Anne's Men The King's Men CONCLUSION

222 235 238 271 319

Notes

325

Bibliography

343

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgements

Principal thanks for the origin and development of the idea for this book must go to Arthur Colby Sprague, whose courses at Bryn Mawr College taught his students to think of plays not only as texts for reading but also as scripts for performance on the stage. Conversations with some of those who are producing Shakespeare and his contemporaries on open stages were extremely helpful, especially with Martin Platt of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, then in Anniston, and with Pat Patton and William Patton of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. The publications of David Bevington, Alan Dessen, and Scott McMillin have been more than commonly useful. Colleagues at the University of Alberta and elsewhere provided information and comment when preliminary studies were presented at departmental seminars and conferences, especially Linda Woodbridge, John Orrell, H.A. Hargreaves, James Black, Clifford J. Ronan, Arthur Kinney, Thelma Greenfireld, Robert Schwartz, and my former student Sylvia Berg. Special gratitude is owing to George Carmichael of the University of Alberta Computing Services, who spent hours and much ingenuity transferring the text from an outdated to a current word-processing program, and to Kathy McLean of the Department of English office, who typed the manuscript and was patient with lastminute changes. Mark Primmer was a wonderfully acute second eye during revision and proofreading. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

ix

This page intentionally left blank

Preface

My study of costume practice in the Elizabethan theatres and its relation to play scripts took its beginning in 1981 from a casual conversation with Martin Platt, the director of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, whose archives I had been examining. He remarked that for his non-scenic theatre the most considerable items in the budget were, first, actors' salaries, and second, costumes. I replied that the two items had been reversed in Shakespeare's day, and at that moment the idea for this book took form. It is, to my surprise, virtually pioneer work. Though there has been much attention to what was worn on the stage, based on evidence from art, iconography, designs for masques, and, occasionally, wishful thinking, there has been little about how costumes were managed once acquired or about the relationship of practical costuming, especially costume change, to the shape of Elizabethan plays. Chapters in books and articles in journals have generalized from a few plays or from plays by one author or one company to the whole "Elizabethan Theatre," and while there has been much that is informative in these, the generalizations often were flawed by limitations of space and scope. Because it attempts a much wider coverage this book undoubtedly has omissions and oversights, but I hope it will stimulate research in the role of costume not only on the Elizabethan stage but also in earlier and later periods. This book, like others about the Elizabethan theatre, began with certain assumptions about costume practices, based on the separate examination of costumes and properties in Coriolanus, Much Ado about Nothing, and A Woman Killed with Kindness, and attempts to see how the requirements of these plays fitted a wider context of existing conventions. While there was a general body of costume conventions followed by everyone

xi

PREFACE

from the fifteenth century on, the application of these conventions changed in response to bigger companies with more sharers, more capital, and for a few, a settled home. Capital permitted wardrobes to be increased for plays with more characters, an increase encouraged by the settlement of some companies in permanent theatres, where they had space to store accumulated garments. An increased inventory of garments made possible more doubling and also more costume change within roles, and, as expected, much of this costume change in the 1590S and later was in the direction of realism: fewer characters compelled into "one beard and weed" for a lifetime's doings, and more changing of their dress for special activities or occasions. Surprises accompanied this general impression, however. The Henslowe records of costume purchases which could be matched with extant plays showed much that I did not expect in the practices of the Admiral's Men, especially its radical modification during the years 1598-1601, when Edward Alleyn was not their leading actor. The costume practices revealed in the Chamberlain's Men's scripts showed that the two companies managed not only their costumes but also their repertories differently, and that Henslowe's records might not apply to the Burbage company, at least not as much as we have thought. Another surprise was what the many extant scripts for boy companies and other records reveal about the business practices of those who managed the boy actors at Paul's and Blackfriars after 1599. Difference was expected, innovative production to match a new kind of play, but in fact the boy companies' practice largely resembles that of the Admiral's Men. Also surprising was how different in costume management were the Admiral's and Worcester's Men, even when Worcester's financing arrangements with Henslowe at the Rose were almost the same as the Admiral's had been. Plays from the years after Shakespeare's death, like A Game at Chess, show a different approach to costumes than the plays of his years with the company. Though in other ways it represents a return to old fashioned style and staging, its black and white costumes suggest a designer's rather than an actors' theatre, like the court masque or the modern stage. Of course the old conventions lived on. Indeed, surreptitious performances under the Commonwealth reverted to the methods and conventions of itinerant actors before 1576, methods that seem to have lingered until the triumph of "historical" settings and costumes in the nineteenth century, and the profession of stage designer in our time.

xii

PREFACE

I have elected to closely analyse scripts from the principal companies up to and including the Shakespeare years. Some scripts, however, were either uninformative or (due to poor or incomplete texts or late publication) might not represent costume practices of their probable date or of the company for which they were first written. These I have either passed over or noted only briefly. For instance, the text of A Yorkshire Tragedy contains no more than a quarter of the original script, that of Hoffman is both late and extremely corrupt, and that of Lust's Dominion perhaps is the same as The Spanish Moor's Tragedy recorded by Henslowe more than fifty years before it reached print, but perhaps it is not. Some plays also passed from one company to another before being printed. These probably show the costume practices of the final owner, which may or may not have altered those proposed by the auther and/or employed by the company for whom it was written. This is especially troublesome with Marlowe's plays. Tamburlaine was revised before printing, but by whom is unknown, The Massacre of Paris and Faustus were condensed, and then added to, by other writers. One, The ]ew of Malta, was only printed in 1631 after a long stage history with more than one company. Jonson revised his plays as performed to make them more "literary" for the 1616 Folio. For texts like these I have made some compromises. When more than one version of a play exists I have used what are thought to be acting texts, testing my analyses against conventions established from large numbers of scripts with a playhouse provenance. How rapidly Elizabethan actors spoke their lines has been much debated. Shakespeare's "two hours' traffic of our stage" in the Prologue to so long a play as Romeo and Juliet (repeated in the prologues to Henry VIII and The Alchemist) seems more likely to be conventional than realistic, or perhaps represents an average between Comedy of Errors and Hamlet, unlike Jonson's open-ended "two houres and a halfe, and somewhat more" in the Prologue to Bartholomew Fair. In the 19705, the rapidly moving Oregon Shakespeare Festival productions averaged seventeen lines per minute. For Elizabethan productions I have arbitrarily assumed an average twenty lines of blank verse per minute when estimating the time available for offstage costume changes, about ten minutes for a 200-line scene. This is undoubtedly too slow for scenes of some kinds (such as rapid-fire jesting), but may be too fast for other kinds of scenes, such as a funeral eulogy or a meditative soliloquy. Average speeds much faster than twenty lines a minute seem like a demand for gabble. To play Hamiet in

xiii

PREFACE

two hours would require a speech-speed approaching thirty lines a minute, given the amount of stage business and the several episodes which demand silence like the Ghost's entry in the Closet Scene, Ophelia's funeral procession, and the prolonged final exit.

In a Stratford, Ontario, Festival program from the 1981 season, there was an apology for the company's use of costumes from former years in its current productions. I thought then and think more strongly now that this apology was misconceived. At other festivals I have seen costumes from earlier years exhibited in glass cases, or for sale, well below cost, in theatre souvenir shops. Meanwhile, the same theatres solicit contributions from the public and from governments, a large part of the money marked for new designer costumes for each new season, costumes which will be discarded or sold and again replaced from scratch in the following year. While some of the discarded costumes are "not servishable," as the inventories in the Office of the Revels so often say, modern companies have certain advantages beyond their Renaissance forebears. Among them are look-alike synthetic fabrics sturdier than the fragile silks and velvets of the Elizabethan stage, and methods of cleaning more effective than the sponges and brushes used by the Revels Office and theatre tiremen. Modern costumes, worn in only one play a season, probably get rather less use, even in repertory, than did much Elizabethan stage apparel, of which some might have been on stage almost daily in the 15905 and even after. The practices of the Admiral's Men, buying plays that could use the costumes on hand, are certainly practicable for modern theatres that commission new plays, though of limited value for the Shakespeare festivals whose "new" plays come from an historic repertoire. The Shakespeare festivals, however, could readily adopt the practice of the Chamberlain's Men and schedule plays from season to season that could retain once-gorgeous costumes for scruffier and scruffier characters as normal wear brings them down to shabby to ragged. This Shakespearean practice would restrict the current method of making deliberately ragged garments for the likes of Bardolph and Pistol. Furthermore, it seems justified as one more touch of authenticity in the increasing number of playhouses that reconstruct the Elizabethan open stage and profess an Elizabethan style in the production of Shakespeare and his fellows.

xiv

The Costumes Question

1 am a wise fellow, and which is more an officer, and which is more, a householder, and which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina, and one that knows the law, go to, and a rich fellow enough, go to, and a fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two gowns, and every thing handsome about him.1 Constable Dogberry's two gowns, one of which he is wearing as he speaks the above words, may be used to represent some under-considered problems of Elizabethan stage studies: how many costumes might a company like Shakespeare's use in the performance of one play, how many times might an actor change costume in one play, how many times might he change within one role, and, of most lasting significance, how might the costume habits of Elizabethan actors and companies affect the form of the plays written for them. While a number of writers on the Elizabethan stage have devoted space to costumes and costume change in discussions of Elizabethan staging, what they say is usually brief in comparison to what they say of the theatre buildings, the structure of the stage, and such large properties as houses, battlements, rocks, and tombs. In his encyclopaedic Elizabethan Stage, E.K. Chambers seldom mentions "apparel." In his chapter "The Actors' Economics," he does say that companies spent heavily on costumes, and he documents the high cost of costumes for court masques. But in his several chapters on staging, he speaks of costumes only once; instead, he devotes page after page to ways of indicating locality. Chambers's interest in devices for localizing is understandable given the inordinate attention to scenery in the theatre of his day, but his failure to discuss costumes at any length suggests a vast

I

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

historical blind spot. By 1923 CJ. Sisson had recognized that the cost of costumes exceeded all others recorded in Henslowe's Diary, and George Fullmer Reynolds both cited Sisson and listed all the costumes prescribed in plays performed at the Red Bull Theatre.2 Yet, like Chambers, Reynolds analysed the use of all parts of the stage building and of large proper' ties, but not of the costumes and hand properties of whose importance he was surely aware. Glynne Wickham's Early English Stages occasionally mentions costume records, but focuses on the building and on large properties, not on what the actors wore. In fact, most of the books on the Elizabethan theatre devote a very small proportion of their pages to the costumes Elizabethan actors spent so much money on, even when acknowledging that costumes, not scenic devices, created the predominant visual effects on the open stage. Despite its title, M.C. Linthicum's Costume in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries is largely a glossary of clothing words illustrated by quotations from Elizabethan plays, and says little about how costumes might have been used on the physical stage. Her principal interest focused on symbolism in Elizabethan court and masking dress, and the symbolic use of color which she documents in these garments she applies to every kind of dramatic entertainment, not discriminating between occasional performance by courtiers for personal display (expense no object) and regular performance by professionals making their living by playing in repertory. Like Chambers, she relies on evidence from the Revels Office records for her discussion of the commercial theatre. Unlike him, she does not use Henslowe's records, though these had long been in print when she wrote, and Sisson had called attention to the costume information that they contain. Her study is useful as a glossary of costume words and helpful for masking and pageantry, but an unreliable guide to costuming on the professional stage. Critical and historical studies of Elizabethan drama do not concern themselves as often as they should with how the actors were to look in performance. Studies of Shakespeare's plays which meticulously investigate clothing imagery rarely recognize that clothing language may refer to the actors' costumes. For instance, in his influential chapter on Macbeth in The Well-Wrought Urn, "The Cloak of Manliness," Cleanth Brooks sensitively reads the play's language of the naked and the clothed, yet never raises the question of what the players of Macbeth, his wife, and others might be wearing as they speak, whether their costumes reinforce or contradict their speech, indeed, whether their costumes communicate

2

THE COSTUMES QUESTION

anything at all. More recently, T. McAlindon's Shakespeare and Decorum comments on what courtesy books say about proper dress for the young and the old of different ranks in society. But in examining the play texts, his concern is with clothing language, not with what such characters as Hamlet and Macbeth actually wore while using this language. Even Ann Pasternak Slater's Shakespeare the Director succumbs to the "literary" at the expense of the theatrical. Her chapter, "Costume," includes useful comment on a limited number of plays, but emphasizes costume symbolism and the way it buttresses the plays' language, and sometimes this makes her divagate from the physical costume on the live actor to purely verbal considerations. Slater does not consider the plays in chronological order, except for taking up the "last plays" as a group, which may prevent her from noticing the changes in costume practice that were bound to occur over close to twenty years. Nor does she consider plays in the repertory by authors other than Shakespeare, or sudden fashions for dramatic subgenres like prodigal plays and city comedies, both of which would have had consequences for the wardrobe that Shakespeare might have had to keep in mind. Surprisingly, overlooking the importance of costume has characterized even studies of acting companies and of performance. In Shakespeare at the Globe, Bernard Beckerman devotes only one paragraph and part of another to one function of costume, its use for disguise: The basic method of disguise is through a change of costume. Almost invariably this change furnishes the foundation for the disguise. [two sentences of statistics] Even when a different costume is not the sole method of disguise, it is almost always introduced as an important supplement. [another statistical sentence, and two pages on changes of manner by the character]... Through uncomplicated means, such as a change of dress, disguise is signified to the audience. [The remaining discussion considers "symbolic" forms of disguise, which apparently do not include changed costume.]4 The twenty-seven plays by Shakespeare and others which Beckerman discusses call, in both stage directions and speeches, for much spectacular costuming and also for costume change, yet Beckerman does not index "costumes," though he devotes many pages to what he acknowledges are often problematic questions of large and small properties. Nine years after

3

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Beckerman, in Shakespearean Staging 1599-1642, T.J. King analyses fixed and movable stage structures and blocking, but says nothing about costuming though, during the period his study covers, the companies were accumulating large wardrobes and costume conventions were changing rapidly. In The Shakespearean Stage, Andrew Gurr devotes seven pages (178-85) to apparel, including two and a half pages of illustrations and Edward Alleyn's inventory of his own costumes; the two and a half pages remaining comment on the splendor and (following Linthicum) the color symbolism of Elizabethan dress in general and of players' attire in particular. Like Chambers and Linthicum, Gurr treats records of court entertainment as reliable for commercial public theatre, and in so doing fails to discriminate between court and public theatre costuming. Perhaps costumes have received so little attention because so much has gone towards "bricks and mortar" questions about theatre buildings and the disputed architecture of the stage. For instance, in the Elizabethan volume of The Revels History of English Drama, Alexander Leggatt says much about the structure of indoor and outdoor theatres and large properties in quite minor detail but nothing about costumes, nor does this word or its synonym "apparel" appear in the index. Other studies devoted to buildings may mention something about the way costumes compensate for the absence of scenery. Michael Hattaway and Peter Thomson are careful about the details of the buildings, but about the costumes both generalize broadly, and rely overmuch on conjecture.5 Such impoverished and at times careless discussion of costumes indicates that many scholars still think that after splendor and cost are mentioned little else can be said about them. This means that information about costumes that students of English Renaissance drama find in secondary sources is limited and difficult to locate. Those who do have anything to say about costumes commonly scatter it among discussions of other aspects of stage history. Alice S. Venezky briefly refers to costume as one aspect of stage pageantry. The essays in Pageantry on the Shakespearean Stage occasionally comment on the function of costume in stage spectacle, and some of the writers recognize its mimetic use, for instance in stage funerals modeled on real ones. Richard Southern, in The Staging of Plays Before Shakespeare, comments perceptively about costumes in interludes and moralities, but his chronological discussion of over sixty plays between 1466 and 1598 causes what he says to get lost in a mass of other detail. Still, his reliance on the texts for what

4

THE COSTUMES QUESTION

they say about production and his caution about generalizing make his study valuable. T.W. Craik's two fine chapters in The Tudor Interlude are unusual exceptions to the indifference of critics and stage historians to costume; although he does not extend his study beyond such late hybrid moralities as The Three Ladies of London and A Knack to Know a Knave, what he says about Tudor and early Elizabethan costume conventions can hardly be improved on: Frequently it is by changing the characters' costume that the author impresses his moral meaning on the audience.... And since so many of the moral interludes are concerned with changes of heart (either falls to wickedness or conversions to virtue) it is appropriate that changes of dress should signify them.. .. Besides these complete changes of dress, there are sometimes symbolic [minor] alterations of a character's appearance.6 Craik seems to have been the first to examine costume change in detail and explain the conventions which governed it when the change was within a single role, but his work has not been as influential as it should. In From Mankind to Marlowe, a study of doubling and its effect on dramatic structure, David Bevington is one of the few to build on Craik's work, devoting several pages of his book to the speed—seldom more than two minutes—with which the actors of interludes and moralities might be required to switch from one role to another, and determining that changes from male to female parts took longer than changes from female to male parts or from male parts to male. He examines the practicalities of rapid costume change, including wearing one costume over another, the exchange of one cap, gown, beard, or vizard for another, or, simplest of all, a new symbolic hand property.7 Yet even Bevington's influential book has not prompted much systematic investigation of costumes in later Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline plays.8 Hal H. Smith's "Some Principles of Elizabethan Stage Costume" attempts "to give a comprehensive view of costuming in the Elizabethan theatre, derived from the slight and contradictory documents we possess." He concentrates on "evidence... that such plays as Troilus and Cressida [Titus Andronicus and Julius Caesar] were costumed in the classic manner as the Renaissance understood it. "9 He observes that "historical" costume

5

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

was largely modified Elizabethan dress. But he does not use Inigo Jones's masque designs or portraits in tilt or masque costume to show how the dress was modified, so does not show how Shakespeare or Jonson might have imagined that a toga looked. G.K. Hunter's excellent "Flat Caps and Blue Coats" examines how much Elizabethan clothing communicated social class and occupation, even more important on stage than on the street, while in Action is Eloquence Bevington discusses costumes and hand properties as aids to theatrical communication.10 Alan C. Dessen gives costumes some attention in Elizabethan Drama and the Viewer's Eye and, in his later Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters, examines in considerable detail how certain garments (hunting dress, boots, night-gowns) were used to give information. He points out the importance of stage directions and dialogue which say that a character is "like" (meaning "dressed as") some real or imaginary figure. In Shakespeare and His Players Martin Holmes takes up the practicalities of stage armour: where it came from, how old it was, and, most important, problems with putting it on and moving about while wearing it. Barbara Mowat's "The Getting up of the Spectacle: The Role of the Visual on the Elizabethan Stage" makes distinctions among symbolic, "illusionary," and conventional uses of costume, according to what kind of information is communicated, and, like Hunter, emphasizes how costume on the stage worked within wider Elizabethan beliefs about congruence between clothing and its wearer's place in the world. But none of these studies, even Hunter's, focuses on costumes in relation to scripts. Nor do any of them fully recognize that the use to which a playwright could put costume depended on the extent of a company's wardrobe and that an adequate wardrobe needed three things: time, money, and permanent storage.

Obviously, costume's role in theatre is a part of what Aristotle called "spectacle," but it has another important function: to identify each character in the play. After all, actors are not the persons they represent; few players of rulers since Nero have been rulers offstage. When an actor enters for the first time his costume tells the audience what he is supposed to be—king, shepherd, bishop, or Turk, and on the Elizabethan stage, woman—often before dialogue identifies who he is in the drama. Only in such unusual situations as the Globe "Induction" to Marston's Malcontent would Richard Burbage or his fellows come on stage in their real identi-

6

THE COSTUMES QUESTION

ties; even clowns known to the audience by their right names (like Jack Benny and other modern comedians) worked inside a persona with its identifying costume, like Tarlton's countryman or Armin's Pink. Much Elizabethan uneasiness about playing arose because the actors represented identities not their own, dressing in garments of fabrics and fashions reserved for their betters. Still worse, some of them, whether imitating or giving example to others, dared wear their playing apparel in the street. Philip Stubbes asserts that "now. .. there is such a confuse mingle mangle of apparell in Ailgna [England], and such preposterous excesse therof, as euery one is permitted to flaunt it out in what apparell he lust himselfe, or can get by anie kind of meanes. So that it is verie hard to knowe who is noble, who is worshipfull, who is a gentleman, who is not: for you shall haue those which are neither of the nobylitie, gentilitie, nor yeomanry; no, nor yet anie Magistral, or Officer in he common welth, go daylie in silkes, veluets, satens, damasks, taffeties, and such like, notwithstanding that they be both base by byrthe, meane by estate, & seruyle by calling."11 Almost worse than seeing actors dress as their social superiors was seeing them dress as their natural "inferiors": women. Stubbes asserted that the fashionable dress of women had, against nature, appropriated male garments like doublets and hats, and male trimmings like the "wings" that covered the joining between the doublet's body and its detachable sleeve. Much of Stubbes's diatribe comes verbatim from the "Homily against Excess of Apparel" (1563), and later moralists and satirists did little but echo the same sermon, augmented out of Stubbes and his like, probably because fashion and social ambition continued to motivate people. Stage clothes, whether above or below the wearer's degree, exacerbated the stigma of performing in a fiction, labeled "lying" by moralists such as Stubbes. Stephen Gosson summed up all the objections when he declared that "in Stage Playes for a boy to put on the attyre, the gesture, the passions of a woman; for a meane person to take upon him the title of a Prince with counterfeit porte and traine, is by outwards signes to shewe them selues otherwise then they are, and so with in the compasse of a lye."12 Lies like these were thought the more dangerous because Elizabethan theories of education, both academic and moral, were dominated by memory; schoolboys memorized rules of grammar and figures of rhetoric by incessant repetition, and most people, literate or not, learned trades, social skills, habits of conduct, morality and religion, in the same way. It was assumed that often repetition of any action, whether earnest or

7

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

feigned, would imprint it by way of the memory on the actor's personality. A chief and common justification for students to act in plays was that to rehearse desirable language and conduct on the stage would imprint it more strongly; defenders of schoolboy acting seldom mention the adverse effects of playing tricksters, parasites, braggarts, and bawds, but opponents replied that to counterfeit a woman, a boaster, a lover, or a fool put the actor in danger of approaching in reality what he represented in play. When Hamlet points out, "use almost can change the stamp of nature" (III.iv. 161), his words voice an old moral anxiety of far wider application than Queen Gertrude's sex life; the same anxiety appears in invectives against parents who applaud when children repeat oaths and obscenities. Dressing for a part could embrace more dangers than moral ones. Actors dressed as stage devils might attract real devils by pretending to be of their number, to their own peril of soul and body and that of those watching. "It was rumored that the actor of Faustus, Edward Alleyn, decided to retire from the stage after a performance of the play during which a real devil had appeared among the counterfeit ones and threatened to fetch off his soul,"13 and, in a story reported from Exeter, a devil "cavorted on the platform,... making himself indistinguishable from those other actors who were merely pretending to be devils."14 But upon the whole the personal risk an actor took dressing as what he was not seemed less dangerous than the examples of "mean men" counterfeiting the actions of their betters in their betters' clothes: one puritan writer conceded that playing as an educational activity was tolerable if the actors avoided "gaudy" dress,15 long observed as a symptom of the Devil's own sin of pride. Sumptuous attire worn by players on the stage was believed, with some reason, to encourage their own presumption to "ape" their betters (as when actors styled themselves "gentlemen" and obtained coats of arms, no matter what their birth). This unpleasant boldness might also make its way to the audience, who, inspired by the actor's example, could justify vain expense on fashionable clothes made of costly imported materials. Absurd though the moralists' fulminations may now appear, they show the Elizabethan perception of clothing as identifying something more than the wearer's role. Whether on the stage or in real society, clothing, like the body it covered, was thought, at least by some, to figure forth the inherent, divinely created nature of its wearer. To wear clothes which identified the wearer as if of a different sex or rank than his true one could be construed as a revolt against God his maker, even if worn in an acknowledged fiction.

8

THE COSTUMES QUESTION

In the scripts of English Renaissance plays from Tudor to Caroline times there is a great deal of costume information. Stage directions and dialogue can at least guide us to what playwrights thought was desirable, often to what they knew was possible for the particular players they wrote for. The earliest Tudor scripts were, for the most part, written for performance at a particular time and place. Costume requirements show what, for instance, Cardinal Morton's household, St Paul's School, or Henry VIII's Tents and Toils would be capable of furnishing to actors who were part of these essentially domestic communities. Entertainments for such "domestic" organizations as great households, including that of the sovereign, schools, colleges, and Inns of Court, were being written from the beginning to the end of the period. For royal households at least, before which other domestic groups often performed, there are many surviving records. During the period some of these "domestic" plays were printed; as well, some plays were written not for one household or occasion but for purchase by anyone, amateur or professional, who might want to put on a play without taking the trouble to write one. These plays "offered for acting" often include doubling schemes and permissive stage directions ("here, if you may" do this or that, dress someone thus); playwrights, unaware of what might be available in the way of personnel, music, properties, or costumes, gave general instructions to show their intention, sometimes suggesting alternative ways of gaining an effect. All these scripts show that, unlike the actors of occasional plays in household settings, villages, or schools, traveling players might have very limited resources, both of costumes and of money to purchase them.16 Unlike plays written for particular performers, such as Nature, Wit and Science, Respublica, Damon and Pithias, Tancred and Gismund, and others, the dialogue in plays "offered for acting" is rarely specific about particulars of costume. When it is, the specifications are for common or readily available items of attire. Though itinerant companies probably kept accounts and inventories, such records were not the kind that would be stored for long or survive to later times, so that household records, especially those of the royal household departments of Tents and Toils and later of the Revels, overwhelmingly dominate the information available to modem scholars about costumes and stage furniture. Almost all such information refers to occasional entertainments concentrated within particular seasons, and almost entirely concerns masking and related perfor-

9

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

mances by household members. Until the 1570S Revels accounts have almost nothing to say about "players," and, except for "the King's Players," men in the household who performed occasionally for Henry VIII and Ed' ward VI, tell us nothing of the "players" origin, and very seldom what they played. (Boys who performed plays at court are not called players but are identified by their choir or school, such as Windsor or Eton, or by their master, such as Sebastian [Westcott] or Mr Mulcaster.) Possibly references to "players" in the Revels Office records induced Chambers and others to treat these records as authoritative for plays not only at court but in country houses, in the traditional playing places in cities and towns, and eventually in the permanent theatres of the Elizabethan period and later. But in fact these references are very intermittent until after 1575. When at last they name companies and plays, and record the provision of costumes and properties for them, the information is rarely detailed. By the late 1580S it dwindles to nothing. Though one can, from the records, make many convincing inferences about the costumes possessed by "players" and, later, "common players" for court performances, the inferences are largely negative: if the Revels supplied such and such items, either the players did not have them or, supposing that they did, what they had was below court standard. And since indications of repeat performances of the same show for the court are rare and ambiguous, what was done at court cannot be treated as authentic for what might have been done by itinerant actors or even by the few companies which, one by one, established themselves in purpose-built permanent theatres on the fringes of London, not even when these companies became the chief purveyors of entertainment to the Court. The records of Philip Henslowe give valuable information about the costumes of at least four professional companies: Lord Strange's and the Admiral's at the Rose through most of the 1590S, Worcester's at the same house from 1601 to 1603, and Lady Elizabeth's at the much later Hope in 1614. Despite their apparent gaps (even when no page has disappeared) the records are complete enough to show an operating system for one major company (the Admiral's) over several years, and for a much shorter time that of another, the Earl of Worcester's. More important, when set against known scripts, they confirm that the scripts' demands upon the wardrobe are usually realistic, so that we can assume some knowledge of the company's physical resources by the writers who supplied its plays. When plays by other companies are compared with these "Henslowe scripts," what appears is a general similarity of production style along with

10

THE COSTUMES QUESTION

distinct company individualities. At the same time, the evidence from Henslowe and from the plays of all the companies show that what the Revels accounts tell us has only rare and peripheral bearing upon wardrobe management by the common players.

II

This page intentionally left blank

Conventions of Costume and Costume Change

Using principles already established in the fifteenth century, stage costume showed its wearer's sex, rank, occupation, and often his age and marital status. Additionally, it allowed an actor to play more than one part—to double—by more-or-less extensive costume changes. Within a role, costume change almost always reflects an inward change. A different dress may show that a character has abandoned good for evil or evil for good, that he has grown up or grown old; changes in rank or occupation often accompany or stand for a moral or temporal change, as in Mankind and Hyckescorner. On the stage, change was invariably simple. With a soliloquy or dialogue to explain what his costume change stood for, the actor would trade one outer garment and/or hat for another, or add a gown or cloak to his costume. Off stage, a change might be more extensive, signifying when the actor reappeared either an inward change of his character or that he was now someone else. If an inward change is meant, explanation for the change soon follows. In a new identity the actor must almost immediately tell the audience who he is now, or if he enters to others they must call him by his new name. But whether the new costume visually expresses a new moral state for a play's protagonist or merely permits one actor to play two, three, or more parts, the problem was always how to get the actor recostumed and back onto the stage. Whenever an actor must make an extensive offstage change, as when prodigals exit in finery and return in rags, or when a story requires disguise, as for the romantic princesses and princes of Clyomon and Clamydes, Love and Fortune, Mucedorus, and many plays better known than these, time must be allowed. For example, in Robert Greene's James

13

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

IV, a scene of 175 lines covers Dorothea's disguise in man's apparel, but the scene extends the actor's changing time by a dance of antics to entertain the audience while "necessary business" was completed backstage. Dorothea's time to change from her male disguise to royal garments would be too brief had Greene not contrived her last scene as a man to be played "in a night gown." Thanks to this loose and easily donned robe, the actor could take off most of the male disguise and add parts of the queen's costume whenever he was offstage. Then, when Nano bids Dorothea "wend, and let us change your weede" (2335), she can be ready to enter "richly attired" (2444) after a much shorter offstage interval than would other' wise be demanded for so radical a costume change. Expedients like these resulted less from Greene's conscious deliberations than from a playwrights' tradition over a century in the making. Unlike the problem of getting a costume to an on stage actor, the problem of providing time for an offstage change is primarily the playwright's, and it has far more effect on the form of plays than does the simple physical transport of gowns or cloaks and hats from "within" to "without."1 Fights, dance, and song can each be prolonged if a backstage hitch delays a character's entrance. Clown scenes, though created to make audiences laugh, can perform the same function. Certainly Greene incorporates all in James IV, and they most certainly provide one reason for a spectacular scene in A Looking Glass for London and England. Here, Queen Remilia enters "in all royalty." After boasting of her beauty she orders the curtains of a stage structure to be shut upon her. The king, his attending lords, and the Magi then enter "in pomp," but the king at once exits: Magi, for love of Rasni, by your art, By magic frame an arbor out of hand For fair Remilia to disport her in. Meanwhile 1 will bethink me on further pomp. The Magi with their rods beat the ground, and from under the same riseth a brave arbor: the King returneth in an other suit while the trumpets sound.

(II.i.84-87) The business with the conjuring and its spectacular result covers not only Rasni's change to the "further pomp" of "an other suit" but also an additional spectacle when Rasni calls his queen to come see:

14

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

Remilia, my delight.—She answereth not. He draws the curtains and find her stroken with thunder, black.

( I I . i . I I I SD) By the king's processional entry with his lords, their manoeuvres to "make a ward about him," the business of the Magi and the arbor, and the sounding of the trumpets for the king's reentry, the play creates time for the player of Remilia to slip out to change costume and makeup, or perhaps for some other player to replace her in her shockingly changed guise. Costume change showing a character's new spiritual status by a new "outward show" appears in English Renaissance plays from the beginning of the period almost to its end, in plays performed by fifteenth century itinerants, household players, court or civic actors, and the unidentified troupes who put on the plays "offered for acting" circa 1565-80. In play after play dialogue or stage directions show that the central character is to change from (relatively) simple clothing to gaudy fashionable attire when he falls from grace, usually at the prompting of a Vice, and perhaps thence to rags, or from fashionable attire or rags to simple new garments on repentance for his misdeeds. This convention was basic, being practicable whether costumes were chosen for a particular performance, like the one for which the Office of Revels furnished costumes to the King's Players at Christmas 1551, or whether they comprised the wardrobe of a provincial troupe who carried it about in a few baskets. Some garments in the latest gaudy fashion, some of plain style, and some tattered were possible to all; indeed, one season's fashionable or plain costumes could wear out to next season's rags. Whether at court or on the road, no Tudor company performed continuously anywhere, nor seems to have had a large repertoire, and therefore none required an extensive wardrobe with costumes tailored to specific roles. As long as the company had costumes enough for the play with the most characters and could change the costume of the few central characters as needed, a limited stock would serve. Even when, after 1576, the professionals played an extended London season in permanent buildings in addition to seasonal performances in great households and at Court, the conventions of costume change developed for the earlier conditions persisted. They were, after all, familiar to the players and poets. More important, they were economical. Modification of these conventions did eventually oc-

15

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

cur, but only after 1594 did they gain significance. It was then that the numerous shifting troupes which existed before the 1592-93 plague hiatus consolidated into a few stable London companies, important enough, eventually, to modify dramatic form. The effects possible with the minimal costume change of early moralities and interludes can be very powerful. In Everyman the hero enters wearing fine clothes, which Death derides, clothes which he continues to wear during his vain appeals to family, friends, possessions, and qualities. But after he has visited Confession, he strips to scourge his body in penance for its "sins of the flesh." These are not, however, the expected gluttony, avarice, and lust, but his liking "to go gay and fresh," that is, finely clad. After penance, Knowledge offers Everyman "a garment of sorrow... contrition... That getteth forgiveness," and Good Deeds asks "will you wear it for your heal?" Everyman puts on the garment, probably a penitent's sheet, rejoicing that "now have I on true contrition." Such a sheet could easily be rearranged as a shroud when Everyman later must "creep" into his grave.2 The same device can evoke not pathos but laughter, as when Newguise takes Mankind's ample gown to alter it to the fashion, and brings garments back cut smaller and smaller. In most moralities the progress of the hero includes his temptation by the Seven Deadly Sins, though the full panoply of seven may not have been staged before Tarlton's two part medley in the 1580S. Traditionally manifested in clothing, the master-sin of pride made a good sermon target. Isaiah and the other prophets utter invectives against finery and ornaments, and Jesus disparages the "soft clothing" worn by those "in kings' houses" (Matt.II:8). Chaucer's "Parson's Tale," which discusses the Sins, subdivides pride into many kinds of behavior, but goes into detail only for "outrageous array of clothyng," whether too voluminous, too decorated, too scanty, or too gaudily colored; little difference lies between the "outrageous array" of Chaucer's Parson and the Elizabethan homily's "Excess of Apparel." Such excess was easy to portray on stage, for the actor need only strut in elaborate, bright-colored garments. Since pride was the master-sin, an actor entering in "outrageous array" could imply all other sins by just this one. Other sins were less visually impressive. A passive sin like sloth is poor theatre, and envy need only be verbalized. Gluttony (except as drunkenness) is awkward to stage, though clowns do sometimes stuff their faces. While on stage flirtation with female characters and speeches of sexual bargaining easily present lechery,

16

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

such scenes also require an actor to put on a female costume for a usually brief appearance, not always practicable if a troupe was small. But lechery was a regular side effect of gluttony, so if the hero or Vice proposed going to a tavern where they would meet "Margery," or if someone spoke of an offstage tavern scene using women's names, this could represent two sins without visual assistance. Since wrath was most frequently expressed by violence against the person, an actor in gaudy costume could offer to fight both virtue and vice characters, and so display pride and wrath together. Accordingly these two sins are those most often enacted on stage throughout the sixteenth century, whether by Vices or by errant morality heroes. In Hyckscorner, Frewill and Imagynation first wear the colorful and immodest finery of Tudor gilded youth, but when Pity and his allies convert them, each receives a new, sober, and probably more adult garment in token of his repentance. In The Life and Repentance of Mary Magdalene, Mary enters for the first time "triflyng / with her garmentes" (56 SD), and her tempters chiefly exploit her vanity of dress; converted, she enters "sadly apparelled" (1678 SD), confessing to vanity before she anoints Jesus. In Elizabethan moralities the device may express a more complex development of moral character. So in Enough Is Good As a Feast, Worldly Man enters "stout and frolic" (91 SD) to be quickly converted by Heavenly Man and Contentation, then exits for 350 lines during which the Vice and his lieutenants plot his downfall. Returning with Enough, who is "poorly clad" and repeatedly called "beggarly," he is dressed "in a strange attire" (626 SD) which may mean "unfashionable" but perhaps indicates a foreign garment like the Geneva gown associated with Calvinism. Once tempted by the Vices, Worldly Man exits with them and is absent for about 250 lines. He then enters "all brave" (IIII SD), suggesting a fairly complete costume change has occurred. In this prideful costume he dies by God's plague, unrepentant. It is hardly a step from making the actor change costume when his character sins or repents to making the actor change costume when his character undergoes any major inward change, for instance, the beginning or end of folly or madness. In Redford's Wit and Science (before 1530) and its later reworkings, Idleness puts Wit into a fool's garments after lulling him asleep. The device was still in use over fifty years later. In The Three Ladies of London, Simplicitie changes from the costume of a prosperous miller to that of a servant and at last to that of a beggar, as his

17

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

fundamental sloth more and more dominates. In the same play, two of the three Ladies acquire, on stage, grotesque new costumes and painted faces when they become corrupt. By the end of the 15805 changes to express mental states could involve complex offstage manipulations; when in Greene's Orlando Furioso Orlando first goes mad, he drags off a Shepherd, than at once reenters "with a leg" (758), insisting that he is "mightie Hercules." After eleven lines of disjointed "mad" speech he exits, to reenter "attire like a mad-man" (842), probably meaning the blanket, staff, and horn of the Abraham Man3 as a modest stage concession to Orlando's total nakedness in Ariosto. Still mad, Orlando reenters "like a Poet" (1168), perhaps wearing a gown and a laurel wreath and carrying papers, for a scene ended by Melissa's magically induced sleep. From this he wakes cured, demanding "how came I thus disguisde/ Like mad Orestes quaintly thus disguisd?" (1304-5). At the scene's end Melissa gives him weapons and sends him "to the battell straight" (1339). Though nothing is said about his "poet" gown, he evidently drops it backstage, since a gown would be an incumbrance in his fight with Sacrepant. Mandricard describes Sacrepant's slayer as "a simple swain; a mercenarie/ Who bravely took the combat to him selfe" (1443-44) with "a scarfe before his face" (1350), so even Orlando's fellow peers do not recognize him until the scarf is removed. The "poet" costume (unexplained by the script but perhaps suggested by the four "madnesses" of Platonic philosophy, of which poetry was the first) permitted the actor to change to his "simple swain" costume while he had 300 lines offstage, then become the "swain" by dropping the gown and tying on the scarf during an eleven-line absence. Costume change for madness persists long after stage repentances, complete with new garments, had become the stuff for mockery in plays like Eastward Ho! and The Devil Is an Ass, whose chief penitent is in fact a devil. Lear's madness visibly begins when he tries to strip, his return to sanity is by "fresh garments." Jonson may be both using and satirizing the convention when in Bartholomew Fair he makes Quarlous rob the madman Trouble-all of his clothes and don them himself to win the elderly widow Purecraft; Quarlous in the first act speaks so emphatically against marrying a widow for her money that when he himself does so one may consider whether he has become "mad in truth" in more ways than Purecraft thinks. Since sixteenth century madmen and fools really did wear special garments to identify them to society, like the figures labeled "Changeling," "Tu Quoque," and "Simpleton" on the title page of The

18

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE Wits, or Sport Upon Sport,4 their garments may also be exploited to give false information about a character's mental state, as with the disguises of Edgar in King Lear and Antonio and Franciscus in The Changeling. A variant on this kind of expressive costume change is change to show a character's new degree or occupation. Often it incorporates a moral dimension because elevation to a higher degree so often rewards worthiness, and a fall to a lower degree so often punishes vice or folly. When a character on the Elizabethan stage is crowned or deposed, grows rich or poor, goes to war, enters a convent or the like, he significantly changes his inward state at the same time as he loses his former "outward show." Though the change is not quite like the rebirth of the penitent Mankind figure in moralities, costume change gives the audience similar information: the same character is now to elicit a different response from the one he elicited before. Changed costume for changed status can also visually indicate that time is passing or has passed. In the early Mundus et Infans the hero enters as the infant Dalliance, receives from World new clothes and the name Wanton, and plays childish games. After seven years pass in a forty-seven line speech, he beomes Lust-and-Liking for seven years in twenty-four lines, "proudly apparelled in garments gay" (134), then Manhood "in robes royal right of good hue" (296) and, since at this point World dubs him a knight, he probably also puts on spurs and a sword. He remains Manhood until Folly renames him Shame (perhaps putting a fool's cap on his head) and invites him to London "to learn revel" (701). When he has become Age, probably in a long gown with a coif on his head, Perseverance instructs him in the requirements of salvation, and, accepting the instruction, he sums up his previous life and is given the name Repentance. All these costume changes correlate with new names to express a theory of human development that lasted throughout English Renaissance drama. 5 Change from fine clothes to rags distinguishes the many prodigal plays, no matter what variation of "decay" the play develops. In Impatient Poverty the title character first complains "my clothes are but bare" (151). But after he has become Prosperity, falling victim to the enticements of Misrule and the gamester Colhazard, he returns "poorly," "a ragged knave" whose "clothes smell all of the smoke" (879-80). Perhaps indicating that he wears a sheet—the traditional garment of contrition—he carries "a candle in his hand doing penance about the place" (976 SD). To him Peace points out "thine own sensual and undiscrete operation,/ Hath brought thee to all this tribulation." Nonetheless he reclothes Poverty as

19

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Prosperity, "With this vesture I shall thee renew" (1040-43), following a course similar to Marston's Histriomastix, a play with far more elaborate costume changes in the successors of Peace, and the human exemplars of each new stage in society's decline from Peace through Plenty, Pride, Envy, and War to Poverty. In Thomas Ingelond's Disobedient Child (offered for acting in 1560), the Son marries against his father's wishes, and with his dowerless wife devotes himself to fine clothes and feasting. Eventually their servant brings a message from "a stranger at home [who] would very fain with you talk" (72)—suggesting a creditor or arresting officer—who will not leave the house until they come. Husband and wife exit, and their servant, alone on the stage, soliloquizes about the prodigal "riot" of meat, drink, dice, and company, giving both wife and husband time to change into poorer clothing for their next entry. This clothing visually prepares the audience for the wife's insistence that "to work we make haste... to get both our livings" and, after the husband prefers "to be quiet, and take mine ease" (75), their violent quarrel. Poverty converts the wife to a shrew who beats her husband. Finally she leaves for the country, ordering him to stay home in her absence, and he, blaming her for his misery, prays she will die soon because, Although that I be a gentleman born And come by my ancestors of a good blood, Yet am I like to wear a coat torn.

(p. 79) A long speech by the Devil seems intruded here to permit the husband a further change from poor man's garments to "a coat torn," also named in the long speech where "he confesseth his naughtiness": That which I had I have clean spent, And kept so much riot with the same, That now I am fain a coat that is rent, Alas, to wear for very shame.

(p. 84) G. Wapull's formless Tide Tarrieth No Man (offered for acting in 1576), includes a similar pair of young prodigals, named Wantonness and Wastefulness, who determine to spend their substance in pleasure. Immediately

20

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

after their exit, Wapull brings in "the Debtor arrested" (1294 SD), who suggests the prodigal, but this nonce-character says his debts are just and blames his present plight on the avarice of Greediness. Only after more than 200 lines concerned with Christianity, Faithful Few, Greediness, and the "Vice" Courage, does Wastefulness reappear, as expected, "poorly," lamenting his condition and followed by "Despair... in some ugly shape" (1582 SD) who encourages suicide. Faithful Few "plucketh [Wastefulness] again," the two pray together, and "Despair flyeth and they rise" (1594 SD; 1610 SD). Wapull has used the prodigal pattern to serve theological ends beyond the usual warnings against riot and expense; Wastefulness vanishes once the play has made its point: that prayer remedies all. The Nice Wanton, played by schoolboys before Edward VI about 1550 but, like the similar Disobedient Child, only offered for acting in 156o6 uses properties rather than costume changes to show the decline of its two sinners. Dalilah quarrels with Iniquity over money and exits threatening to find "a good fellow or two" who "shall box you for this gear." After Iniquity has called her "jade" and "whore" before his own exit, she "cometh in ragged, her face hid, or disfigured, halting on a staff" (250-61 SD). The decline of her brother Ismael into a thief is not shown, but revealed when he enters, apparently in his original costume but "bound like a prisoner" (369 SD) to be tried, condemned, and carried (with Iniquity) to execution. As in Mundus et Infans, the costume changes of all these plays foreshorten time, so emphasizing the ruinous outcome of the characters' prodigality. Change into "poor" clothing persisted in plays written to the "prodigal" formula throughout the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. Whether a hero's courses follow the prodigal pattern openly, as in The English Traveler, or whether they merely evoke the prodigal situation, as does that of Bassanio and later of Antonio in Merchant of Venice, or of Alexander Kickshaw in The Lady of Pleasure, shabbiness of costume visually expresses the wearer's condition. And if he reforms or recoups his fortune by whatever means, he can be expected to put on new garments, as do Bassanio, Kickshaw, and Wellborn in A New; Way to Pay Old Debts. In Eastward Ho! which uses the conventions of prodigal plays satirically, Gertrude and Quicksilver's folly is emphasized when they don clothes above their degree. Their return to sense comes when they lose this finery. Meanwhile, Golding's advantageous prudence displays itself as in comically rapid succession he appears wearing the tokens of citizen advancement. When Henry V enters robed and crowned at the end of

21

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Henry IV Part 2, his costume alone should tell Falstaff and company that he is no more Prince Hal in character than he is in clothes. Possibly the greatest of all status changes is from the living to the dead, made visible in Everyman when, wrapped in his winding-sheet, he enters his grave. This signal seems to have persisted: A Warning for Fair Women mentions "some fowle sheete, or a leather pelch" (line 55) as ghost dress as late as 1599, and such readily-assumed overgarments seem the only way to manage the eleven ghosts who visit Richard and Richmond late in Shakespeare's Richard III, since almost all the actors must play other roles immediately before and after this scene. Although characters die in both Corpus Christi plays and in sixteenth century moralities, death is not, apparently, shown through costume until the 15805. It is then that the ghost of Andrea presides over The Spanish Tragedy and, in Locrine, that the ghost of Albanact pursues Humber crying "Vindicta!" and the ghost of Corineus predicts and possibly causes the defeat and suicide of Locrine, Estrild, and Sabren. Henslowe mentions "j gostes sewt," perhaps for the Ghost of Andrea, as well as "j gostes bodeyes"7 for an unknown female role, yet nothing indicates what these costumes were like; the grislysounding mask of Medioxes for Edward VI in the year he died, "half man and half deathe. . . hedpeces. . . doble vizaged thone syde lyke a man and thother lyke deathe"8 is so fully described that its apparel was probably not traditional, and no later record suggests that it became so. Since stage ghosts usually have died by violence and walk to haunt their killers, it may be that the wounds and "gory locks" of Banquo's Ghost indicate a convention applicable to Andrea, Albanact, Corineus, Caesar, and others. Still, King Hamlet walks "in complete steel" as when he killed Norway, not in a ghost costume, so the convention was probably never rigid. The one feature essential to any changed status, including that from life to death, was that the character look different; becoming a ghost nearly always meant an offstage costume change, whether the transformation merely meant wrapping oneself in a sheet or whether it involved more elaborate dress and makeup. From the first (probably long-lost) play on the Fall of Man, a deceiver and his dupe were stock characters in European drama, and just as Satan disguised himself as a serpent to effect his deceit, so all subsequent deceivers represented themselves as something they were not. The simplest of all disguises requires no change of appearance and therefore no change of costume; the deceiver simply gives a false name, as when Envy in Impatient Poverty tells both Prosperity and Peace that he is Charity, and is

22

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

believed, or when Hypocrisy in Lusty Juventus introduces himself as Friendship and, so accepted, proceeds to introduce the other Vices, first to the audience by their true names, then to the hero by false ones. But the use of false names alone is not visually interesting, nor is it altogether clear. When the audience first meets a character under one name, then for a long time hears him called by another, it may cease to remember that the familiar name is false. But if the change of name is accompanied by a new costume, then visual and verbal disguises reinforce each other. Further emphasis may be placed upon the deception if other deceivers use the true name to the disguise costume, as do the Vices in Respublica. Morality deceivers who disguise themselves almost always do so on stage accompanied by gloating soliloquy or dialogue with their fellow Vices, making sure that the audience remembers what reality is hidden beneath. At least some of the time, the original costume of a morality deceiver must have been emblematic of his true nature, like Rumor's garment "painted full of tongues" in Henry IV Part 2; perhaps some "light huswife" garment made clear that a "girl... which will make us to be merry" (Lusty Juventus 765-66) is not the innocent-sounding Unknown Honesty but the whore Abominable Living, a name never used to address her. But if the Vice puts on a sober robe or gown that implies "virtue" atop his more accurate costume, and if this occurs along with speech and action emphasizing the change and its corrupt purpose, the impression of falsity is both stronger and more durable. In The Life and Repentance of Mary Magdalene the Vice, Infidelitie, has not one but several gowns to disguise himself: ... there such a name to my selfe I do geue, I haue a garment correspondent to that name. A vesture I have here to this garment correspondent: Lo, here it is; a gowne, I trowe, conuenient. Mary did talke with me before in this geare [original costume]; But because she shall the sooner to me apply I will dresse me in these garments euen by and by. Put on a gowne & a cap. How thynke you by me now in this aray? (390-405)

23

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Later, when Infidelitie wants to enter Simon the Pharisee's house, Malicious Judgement advises him to "hyde thy selfe in a Pharisies gowne, /Such a one as is bordered with the commaundements" (1539-40). Of course he has "one conuenient," with an appropriate cap. Emblematic garments had to be specially tailored, and might not be usable except in the role they were made for; they seem more frequent in plays written for household or school performances than in plays merely offered for acting. In the court play Respublica, Avarice gives Adulation, Oppression, and Insolence the new names Honesty, Reformation, and Authority, and puts them into "other garments [to]. .. counterfeit gravity" (I.iii.401-2), sober gowns of royal counsellors which he twice anxiously warns them to "keep. .. close afore" (417, 579). At the play's end, Verity strips these off and Respublica recognizes their wearers by their original betraying suits, probably all "pride" costumes. Avarice, who first enters wearing a specially made reversible gown with "purses that hang at my back" (46) assumes the name Policy, turning his gown inside out to seem a sober counsellor. This lets the actor show how Avarice loves money, for when Respublica enters he has opened the gown to fondle his purses, permitting a moment of comic suspense since he has forgotten to keep his own gown "close afore." In the prolonged exposure scene at the end, he claims that the bag they find "in [his] bosom" (1836) is full of "rye," permitting an extended list of words for malfeasance ending in this syllable, until the gown is taken from him and, no doubt, held aloft for Respublica's astonished "Where has thou dragged up all these purses?" (1880). But it is the gown, not the garments beneath it, that betray his true nature; instead of merely losing a false name with the false gown, as do his three lieutenants, Avarice loses at once both his disguise as Policy and the money-laden garment that defines him. Respublica's Avarice does not seem to have the oversized nose of the later stage usurer,9 though "covetous men with long noses" (Revels 116) had danced in a mask for Edward VI two or three years earlier. Sometimes such a costume change facilitates some physical demand of stage action. In William Garter's Vertuous and Godlye Susanna (offered for acting), the Vice, 111 Report, appropriates the robe of office worn by one of the executed Unjust Judges and puts it on his own back, but this garment does not prevent Servus and True Report from recognizing him on sight despite his claim to be a judge and a magistrate: "doest not see by my gowne" (1284). Garter may have intended this gown to be not a genuine

24

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

disguise but a means of identifying 111 Report with the two Biblical evildoers. After the Vice fails to prove that True Report is really Hugh Report and he himself not 111 but Will, "they haue him to hanging, the Deuill entreth saying Oh oh, oh," (SD 1382), and promising, His [111 Report's] soule, his bones, his flesh and all by me shall be possest. And what there is in Hell to harme, or punish him withall, Or what I may deuyse anew, his fleshe shall feele it all. (1395-97) It is not clear whether "haue him to hanging" means that they bind 111 Report and hale him offstage, or whether the hanging is to be simulated on stage (as in Horestes) and the Devil afterwards to exit with 111 Report on his shoulders. Exits to Hell on a devil's back form a comic conclusion to other careers of vice and folly; Miles in Friar Bacon and Pug in The Devil Is an Ass are familiar later examples. Therefore it seems likely that 111 Report indeed rides off in this way. If so, by the transfer of one costume—probably the two Judges were dressed alike—Garter assimilates three characters into one, thus enabling one devil to, in effect, carry all of them at once to hell in the person of a single actor. Jacob and Esau, an earlier play offered for acting, shows that a playwright might feel the need to explain any alteration of a character's dress, even when no confusion was possible. When Rebecca, on stage, disguises Jacob as his brother Esau with a kidskin collar and sleeves she first instructs him: Thou shalt here incontinent put upon thy backe Esau his best apparell, whose fragraunt flauour, Shall coniure Isaac to beare thee his fauour. (1274-76)

Although Esau never appears in "his best apparell" and no confusion of identity would result from this on stage change, as soon as Jacob is disguised the nurse Debora exclaims, "Mary sir now is maister Jacob trimme in deede" (1277) and "Mary sir Jacob is now gay and trim" (1282). As if this were not clear enough Jacob then moralizes:

25

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

I could with mine owne geare better contented b e . . . I loue not to wear an other birdes feathers. Mine owne poore homely geare will serue for all wethers. (1284-48) This sounds like hypocrisy but is probably meant, as with Enough and other virtue characters, to express piety by preference for simple, utilitarian apparel. Jacob's disguise is supposed to trick the blind Isaac by touch and smell, so it probably was supposed to look crude to the sighted audience. But the playwright, accustomed to explaining all costume changes, elaborates further upon Jacob's changed appearance, not his likeness to Esau. After Isaac has overcome his suspicions and blessed Jacob, Esau enters in his familiar "work day" costume expecting blessing and discovering he is too late. Presumably Jacob then reappears in his "poore homely geare" after stripping off the disguise backstage, and as the play ends he departs to seek a wife in this familiar costume. On stage costume change survives in a comically naive form in Look About You, where characters are constantly changing and exchanging costumes on stage and in each new costume deceive even their parents, brothers, and spouses. It may be that this survival of an obsolete morality device evoked memories of the morality deceivers; the Vice-like villain Skinke, who disguises himself as many of the other characters and in the guise of a hermit commits robberies and attempts rape, even calls himself "Ambodexter" in apparent allusion to the Vice in Cambises. But moral censure scarcely attaches itself to disguise as such in Look About You, for the characters who disguise themselves by putting on other characters' clothes include more good characters than wicked, even outnumber the characters who remain themselves throughout. Neither serious harm nor offense results from the disguises, and the most a deceived character complains of is his own stupidity. More realism is in evidence, on the surface at least, in plays where kings and aristocrats disguise themselves to go among their inferiors. In George-a'Greene, and Hey wood's Edward IV Part I, royal masquerades just prove what good fellows the kings are. For these disguises the kings and their noble sidekicks may simply borrow plain cloaks from other characters on stage:

26

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

. . . Lord Maior, and you, my other friendes, I must intreate you not to knowledge me. No man stand bare-all as companions. Giue me a cloke, that I may be disguisde. Tom Bellinger, go thou and take another.10 This disguise leads eventually to the Tanner of Tamworth's good fortune and is treated as pure merriment. But when Edward disguises himself to seduce Jane Shore, his concealment of his identity is disapproved because it leads to adultery. On the night before Agincourt, Shakespeare's Henry V borrows Erpingham's cloak for warmth as he walks alone. This borrowed garment functions exactly as does King Edward's deliberate disguise in Henry's encounters with Pistol and the three soldiers. Because the soldiers do not recognize him, he can discover their views on the war and then, as if he were disinterested, argue for its justice. After the battle, when Henry plays his practical joke on Williams and Fluellen, Williams reproaches him for the deception, but when the king compensates him with a glove full of coins, the soldier has no more to say. The pastime disguise of masking is usually quite as innocent as and seldom more complicated than disguises by different cloaks. Although the characters may devote an earlier scene to planning them, stage masquerades usually occupy only one scene. Maskers disguise themselves on stage by simply putting on "vizards" or sometimes, swathing themselves in more elaborate disguise. Mercutio and his fellows merely don false faces for their mask at the Capulet feast, but the King and Lords in Love's Labours Lost wear not only masks but also the cloaks and headdresses of Muscovites. Hieronymo's mask by anonymous performers early in The Spanish Tragedy seems to call for the same sort of wrappings donned offstage. Costume change offstage was probably intended for the wearers of the "masking sutes" ordered for the lost Rise of Cardinal Wolsey in 1601, and certainly for the mute masquers in Timon of Athens, who have no other role in the play and must have been doubling in other parts. Offstage donning of the disguises was essential for the murder-masques of The Revenger's Tragedy and Women Beware Women. In Thomas of Woodstock, the King and his minions enter masked as "Diana's knights, led in by four other knights in green, with horns about their necks and boar spears in their hands" (IV.ii. 124 SD), but these garments were clearly easy to put

27

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

on and remove, since they quickly bundle Woodstock into a similar "masking suit" (193) and vizard to keep his arrest secret. A variant of masking, a play within a play, requires costume change according to who is supposed to be acting and how long these plays are to last. In the performance of "Soliman and Perseda" in Act V of The Spanish Tragedy, through which Hieronymo carries out his revenge, the costumes are tokens and are not supposed to disguise the actors. Hieronymo's instructions to his players make this token nature clear: You must provide a Turkish cap, A black mustachio, and a fauchion; Gives a paper to Balthazar. You, with a cross, like to knight of Rhodes; Gives another to Lorenzo. And, Madam, you must attire yourself He giveth Bel-imperia another. [As]... to your discretion shall seem best. (IV. i. 143-48) The speeches of the stage audience show they enjoy identifying the aristocrats who are playing the parts: See, viceroy, that is Balthazar your son, That represents the emperor Soliman. Here comes Lorenzo; look upon the plot, And tell me, brother, what part plays he? But Bel-imperia plays Perseda well. (IV.iv.2o-69) What the men are to wear would have been stock or easily made, but Belimperia is only to be "Like Phoebe, Flora, or the Huntress" (147). Kyd suggests what kind of outfit might be fit for a "Grecian Lady," but he does not specify as he does for Balthazar's and Lorenzo's outfits. Bel-imperia's "discretion" indicates what Henslowe's records also show about costumes for boys, that Kyd could not be sure about available women's apparel. In later plays whose revenges are accomplished during masques, like Antonio's Revenge and Women Beware Women, similar "disguises" are used

28

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

for the same reason; the audience (stage and theatre) needs to know what character in the "outer play" is being stabbed or poisoned, and the role in the "inner play" is unimportant. In The Revenger's Tragedy, on the other hand, the audience expects masquers to murder the Duke and his companions, which duly occurs, but cannot expect "the other Mask of Intended Murderers. . . coming in dancing" to murder not the Duke but each other (V.iii.so 48). Here identical masque costumes obliterate the differences between the characters, reducing all to the same bloodthirsty level. In plays-within-plays like Midsummer Night's Dream's "Pyramus and Thisby" or those in Histriomastix, the original characters must remain identifiable because the point of the show is ineptitude. Peter Quince supplies five "prologues" for this purpose, but Bottom, if no others, must be recognizable beneath his "Pyramus" outfit. Sir Oliver Owlet's Men in Histriomastix talk a lot about "apparel," but very little seems used in their unfinished plays. Some kind of compromise must have been necessary in a play like Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, when Folly wit and his confederates disguise themselves as players and perform part of a play for his grandfather Sir Bounteous in order to steal valuables; the "outer play's" characters had to be recognizable to the audience, yet in their "inner play" roles changed enough that Sir Bounteous could conceivably not know them. Since Follywit and his cohorts have succeeded in deceiving Sir Bounteous disguised as a lord and his "bluecoats," as "Lincolnshire men" in masking suits and vizards, and as a courtesan and her servants, a good "player" disguise for him and the others might be their London finery worn with player's beards and/or wigs. But when a play within a play is performed by such actors as the traveling players hired to perform for Christopher Sly in both Taming plays and to present "The Murder of Gonzago" in Hamlet, full-scale costume change for the play-in-play part seems intended, for in the first an extended induction permits the players to change costume and in the second, after Hamlet bids the players "Go make you ready" (III.ii.45), Hamlet's private conversation with Horatio, the royal entry to a "Danish march," and Hamlet's flirtation with Ophelia allow these players something over five minutes to put on their stage royalty.

If an early Renaissance acting company of two, four, or eight players was not to limit itself to plays with two, four, or eight roles, then its recourse

29

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

must be to double the excess parts. As Bevington has shown in From Mankind to Marlowe, this necessity affected everything from the lifespan of a character to the number of costumes a company had to possess. Early moralities and interludes were performed by small troupes who wanted to put on the best possible show for the least possible money, whether for audiences who had seen cycle plays and other civic shows in their splendor or for audiences who had seen or heard of the age's sumptuous court entertainments. Still, even the household players of Henry VIII and Edward VI were few in number, and must have doubled parts in the same way as the poorest wanderers. No matter where or for whom a play was put on, doubling as a condition of performance dominated almost every other for as long as the troupes remained small and itinerant, and continued for similar economic reasons among large sedentary companies in permanent theatres after the late 15705. Such a device for implying more persons than actually played satisfied the Elizabethan notion of grandeur, expressed by the crowds of liveried attendants who surrounded royalty, nobles, and great churchmen on all public occasions from birth to funeral. On stage, in histories and tragedies, characters supposed to be great nobles, queens, kings, and emperors might have to make do with token attendants and opponents, but doubling permitted a better illusion than Dickens gave Mr Wopsle's Hamlet, its "Danish nobility. . . consisting of a noble boy... a venerable Peer with a dirty face,. . . and the Danish chivalry with a comb in its hair and a pair of white silk legs." Victorian productions of Shakespeare intruded crowds of watchers, dancers, and so on, and film "epics" still may advertise a "cast of thousands." Many people in a show, together or sequentially, look more spectacular and imply more opulence than a few. For most of the sixteenth century doubling was the most common reason for an actor to appear in different costumes. Any costume change that was not for doubling had to be explained, because audiences had learned to expect that a new costume meant a new character. When playing different roles by means of different costumes an actor did not draw attention to a new garment as he did regularly when a changed dress expressed his character's inward change. Costume changes for doubling took place offstage even if they were only such token changes as a different cloak and hat. Because doubling change happened much more often than expressive change, when someone like Moros, Worldly Man, or Neronis retained one identity through two or more costume changes, the playwright

30

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

had to make sure the audience knew that the same person was supposed to be on stage inside the different dress. In plays written for the small, mainly itinerant troupes before the building of permanent theatres in and after 1576, doubling and its concomitant costume change can go to astonishing lengths. Tudor and early Elizabethan professional troupes, sometimes as small as two, commonly four, and virtually never larger than eight players, might undertake four or more times as many characters as the troupe numbered. The number of characters a small company could play was limited not so much by how many belonged to it as by how many costumes it owned. Though doubling is less likely in plays written for nonprofessionals, such as schoolboys and members of the Inns of Court, any play may require it and most, at least those printed, would permit it. It seems likely that even Wit and Science, which was written for a school, was constructed so that its eight parts for singers could be played by four actors. In Richard Edwards's Damon and Pithias, played by the Chapel boys at Court at Christmas 1564, there is a late scene in which Eubulus is alone on stage lamenting the pending execution of Pithias. Suddenly, without any preparation, appears the direction "Then the Muses singe" (1894 SD): Alas what happe hast thou poore Pithias now to die, Wo worth the which man for his death hath geuen us cause to crie. (1895-96) Eubulus reacts to these lines with a quatrain, worthy of Bottom, which implies that the Muses are heard but not seen: Me think I hear with yelow rented heares, The Muses frame ther notes my state to mone: Among which sorte as one that morneth with harte, In doleful tunes my selfe will beare a parte. (1898-1901) This introduces Eubulus's four-quatrain solo with the Muses as chorus, beginning "With yelow rented heares come on you Muses nine" (1903). But with no direction for them to enter, and, more important, none for them to exit (only the word "Finis" and two lines praising them for their sympa-

31

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

thy) it seems likely that the Muses sang "within," and that the choir included all the boy players but the actor of Eubulus. The structure of Damon and Pithias, as of Wit and Science and the Inner Temple's Tancred and Gismund, permits doubling of some roles, and indeed such doubling may have been necessary, for it does seem likely that the play's two clowns, Grim the Collier and the hangman Gronno, were adult roles played by one man. Similarly, Snap the Tipstaff and the slave Stephano may have been performed by one boy. Probably the authors of these plays and some others doubled certain parts because their plays' form imitated that of plays for the smaller professional companies. Such plays were already familiar models in English for the choirmasters and lawyers who wrote scripts for private and court performances. All the same, the potential for doubling in these imitations is never great; even when two characters are never on stage together, their entrances and exits are seldom spaced to permit even minimal costume change. Scripts offered for acting differ immensely in the number of parts one actor is to undertake: the doubling schemes they provide may demand anything from two to seven roles for one actor. Bale's God's Promises could be done by two, one playing Prolocutor and Pater Celestis, the other playing Adam, Noah, Moses, David, and John the Baptist, but his Kyng Johan needs five actors to play seventeen characters, of which, apparently, he wanted three pairs to be recognizable alternates: Sedycion and Steven Langton, Usurped Power and the Pope, Private Wealth and a Cardinal. These characters may have changed names without changing costumes. Lusty juventus distributes nine parts among four players. Like Will to Like distributes sixteen parts among five, with three actors playing four parts each and the actor of Nicoll Newfangle (the Vice) not doubling at all. Susanna distributes seventeen roles among eight. The Tide Tarrieth No Man is more demanding, with four actors to play seventeen parts, and at one juncture the playwright compensated for a too-short interval between an exit and a recostumed entry by instructing Hurtful Help and the Vice, Courage, to fight "to prolong the time while Wantonness maketh her ready" (1118 SD). In an extreme case, two actors seem expected to play ten parts in Mundus et Infans, although what takes place in the first part of this play is not strictly doubling since the costume changes which bring Dalliance to Manhood occur on stage and clearly represent but one entity under successive names. As his final deed, World knights the hero as Manhood

32

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

Mighty, then exits, returning as Conscience, who in turn exits to reenter almost at once as Folly. Folly entices Manhood to follow him to London for the usual "riot" of a prodigal, naming him Shame and perhaps transferring his own fool's cap to Manhood's head as he exits. Manhood/Shame boasts of his freedom "to learn revel," then Folly re-enters as Conscience. Conscience and Shame have a brief quarrel, the latter then exiting to dress as Perseverance. Conscience exits as Perseverance enters, this time to dress as Age in a gray beard, a coif, and perhaps the rags of the ruined prodigal. But Perseverance soon renames Age Repentance, probably, like Good Deeds in Everyman, giving him a new overgarment with the new name. This fits with the earlier part of the play, when with each new name for the hero, World has given him new garments. It is also appropriate since Repentance is to deliver the concluding exhortation to virtue. These offstage changes in the second half of Mundus et In/ans, which turn World into Conscience, Conscience into Folly and back again, Manhood into Perseverance, and Conscience into Age, are true doubling with its characteristic offstage costume changes, unlike the changes of the first half which turn one character into his temporal successor in full sight of the audience. Among the plays offered for acting, Thomas Preston's Cambises is unique in its demands for doubling, eight actors being called on to play no fewer than thirty-eight roles. Only three actors play fewer than six, those who play the major roles of Cambises (doubling only the epilogue), Ambidexter (doubling only Trial), and Young Child and Cupid, tiny parts evidently doubled by "a boy, the least that can play" who has no other roles. Of the remaining thirty-two characters few last more than one scene. With so many parts in different dress the audience would have seen any new costume as a new character unless someone explained otherwise. But in this play only three of the thirty-eight characters must change any part of their costumes: Ambidexter, Sisamnes, and the King. Ambidexter first enters wearing burlesque armor: "an old capcase on his head, an old pail about his hips for harness," and carrying as his weapons a scummer, potlid, and rake (ii SD). Probably the "armor" went over a clown costume, for Ambidexter's first scene involves him with the comic soldiers Huf, Snuf, and Ruf, and the Meretrix. When the comedy grows violent, he "must run his way for fear" (xi SD 140). The Meretrix prolongs an attack on Snuf, giving the actor of Ambidexter time to get out of the "armor" and put on at least a cloak and hat so that he can reenter for the

33

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

next scene to accost Sisamnes "like a gentleman" (Sc. iii, 14), phrasing which in stage usage normally implies a gentleman's dress though not necessarily a gentleman's manner. Ambidexter remains "like a gentleman" for the rest of the play, and his activities after meeting Sisamnes are connected mainly with the Court. Sisamnes first enters "like a lawyer." Later, appointed the King's deputy, he changes on the stage to a gown trimmed with a "bordered guard" (Sc. i, 114), and finally undergoes the most drastic of all costume changes, when, stripped of his robe of office, he is executed and flayed "with a false skin" (v so 124). The actor of Sisamnes must have worn at least four layers of clothes, all but whatever was under the "false skin" removed on stage. After he is carried out, the actor is offstage for about 145 lines to change costume for Lord Smerdis's attendant Diligence. Cambises probably remained in royal garb through most of the play, but when he is to die, the actor enters "without a gown, a sword thrust up into his side, bleeding' (x so 214); this minor change is explained by the offstage activity that caused the wound, "As I on horseback up did leap" (Sc. x, 222), for a gown was not a horseman's garment; probably Preston wanted to get rid of a concealing robe to give the audience a good view of sword and blood. In plays written between the late 15705 and the early 15908, the authors sometimes venture both extensive doubling and extensive expressive costume change. Wilson's Three Ladies of London and Cobbler's Prophecy both call for six actors to play twenty-six roles, almost the same demand for doubling as Cambises with eight actors (4.33 roles per actor against 4-5). 11 Some of the characters in Three Ladies are of the familiar morality kind. Their names indicate their status as virtues (Love, Conscience, Hospitality) or as vices (Fraud, Dissimulation, Lucar); the action follows the familiar morality pattern of innocence corrupted by vice. But a second group of characters is different; the lawyer, the artificer, the parson, the English justice Nemo, the merchant, the Jewish usurer, and the Turkish judge display not the nature of vice but Lucar's evil effect on society, since each helps exhibit some facet of avarice. Unlike the simple parade of social types in Enough Is As Good As a Feast and All for Money, however, the merchant, the Jew, and the Turkish judge enact a subplot that shows justice subverted by the merchant's lust for money. At the play's end Justice Nemo and his court's officers (constable, clerk, beadle, crier) function almost like dei ex machina to punish Lucar, Conscience, and Love, and seem no different in function from the nonallegorical jus-

34

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

tices who resolve Jonson's moral comedies by a "happy" dealing of punishments all round. Unlike Cambises with its limited costume change almost entirely for doubling, Three Ladies calls for multiple changes not only for doubling but also to show the characters' changing moral states as their social status changes. Dissimulation first enters "in a Farmers long coat," Fraud has "a Sword and a Buckler like a Ruffian," and the clown, Simplicitie, is "Like a Miller all mealy with a wande in his hand" (Sig. Aiii). Several scenes later, having donned a blue coat after taking service with Conscience and Love, he remembers an easier life "when I was a miller" (Sig. Diii). These costumes create a rural setting for the play's earlier scenes, for the miller, the farmer, the ruffian and Hospitalitie are country rather than city types. But later in the play the three ladies, their servant, and the Vices (who have murdered Hospitalitie) all come to London. When Lucar there allies herself with the merchant and the usurer, when Dissimulation becomes a city gentleman and by marrying Love transforms her to Lust, and when the impoverished Conscience becomes first a hawker of brooms in the street and then the spotted accomplice of Lucar, it seems likely that they have all changed costume for their new urban environment: Lucar, Love, and Dissimulation to fashionable finery, Conscience to rags. In a transition scene, Simplicitie explains that a basket he is carrying contains Love's and Conscience's gowns, which he is taking to pawn; he does not exhibit the costumes, but the scene shows what Lucar's departure has done to the other ladies and prepares for their change to new costumes. Once Lucar and her allies corrupt Love and Conscience, they undergo grotesque emblematic changes of appearance. Love is put into a "two-faced" hood after her marriage, and Lucar paints spots on the face of Conscience while pretending to beautify her. In the satirical vignettes showing how the corruption of Love and Conscience extends through England and beyond, costumes identify characters by rank, occupation, or country. Artifex dresses "like an Artificer" and "Peter please man like a Parson. " While there is no "like a" stage direction for others, the lawyer, the justice with his crier and clerk, the scholar, and the constable and his officers must have worn familiar "occupational" garments. Exotic attire probably indicated foreignness for Mercadore "like an Italian Merchant," Gerontus "the lewe," and "the ludge of Turkic." These "occupational" roles need only loose overgarments, headgear, and hand properties, so they would have been easy for the rapidly doubling actors to change.

35

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

When Simplicitie loses his place as the ladies' servant and joins the vagabonds Tom Beggar and Wily Will, he changes from his honest blue coat to some "rogue" costume, whether copied from life or adapted from the descriptions or illustrations in such rogue pamphlets as Audeley's and Harmon's. His change from serving-man to rogue is partly expressive, since it emphasizes his vice of sloth, but his adventures with the rogues go with his name, for they escape but he is arrested, and of all the characters he is first to be punished, being stripped and whipped "about the stage" and dismissed from the play. Getting rid of Simplicitie frees the actor to take a new part for the trial and punishment of the ladies, when Wilson apparently felt that three actors would not make a convincing court of justice. Justice Nemo is attended by a clerk, a crier, and a constable. To make up this court, two of the ladies, Lucar and Conscience, are tried separately from Love, since the actor of Love is needed for one of the four justicers. Conscience becomes the witness against Lucar, who is condemned to death. The constable removes her. Then a direction reads "Let Lucar make ready for Love quickly, and come with diligence," a transfer of role covered by the questioning of Conscience, who explains her ragged attire: Userie. . . brought me to beggery, My gowne to pay my rent, to him I did send: So driuen to that extremitie, I haue fallen to that you see. (Sig. Fiii) Meanwhile, the actor of Lucar has donned Love's two-faced cloak and hood; the role was the costume, not the player wearing it. After 1576, companies were enabled to settle for most of the year in permanent playhouses. Soon after they evidently increased their personnel, but this did not end doubling, though it probably released actors of major parts from frantic changes to play minor ones. Marlowe must have expected to have at least fifteen actors available for some forty parts in Tamburlaine, twice as many as had played thirty-eight parts in Cambises. It is unlikely that the actors of major roles like Zenocrate, Theridamas, Techelles, and Usumcasane were constantly in and out of costumes to double as ephemeral characters with short life spans or as anonymous minor figures. Tamburlaine himself certainly and his first two lieutenants probably change costume to show their advance from shepherds to kings; Tamburlaine also makes some expressive costume changes late in the

36

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

play, when he communicates his purposes to Damascus with white garments, then scarlet, and, last, black. But Marlowe made his main characters name themselves and each other often, and carefully gave reasons for the costume changes he required. Evidently he assumed that the audience would accept each new costume as a new character, and took the traditional precautions against this. Because the convention of doubling meant that any new costume was likely to be a new character in the minds of the audience, all offstage costume change required the player to make his identity clear on his next entrance. If a costume change is to be made within his role, then the script contains some lines anticipating that change. When he reenters newly clad, his lines rapidly identify him as the one who has gone out in a different dress. Through the techniques for straightforward doubling in plays like Cambises, rapid shifts of identity could take place. Still, as shown with the madman/poet/swain changes in Orlando Furioso, or the quick-change tricks with identity in the later Look About You and Blind Beggar of Alexandria, the playwright, for whatever reason costume changes are required, always had to provide opportunity and time for them. Prolonged disguises really amount to the same thing as a doubled role; the only difference is that when the disguised actor changes his appearance, he asserts that he remains the same person he was before. Disguise permits activities improper if not impossible within a character's usual rank, sex, or occupation, as with heroines like Neronis in Clyomon and Clamydes, Dorothea in James IV, and many of Shakespeare's plays, with romance heroes like Rowland Lacy in The Shoemaker's Holiday, belied characters like Edgar in King Lear, or characters with a secret, like Postumus and Belarius in Cymbeline, the Courtesan in A Trick to Catch the Old One, Sir John Frugal in The City Madam and innumerable others throughout the period. Such "romantic" disguises normally last for a great part of the play and require a completely different style of clothing from the character's "true" situation, whether heroines are dressing as men to protect themselves in a man's world, aristocrats are dressing as artisans, beggars, or madmen to win their loves or save their necks, or shady characters as noblemen, to pretend respectability. Morally reprehensible because they remain inwardly the same while outwardly changed, deceivers may nonetheless escape the stigma of evil and deceit by carefully explaining the good purpose they intend. Plots which require good as well as bad characters to disguise them-

37

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

selves enter the English theatre through adaptations from Italian commedia erudita and, more important, through the dramatizing of romance. Such disguises differ morally from the deceivers' disguises in plays like Respublica and Mary Magdalene, for the disguised character occupies the same sympathetic position as the deceiver's victim in moralities. Unlike morality deceivers, who assume their new garments on the stage and explain their new identities by boasting of their cleverness, disguised characters in romance almost invariably put on their new costumes offstage, thus demanding that the playwright provide the actor with time, just as he would for a major costume change in a doubled part. Accordingly, from the point of view of the actor, such disguises make the same demands upon him and the company wardrobe as doubling, the only distinction being that when doubling the actor asserts he both looks like and is a different person, while the disguised actor looks different but asserts he is the same. Though the Revels accounts of the 1570s give many titles which suggest a romance subject and conceivably, therefore, disguised characters, the plays themselves have not survived; the extant romances of the 1580s either were not played at court or were listed under different names from the published texts. The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune, Clyomon and Clamydes, Mucedorws, and the fragmentary Common Conditions all require one or more characters to go into disguise for a good part of the action, and since all have a fair-sized cast, the actor who changes costume for disguise must be distinguished from the actor who changes costume to become a different character. Clyomon and Clamydes and Common Conditions are largely in fourteener couplets and doggerel, which take more time per line than iambic pentameter; a character offstage for twenty lines of fourteeners would be offstage at least two or three minutes longer than one absent for twenty lines of blank verse. The two heroes of Clyomon and Clamydes do not exactly disguise themselves, but during many of their adventures they go by the titles "Knight of the White Shield" and "Knight of the Golden Shield," and when asked their names refuse to give them, refusals which help to drive the story forward. Two characters disguise themselves by costume change: Bryan Sance Foy and Princess Neronis. Bryan resembles Vice-disguisers in some ways; he is a confessed coward who enchants and imprisons Clamydes and, "Having Clamydes his apparell on his Sheeld, and the Serpents head" (ix SD), claims the hand of Princess Juliana of Denmark. But Bryan disappears from the play between his exit at the end of Scene ix

38

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

and his return over a thousand lines later in his Clamydes disguise. Obviously the actor of the role doubled other parts during this long interval, changing out of the Clamydes costume into whatever the other parts required, and only putting it back on after playing such short-lived characters as (probably) King Thrasellus of Norway, Rumor, and Duke Mustantius of Macedonia. The disguises assumed by Princess Neronis as she searches for her lover Clyomon are closer to the disguise-doubling pattern, since she adopts three male identities before resuming her dress as a princess in the final scene. Given the importance of Neronis not only in the quest story which chiefly concerns her but also in a comic subplot with Corin the shepherd, it is also unlikely that the actor played any other part after her first entrance in Scene viii. Her story exemplifies a long-lived convention of romance disguise, the convention that a changed costume prevents recognition even by the character's nearest and dearest. Neronis enters the play dressed as the princess she really is, with a train of lords and ladies to establish her importance. In her second scene she meets Clyomon, and in her third they declare their love for each other before Clyomon's departure. About 150 lines after her exit as a princess, Neronis reenters "in mans apparell" (xv SD), which probably means in a page's suit, since her costume in Scenes xx, xxii, and the beginning of Scene xxiii is called that of the Page. In Scene xviii she reenters "like a Sheepheards boy" after being offstage for 172 lines. This new costume was probably a loose overgarment, since she is absent for only twenty lines before her subsequent entry "like the Page," to take service with Clyomon as Curdaceer. The final scene is very long. Near its beginning Neronis/Curdaceer brings a message from Clyomon and departs. Subtle Shift the Vice announces 190 lines later that "the Queene with other Ladyes very busy I did spy:/ Decking vp a strange Lady very gallant and gay" (2139-40). Twenty lines later Neronis reenters, not in her original dress as a princess, but in a new and probably much more "gallant and gay" costume since Clyomon fails to recognize her. That she has been his page without his knowing her comes as a complete surprise. Changes of circumstance or activity which require a costume change become more common in the 1580s when morality characteristics are becoming submerged in historical or fictitious narrative, forms which encourage the development of some surface realism no matter how "romantic" the situation. Disguise in the other three extant romance plays is less elaborate. In Love and Fortune Bomelio, the exiled father of its hero

39

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Hermione, spends most of the play as a hermit. In a late scene, however, he disguises himself as a foreign doctor (speaking pidgin) to help his son's lady escape her father's tyrannic imprisonment. In Mucedorus the title character, really the Prince of Aragon, disguises himself as a shepherd to win the Princess Amadine. In both plays, their true identities are revealed in the concluding recognition scenes so frequent in romance narrative and drama. These plays, however typical of a genre mostly lost, forecast the conventions of romantic comedy and tragicomedy, both in their use of disguised heroes and heroines and in the way the costume changes for disguise are managed. While performances of As You Like It or The Winter's Tale would have seen less costume change for doubled parts than performances of Clyomon and Clamydes or Love and Fortune, for disguise their timing would hardly have differed. Two late hybrids, one belonging to Strange's Men before 1592, the other probably written in answer to it for another company and recorded as a "get penny" for the Admiral's Men in 1594, are the anonymous Knack to Know a Knave and Knack to Know an Honest Man. Both prove that stage poets might learn the costume conventions by rote without understanding them, and so use them as meaningless ends in themselves. In these plays, where vestigial morality characters mingle with others who are romantic, satirical, and (at least purportedly) historical, costume change occurs for doubling, for disguise, for change of status, and for moral meaning. In A Knack to Know a Knave Honesty promises King Edgar to find the knaves in his country, and proceeds to show the villainy of satirical types like those in The Three Ladies of London. But Honesty says nothing about the king's plans for Alfrida, whom Earl Ethenwald is to seduce for the king but whom Ethenwald instead marries. Alfrida exchanges clothes with her kitchen maid to deceive the king, but the maid's manners betray her, and when Alfrida then enters in the maid's clothes she at once admits who she is. Later, Bishop Dunstan conjures a devil in Ethenwald's shape, and introduces it with Alfrida (in an unspecified disguise) to make the king pardon the lovers and give up his lecherous intent. The unknown playwright may have intended some parallel between the satiric knaves unmasked by Honesty and the lecherous king foiled by St. Dunstan (with the devil's help!), but the moral-satiric and historicromantic plots proceed independently once Honesty has made his bargain with the king, and thereafter these plots, like Marvell's "parallel" lovers, "though infinite can never meet." The costume changes follow the estab-

40

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

lished conventions, as if the playwright was assembling a mechanism of expressive commonplaces without giving them anything to express. A Knack to Know an Honest Man retains a few vestiges of the morality though it is essentially a tragicomedy set in modern Italy. The text is in a state of confusion, possibly because it was printed from the foul papers of two or more collaborators; it lacks prompter's directions and in different scenes makes characters call the same young man Zepherus, Zepherius, Zepheron, Zepheronus, Zepheronio, and Zepherionio. Though the script calls for conventional costume changes, it does so in ways that would be unclear in performance, at least to an audience accustomed to having a character's changed appearance carefully explained. At its beginning some shepherds witness a duel between two Venetian gentlemen, Lelio and Sempronio, in which Lelio leaves Sempronio for dead. A hermit carries Sempronio off, promising to restore his life, but the shepherds report that Sempronio has been killed and his uncle, the usurer Servio, demands Lelio's life. Lelio's father-in-law Brishio smuggles him out of Venice but is detected in the act, thus forcing him and his sons to flee. Like Lelio, they become mercenary soldiers, with costume change for all; about to fight as champions for opposing armies, Brishio and Lelio recognize each other at the last minute, suggesting that each wears a helmet that conceals his face. Meanwhile, Sempronio returns to Venice in a disguise of gray hair and rags, calling himself Penitent Experience, a relic of the morality change of heart expressed by a new name and humble garments. But, so disguised, he never communicates his true identity to the audience, unless by often repeating how Sempronio had tried to seduce Lelio's wife Annetta. He claims the "knack to know an honest man" and, rather like the disguised duke in Measure for Measure, tries to help Lelio's wife and daughter against the covetous Servio and the duke's lustful son Fortunio. The lengthy recognition scene which closes the play makes Sempronio name himself and explain his appearance, a little late for such clarification. The authors may have been attempting a more realistic exposition than the usual confiding to the audience of a disguised character's true identity, but an audience accustomed to such a straightforward admission of disguise might fail to get the point. Most likely the actors would have insisted on revision, for in its printed version this final scene is not merely unclear but is ineffective theatre. Decorum of dress in the Tudor and earlier Elizabethan theatre made clear a character's position in the class hierarchy and the costume was sel-

41

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

dom altered except to reflect moral or spiritual change. Obviously these conventions of decorum were not realistic in Elizabethan times when a dress code was still supposed to exist but was constantly violated. Instead, their function was clarity, their necessity economic. Plays in these years rarely demanded special attire for the holidays, feasts, weddings, or even funerals at which historical Elizabethans wore "unusual weeds." For weddings, even the puritan William Gouge included "putting on best apparel" among the things "very requisite [among] all those lawful customes that are used for setting forth of the outward solemnitie as meeting of friends, accompanying the Bridegroome and Bride both to and from the Church,. . . feasting, with other tokens of rejoycing."12 At important funerals, cloaks for lesser personages, sleeved and hooded gowns for greater, took from three and a half to sixteen yards of cloth, depending on the wearer's rank and thus his place in the funeral procession; in the preface to The Scholemaster, Robert Ascham speaks of wearing such a black cloak for Sir Richard Sackville. Illustrations made to record Elizabethan funerals show that the mourning garments of all but servants swathed the wearer to the feet and for the upper ranks had long trains behind and sometimes even before.13 In the theatre, costume worn for decorum might give true information about the occasion, but misinform the audience about the character's soul. (Festive finery might indicate pride or a mourning cloak penance when the character was neither proud nor penitent.) Changing someone's costume for mere social decorum might also place demands on the wardrobe which travelling actors would have trouble meeting. For these reasons, costume change to fit the situation remains rare until the companies had established themselves in permanent theatres with enough storage to accumulate costumes, sometimes so many that some could be misplaced, as Philip Henslowe found when he inventoried the Admiral Men's costumes in 1598. Only when there are plenty of costumes can costume change for decorum be accommodated. After 1594, with fewer and more prosperous companies than earlier, and plays having more concern for story than for moral states, costume change to fit a scene's occasion becomes more common. After 1600 it even begins to supersede the traditional expressive changes. While Elizabethans were officially expected to dress according to their class, sex, age, and office,14 the number of moralists (like Stubbes) who attacked violators of the conventions, and the attempts to enforce the conventions by acts of Parliament and such regulatory bodies as the guilds,

42

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

indicate widespread dressing above one's degree. On the stage, where information about calling and class needs to be accurate for audience understanding, characters seem usually to have dressed as their real-world counterparts were supposed to unless the play explains that someone is not dressed as he should be. This is often used for comic effect, as when the servant Lentulo in Love and Fortune persuades the parasite Penulo to give him a fine suit to wear, along with a ring to hold in his mouth and a marigold to hold in his hand, and later enters so accoutred for a wonderfully comic scene. In some kinds of play, a costume above or below a character's rank can be a sign of social or political disorder. For instance, in Thomas of Woodstock the hero objects to the king's outlandish new fashions, because "never was English king so habited" (III.ii.38). Lancaster points out a worse evil than a king in fantastical attire: We could allow his clothing, brother Woodstock. But we have four kings more, are equalled with him. There's Bagot, Bushy, wanton Greene, and Scroop, In state and fashion without difference. (III.ii.39-42) When distinction of dress between the king and his minions disappears, so does "the specialty of rule"; York adds that "th're more than kings, for they rule him" (43). But according to the conventions of class, the virtuous Thomas Duke of Gloucester also dresses indecorously, appearing at court in frieze, an English woollen commonly used for servants' winter liveries and worn by gentlemen only for outdoor pursuits in the country. Thomas's indecorum forecasts his own later vulnerability. Most of the time, on the stage, costume information is reliable. "Leather apron and rule" identify a man as a carpenter and the day as a "work day"; "flat cap" says "apprentice" and with a gown added says "citizen," and so on. The title page to Heywood's Four Prentices of London incongruously matches the heroes' weapons and body armour with flat caps to "show they are apprentices,"15 and it seems likely that this incongruous combination was what the actors really wore, for in Edward the Fourth, Part I Heywood makes sure that apprentices in flat caps get recognition for military prowess. When the rebel Falconbridge is to besiege London, Heywood directs: "enters the Lord Maior and his associates, with prentices." One of them soon exhorts the others: "London prentices, be rul'd by

43

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

me;/Die ere ye lose fair Londons liberty," and a rebel taunts their distinctive headgear: "How now, my flat caps." Shortly after this comes the direction, "Here is a very fierie assault on all sides, wherein the prentices doe great sendee" (I SD 14-20). In Dekker's Honest Whore, Part 2, which Harbage and Scheonbaum assign to 1605, the citizen Candido praises the flat cap as a symbol of liberty. Yet a statute for the Company of Butchers in 1607 provides that "whensoever he shall weare his livery gown and whood, [a member] shall weare therewith a round Cappe of wooll and not a hat." In the company hall, officers are enjoined to wear "a gowne and a Cappe and neither... cloke nor hatt."16 Such a statute shows that the traditional citizen's cap was going out of use as everyday wear, if, even with their ceremonial apparel, officers in the minor Company of Butchers had taken to wearing the hat formerly reserved for gentlemen. Stage citizens seem to have been more law-abiding in their apparel than were their counterparts on the street. Although "best apparel" or "unusual weeds" for holy days or festive occasions such as weddings was normal in Elizabethan society, it does not often figure on such occasions in early Elizabethan plays, where festivities of this kind usually terminate comedies and motivate the final mass exits. Black clothes, especially the distinctive funeral garments, say "mourning," although not necessarily "funeral," for in Selimus two pairs of characters enter "in mourning cloaks" to lament their evil case and the sultan's tyranny, and both are murdered soon after. Selimus and Shakespeare's Henry VI Part I, which opens with "the funeral of King Henry the Fift," are of about the same date, not long after the funerals of Elizabethan grandees like Sidney, Leicester, and two Earls of Rutland. Many marched in such funerals, clad in blacks at the estate's expense. Some of the wearers might have profited afterwards by selling the gowns and cloaks to actors. Since in Selimus mourning garments seem gratuitous, since Henry V's funeral in Henry VI opens the play spectacularly, and since Henry VI's pitiful procession in Richard 111 is almost as prominently placed, authentic funeral attire may have been a theatrical novelty and the scenes written as they are because it was available. Weddings did not require so highly conventionalized garb as did funerals, but the decorum of "best apparel" permitted a show of fine costume. In Thomas of Woodstock, Lancaster and York want their brother to "like a courtier cast this country habit" (I.i. 197), at least for King Richard's wedding. Though "the king could not have entreated me to leave this habit" (213-14), Thomas agrees that "for once I'll sumpter a gaudy wardrobe"

44

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

(211) to please his brothers. Some 125 lines after his exit as "plain Thomas" he enters "very brave" in the royal wedding procession. The playwright may have had a costume in mind, made from cloth of gold with slashes, for the king sneers, "I did not know him in this. . . golden metamorphosis... hatched and gilded" (1.iii.74-77). Woodstock attributes his finery to decorum, "fitting for your nuptial day/And coronation of your virtuous queen" (81-82), even though it has cost "A hundred oaks" and "ten acres of good land" (95-98) and even though he will not be wearing it again. Given the propriety of "best apparel" in a wedding guest, in Taming of the Shrew the bridegroom Petruchio's outlandish and indecorous costume, beside his decorously attired bride and her company, forecasts his coming "indecorum" as a weapon in her taming. If a wedding is the hasty or secret kind so frequent in romantic tragedy and tragicomedy, whether Romeo's to Juliet or Margaret Overreach's to Young Allworth, a bride and groom wearing "work day" clothes visually communicate the irregularity. When, amid a company dressed in coronation (and wedding) finery, Hamlet stands in an "inky cloak" and a suit "of solemn black," such a violation of decorum may be expected to demand immediate explanation, though it differs little from the oxymoron of the King's "mirth in funeral and dirge in marriage."17 "Best apparel" was also decorum when a stage aristocrat was on trial for his life or going to execution, since historic Elizabethans wore fine clothes on these occasions, and accounts of their trials and death describe in detail what they wore. A letter about the execution of Mary Queen of Scots catalogues her every stitch, down to her "nether stockinges worsted, coulour watchett clocked with silver, and edged on the topps with silver, and next hir leg, a payre of jarsye hose, white."18 Like Mary, Essex came to the scaffold in black outer garments (for mourning), and when stripped of these appeared in the red of martyrdom.19 Lu Emily Pearson seems to think Essex wore his "waistcoat of bright red woolen material" because he was fond of it,20 like a comforting stuffed toy, but he is more likely to have known about Mary's dramatic death costume and, with his own histrionic inclinations, mimicked it. But for such scenes in the theatre a costume change would often be inconvenient, and in fact most of the time stage executions are treated as if summary: "Some guard these traitors to the block of death" (Henry IV Part 2, IV.ii.122). Egistus, taken prisoner in Horestes, is immediately hanged on the stage; in Susanna the unjust judges are executed as soon as

45

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

condemned. Later "they have [111 Report] to hanging," perhaps also on stage. In Cambises, when Sisamnes is condemned, a character named Execution is to "Smite him in the neck with a sword to signifie his death" (v. 89) by beheading. More ceremonious executions bring the prisoner in procession with officers and often the executioner, for instance, "Enter ViceAdmiral and the Captain of the He of Wight, with Falconbridge bound, the Headsman bearing the axe before him" (Edward IV Part I, Heywood, 1.53). To identify the officers, costumes and hand properties would serve, but to recall the long-absent Falconbridge to the audience, Heywood writes a kind of trial which connects him with the much earlier scenes where he and his followers tried to seize London. Similar processions accompany Rivers, Vaughan, Grey, and Buckingham to their executions in Richard II, where ceremony visually reinforces lamentation over Richard's tyranny. Men of low rank, like Pedringano in The Spanish Tragedy, Bushy and Green in Richard II, and "young Aire" in the second part of Heywood's Edward IV suffer with less ceremony. Pedringano dies with the same grim comedy as 111 Report in Susanna. Only a few plays insist on "best apparel" for their condemned aristocrats. Chapman's Tragedy of Charles Duke of Byron stages the grisly etiquette of an aristocrat's execution almost to the fall of the axe, and devotes some attention to Byron's clothes, while Shakespeare's later Henry VIII provides more than enough time for Buckingham to change from the "plain man" garb of his arrest for his ceremonial entry from his condemnation, four long scenes after his last exit: Enter Buckingham from his arraignment, Tipstaves before him, the axe with the edge towards him, Halberds on each side; accompanied with Sir Thomas Lovell, Sir Nicholas Vaux, Sir Walter Sands, and common people, etc. (II.i. 53 SD) Probably most such scenes disregard the custom of best apparel for public trial and death for the same reason as did the queen's trial in Cambises—a costume change would both delay the action and inconvenience the actors because the "victims" would normally exit to change costume for a new role, and time is seldom available before they "die" to put on "best apparel" only to take it off again. It is also likely that most of the great men tried for treason on the stage appeared, at least in court scenes, in what already was "best apparel" to the audience's eyes, while those sum-

46

CONVENTIONS OF COSTUME AND COSTUME CHANGE

marily executed, especially after battles as are Buckingham in Richard III, Meredith in Edward I, and Worcester and Vernon in Henry IV Part i, die without trial or the ceremonies connected with more formal proceedings. Another convention, the ancient practice of emblematic costume and costume change, told the audience what to think of a character or his situation, whether he is growing better or worse, richer or poorer, higher or lower, in the social or moral scale. (The convention may also smack of realism—a new king did assume state dress to advertise his right to be obeyed; a rich man grown poor did become shabby, then ragged.) When plays began to represent events more-or-less lifelike, which for the audience meant everyday wear or "unusual weeds" for decorum, the players undertook to supply costumes and the playwrights to provide time for change to appropriate dress, although stage practicality ruled what form a costume change could take. In circumstances where a play's requirements would not allow complete alteration of attire, the companies accumulated many loose overgarments to facilitate quick change of an actor's outward show. Eventually, with the prosperity of the companies and their accumulation of numerous costumes, costume change in plays began to approximate reality. But no matter what quantity of clothes were available, the audience still needed to know whether a new costume was on the back of the same or a different character, and the plays continued to explain these changes.

47

This page intentionally left blank

Documents

THE RELEVANCE OF THE REVELS ACCOUNTS Those who have paid some attention to Elizabethan theatrical costumes have often conflated evidence about different kinds of theatricals. Mingled data from the Revels Accounts, from Inns of Court performances, from university records, from narratives of royal entertainment in town and country, and from the Henslowe papers produce generalizations about costumes in "the Elizabethan theatre," by which is usually meant the professional actors of the London commercial stage between 1576 and 1642. While many of the conventions of costuming were necessarily interchangeable wherever the performance and whoever the performers, the conditions of Court, Inn, and university theatre nonetheless differed from those of the professional actors. The social position of the courtier, the lawyer, and the student was much higher than that of the "common player" whose status was shaky and who, after 1572, had either to be "servant" to a noble or risk the penalties for vagabondage. Privileged groups performed for reasons other than strictly economic, while the common player earned his living by acting. The status of players and also most professionals in Renaissance society is distinguished by the fact that the professional engages in his activity "full time," at least during a recognized season or on a recognized, often seasonal, circuit. Unlike the modern Olympic athlete or the Renaissance court masquer, he is paid openly to do something specific at another's orders; thus if the term is strictly interpreted he can never be a "gentleman. " This is made explicit in The Courtier, Although Castiglione concedes that anyone of high achievement in scholarship and the arts may be

49

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

granted courtier status, he considers "a gentleman born... of a good house"1 who counts "armes to bee his principall profession, and all the other good qualities for an ornament thereof"2 the best exemplar of the courtly ideal. Especially he contrasts any display of a courtier's skill in music, dance, the visual arts, and authorship with those of professional artists, musicians, dancers, and clowns, such as the painters Raphael and Julio Romano, the "very pleasant Musition, and... excellent dauncer" Barletta,3 and the clowns Berto and Strascino, who are allowed to act and dress indecorously "because it is their profession."4 Unlike the "true" courtier, who shows his accomplishments voluntarily and largely in private before his equals, professionals like this must perform in public on call. The same social gulf yawned between a Sidney and poets of lower birth. Toward poetry Sidney took what we would call a professional attitude, but he did not write for the press or speak his own lines in The Lady of May and The Foster Children of Desire. Who did perform the speaking parts remains unknown. The Earl of Derby's "comedies for the common players" and association with actors were evidently thought eccentric and tolerable only because alternatives might be worse. The gentlemen from the Inns of Court who wrote and acted plays, danced, and even played the buffoon during seasonal festivals among themselves or before the sovereign6 could do so only because these were private entertainments, as King James reminded the French Ambassador at the time of the Masque of Blackness. Such shows normally had only one performance. At the Inns of Court and the universities speaking parts seem to have been taken by students, young men belonging to their societies' lowest rank. The spokesmen of masquers and tilters were either their own servants or hirelings. When the Jacobean court masque began to need not only spokesmen but also clowns, the parts were taken by players from the public theatres "because it [was] their profession"; the noble masquers expressed devotion to the chief spectator only in the silent language of the dance. This difference of status is connected with costumes because clothing was the chief conventional indicator of the wearer's social position not only according to sumptuary laws but also to the etiquette of the Revels. In 1545, late in the reign of that masking prince Henry VIII, the equipment of court celebrations (mainly but not only costumes) was put into the charge of a new subdepartment of the royal Chamber, headed by a man of knight's rank, and provided with a staff and space for storage and work. This new department, the Revels Office, first functioned mainly to

50

DOCUMENTS

safeguard and maintain existing apparel and properties and to procure new ones as required. It therefore employed carpenters and painters to construct and decorate "houses" of timber and canvas to contain the show or contribute to it, ordered properties, "vizards," and hair goods from haberdashers, and both permanently and seasonally employed tailors and their assistants to make and remodel costumes for man and sometimes horse, whatever tilters or maskers chose to impersonate. Occasionally, it supplied "players' garments" when chapel, school, and (sometimes) professional actors entertained the sovereign. Later the duties of the Revels Office were extended to the selection and revision of entertainments offered by corporate bodies, schools, and "common players," and to supplying these outsiders with houses, properties, and apparel fine enough for the royal presence. This expansion of function led, largely at Edmund Tilney's initiative, to the censorship (called "making fit") not only of plays for the Court but also for the public theatre and, eventually, for the press. In fact, by 1590 the function of the Revels to provide properties and costumes for entertainment in masquerade had almost gone out of use, replaced by the much cheaper offerings of loyal subjects and professional players. When Anne of Denmark revived masque as a significant court activity, the Revels Office no longer acted as supplier or contractor for scenery and apparel, but was responsible only for lights and the musicians' spaces, its former functions taken over partly by court officials8 and partly by Inigo Jones and other designers. There is, however, very little evidence that, in the years when the Revels Office was responsible for costumes, it had much to do with professional actors unless they played at Court. The Revels-players connection dated from the years when the Office was losing its former function and when its ambitious Masters (mainly Tilney, but also Buc and Herbert) were finding for it new court functions and new means to use it to enrich themselves. The organization of Chambers's Elizabethan Stage promotes the idea that the court's ways of entertaining itself were significant influences on the growth of the Elizabethan professional theatre. In several places it implies that Revels was an important source of the professional actors' costumes for public performances. Glynne Wickham does the same: "once a garment was 'no more serviceable' to the Revels Office, and not 'chargeable' in the inventory, it could pass either as a gift or at some small charge into the wardrobe of a professional acting company where for another year or two at least it could continue to be both 'serviceable' and 'chargeable'. ... It may have been from this source that Anthony Munday col-

51

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

lected the private wardrobe from which he furnished the Lord Mayors' shows. "9 Such assumptions can be refuted from the Revels accounts themselves, from Henslowe's papers, and from other miscellaneous records about theatrical apparel. Elizabethan masks and Jacobean masques were gifts, their cost not to be counted by the participants. Garments worn by "lords" whose ordinary court dress was of silk, satin, velvet, or cloth of silver and gold was made of the same rich materials no matter where on the social scale stood the persons they represented; gods, warriors, and shepherds were all clad alike in the fabrics if not the fashions of the upper class, and the materials had to be in good condition. Masking garments, after two or three alterations for principals, were remodeled for the maskers' torchbearers, played by those of lower status. In the time of Edward VI, George Ferrers, the Lord of Misrule, in 1551, complained that the then Master of the Revels, Sir Thomas Cawarden, had "mistaken ye persons that sholde were [certain costumes] as Sir Robert Staffords & Thomas wyndeham with other gentlemen that stande also apon their reputacion and wolde not be seen in london so torchebererlyke disgysed" (Revels 59). Twenty years later, a complaint by the haberdasher Thomas Giles expresses horror not only that the Yeoman of the Revels (John Arnold) was making illicit profits by renting "the quenes Magestyes... maskes... to all sort of parsons that wyll hyer the same" so that the costumes were losing "glosse & bewtye" from dirty surroundings and dirty people, but also that they were worn by "the meanest sort of mene/ to the grett dyscredytt of the same aparell/ which afterwarde ys to be shewyd before her heyghnes & to be worne by theme of grett callynge."10 As the "Homily against Excess of Apparel" insists, to have much and varied clothing, especially of elaborate cut and rich fabric, is the chief manifestation of the sin of pride, unless it belongs to the "degree and office" of God's appointment. Otherwise, "many one.. . which now ruffleth in silks and velvets... in his sables, in his fine furred gown, corked slippers, trim buskins, and warm mittens,. . . one gown for the day, another for the night; one long, another short;. . . one of this color, another of that color; one of cloth, another of silk or damask. . . change of apparel, one afore dinner, and another after; one of the Spanish fashon, another Turkey. . .that many knoweth not how many sorts they have," would, if clothed according to his God-determined rank, "be compelled to wear a russet coat." Especially worn by women and young men, fashionable, rich, and colorful clothing is the outward mark of the sin of

52

DOCUMENTS lechery.11 Masking apparel had long exaggerated both the rich and the gaudy, but when worn within the circle of the court as part of its private entertainment, indeed worn by royalty itself, it was not a good target for either moralists or conservative viewers-with-alarm. When court entertainment took a pastoral form, it could startlingly combine rich fabric and color with a poor man's cut. A mask of "Cloyens" before 1560 dressed its eight maskers in "Cotes of crymmesen Satten garded with yellowe gowlde Laune with half sieves of the same and vnder sieves of greene damaske... playne hosen of greene damaske... Aperns of white gowlde sarsnet edged with veniys gowlde frenge" which were "gyven awaye by the maskers in ye queenes presence," a costume completed by "broode hattes Crymmesen satten lyned with greene gold sarsenett... land] Shewes of Blacke velvett Laced aboue the Ancle." These aristocrat-rustics carried both flails and spades made of "tree foyled ouer," no doubt with something resembling gold or silver if not the real thing (R.O. Eliz. 40). Their torchbearers were "hinds" clad in "Cassokes of owlde redd Sarsnett flamed with yellowe satten paynted with vnder sieves of owlde yellowe gowlde sarsnett" with slops and caps of the same red and yellow fabric (41). Similar "owlde" red sarcenet made "a Cote a hoode a cappe and a girdle for a Shepperd mynstrell to the Cloynes" (334). In another mask, fishwives wore red cloth of gold and blue velvet with gold and silver trimming and market wives wore particolored purple and red cloth of gold and silver, red satin, white sarcenet, and tinsel fabric with gold and silver trim. The same kinds of material were used for the goddess Diana and her nymphs and for Prince Acteon, whose costume, of "white velvet raysed with copper gold" lined with "Tawney clothe of Copper gold striped Sarcenett" could not be reused as it had been "all to Cutt in small panes and steyned with blood" (36, 31). That a masking costume might represent any kind of person (or creature, as with a mask of cats for Edward VI), but that it must still distinguish the noble wearer and occasion from the model it was based on, was an idea growing even stronger in the Jacobean period. Dudley Carleton thought the costumes for Jonson's Masque of Blackness "too light and curtisan-like" for ladies of rank (H. & S. X 449). For Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, "being the Prince [Charles] his first Mask," his cutwork "masking ruff and cuffs," cost £7 and "a fayre white plume for his Hyghnes with ffiftie dozen of Egrettes," £8; the prince provided masking suits for Sir William Erwin and Mr Roger Palmer, having each "a fayre white plume... wth xi dozen of Egrettes" at a cost of £7 apiece. Reports sug-

53

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

gest disapproval that the Prince was not enough distinguished from his "dancing companions" and "minorum gentium" (X, 576-77). Since his costume barely differed from theirs, the offense must have involved propriety of dress. The rich silk fabrics used for court masking attire were costly imports. In their accounts, the officers of the Revels constantly emphasize their economy in managing the use and reuse of these materials throughout the period covered by their records, although this was a practice dating from the beginning of their office if not before. Thomas Giles comments that mask costumes "never com before her heyghnes twysse In on forme" (R.O. Eliz. 409), so the fabrics were expected to last through several seasons. A self-justify ing entry by the Clerk of the Revels appears at the end of the revels season of 1571-72, not long after Giles's observation: . . . somuche of allmanner of the Emptions & provisions aforeseide, as was expedient, & requizite: was aptly Employed. atogether with parte of the woorkmanshipp & attendaunces aforeseide. And the Residue of the Emptions not then employed theron: was by the seid Master of this office & others whome he did put in trust reserved for farder service in thoffice.

145) Most of these "Emptions" were costly fabrics that needed skilled (and costly) workmanship: tens of yards of "Taffita," "Sattyns," "Sarcenettes," "Cloth of golde," "Tynsells," "Velvettes," "Damaskes," "of sundry coollers and prices" were supplied at a cost of £516 6s 2d. There is an immense difference in price between what the office paid in the same season for such imports and for English-made fabric: £14 for 140 yards of "Tukes" (25 a yard), £7 10S 8d for chamlet and buckram, and but one shilling for five yards of sackcloth, though "Stripte with sylver." But during the same season some "maskes were but translated & otherwise garnished... by meanes wherof the Chardge of workmanshipp & attendaunce is cheefely to be respected" (146). The Revels staff had personal reasons for economical use of their purchases. At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, in a plan to rationalize the financial management of the Revels Office, an anonymous officer observed that "Princes are alwayes to haue thinges accordinge to their pleasure," and "the charges [for banqueting houses and entertainments] will

54

DOCUMENTS

growe accordinge to the Princes pleasure" (7). Creditors of the Office petitioned for payment of their bills in 1574, 1576, and 1579; in an undated petition of his own (perhaps 1576-77), William Bowll, Yeoman of the Revels, appealed to the Treasury for the payment of £236 for which one Bate and others "do sue & molest him in the law by all extreme wayes & meanes" even though he had incurred the debts as part of his employment (412-17). Given the cost of material for new costumes, which the officers knew they might have to pay from their own pockets, it is not surprising that old ones were so often "translated" even if this had never been enjoined upon the Office. An inventory by Thomas Blagrave in 1560, when the Revels was still a small and minimally formalized department, itemizes what had been done with fabrics issued by the Wardrobe for court entertainments. For instance, sixty-three yards of purple satin was made into: . .. iiij large garmentes for two Cardenalles,. . . two hattes and twoo hoodes to them.. . and in paninge of the Scaplers hoodes and sieves of two ffriers and two Monkes and for the whole hodes of the twoo Monkes.

(25) The same inventory shows "scaplers," and hoods of white, yellow, and russet velvet, carnation and green satin, and crimson damask, palmers' bags of embroidered cloth of silver, and "purple gold sarcenet" girdles. Forty yards of purple satin made "iiij large garmentes for two Cardenalles" and six yards "two hattes and twoo hoodes to them," sixty yards of crimson satin made "vj large garmentes for twoo Cardinalls and two bishoppes," then became "viij clownes garmentes and hattes" (23-27). The "ffoure garmentes and ij hoodes [of purple satin] againe were translated into iiij garmentes of the torche bearers to the Nymphes And the Scaplers sieves and hoodes paned translated into two paire of longe Sieves of the torche bearers to Acteons Maske" (25). The crimson satin that first dressed cardinals, bishops, and then clowns was cut down repeatedly to be used as new costumes, then parts of costumes, and at last ever more exiguous trimmings: . . . the gardinge of vj compassed garmentes for women and so thereof. In to lerkins and half Sieves of

55

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Thextronomers. 20 which were againe translated into barbariens and so therof. Into gardinge of the neither lace & false sieves of vj Moores garmentes. (R.O. Eliz. 25) Many of these garments, or some very like them, appear in inventories from early in the reign of Edward VI, so that the materials they were made of probably date from the extravagant times of Henry VIII. These same materials, with longer pedigrees, reappear in the inventory taken early in Mary's reign. Some of the remade garments were still in stock and usable as late as 1560, but much of the cloth was so "often translated transformed and disguised" and had become "so forworne and to moche knowen as now any more not Seruiceable nor Chargeable" (22). Cloth woven with gold or silver remained valuable no matter how often it underwent transformation, and was what most often became "ffees" for the Revels employees: "greene clothe of Silver translated into lyninge of the Almaynes sloppes and agayn cut in peces to payne ffissher mens sloppes & bodies and agayn translated into A Maske of Marryners and againe translated into Torchebearers for a maske of Turkes... so often shewen and translated was forworne and not seruiceable nor chargeable but dampned for ffees"; so eventually were "vj straighte gownes of clothe of gold blew velvet with Roses of gold raysed" ("Albonyes warryers," "serviseable" in the inventory of 1553-54 [Revels 182]), after being altered four times (R.O. Eliz. 19, 21). Rich fabrics might also be recycled while remaining essentially whole. Then, after being worn through two or three alterations by courtly maskers, they might descend to torchbearers, and then to players, always the last stage: the "vj straighte gownes of clothe of gold blew velvet with Roses of gold raysed" first worn by "Albonyes warryers" were altered into "a maske of Irishemen and again in to a Maske of ffisshermen & againe into Marryners and after into players garmentes," which seem to have been used thus for quite a long time before, "forworne," the fabric was "taken for ffees" (21).12 "Damaske Bawdekyn" used for the sleeves of "Turkes. Archers" was "translated into Sloppes ffor children to playe in" until worn out (21), though the damask did not become anyone's "ffees," probably because it contained no gold or silver. Thirty-five yards of crimson damask was "Imployed into ffrockes and priestes gownes with wide Sieves translated twise agayne in to torch bearers and vsed by players and to them geven by Composicion.24. [yards] and into clokes and Sloppes

56

DOCUMENTS

for torchebearers. 16. which was altered agayne for players and to them geven by the Master by composicion" (27). Once a costume had descended to a player's back, it apparently could not be recycled even as trimming on the costume of a masker "of grett callynge." The drummers and fife players who furnished the entry music to masks were costumed from the same old apparel as were players, and sometimes received at least part of the apparel as a reward: red sarcenet "Imployed into the furniture to iiij drommes and fifes & twoo bagge pipes... which they had to theire owne vse by composicion" (23); the drums and fifes of the Fishermen's Mask and of Acteon's Mask also "had for their fees" what they had worn (25). But this was not invariable. Though these hired musicians may have walked out wearing their costumes, five of them were given no less than IQS apiece "in Reward for that they Restored theyr garmentes the ij nightes that the maskes wase" (Revels 43). In this case the garments were probably still fit for reuse or alteration for other musicians or players. What the officers who received worn out costumes did with them is never revealed. Nothing supports Chambers's assertion that the garments were sold to actors.13 Instead, because much of what was "dampned for ffees" contained gold or silver threads the "fee" must have been the metal recovered by burning the cloth, a normal goldsmith's skill casually mentioned by Dryden. However, if players' garments and worn masking habits still made a fairly decent appearance, it seems more likely that the Revels officers would have sold them to tailors or haberdashers employed in the office, some of whom are known to have had costumes for hire. So did at least one Revels officer, according to the haberdasher Thomas Giles. In an outraged letter to a person addressed as "your honor," Giles complains of the illicit profits being made by John Arnold, Yeoman of the Revels, by the unauthorized renting out of Revels masking gear. Giles lists several sets of masking attire recently hired from Arnold by Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, and the Temple, by the Lord Mayor, Lord Montague, Edward Hinde, a Mr Denman, Mr Martyn, and, scandalously, a Blackfriars tailor, for their weddings. Waxing indignant, he complains of letting "the new mask of blak & whytt" (Elizabeth's personal colors) be hired for a May Eve procession through Cheapside and other apparel for shows in Fleet Street and at the Charterhouse. The same "yello clothe of gold gownes" went successively to the Horsehead and Bullhead taverns in Cheap (R. O. Eliz. 410). The last of these may represent actors' use of Revels garments, but as the places are not known as even temporary fit-up theatres, a private entertainment seems more likely.

57

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Through most of his letter Giles represents himself as actuated by desire to save the Queen's money and her Court's honour by blowing the whistle on Arnold. More honestly, he concludes with what probably was his chief motive: "your orator ys grettlye hynderyd of hys lyvynge herbye/ who havynge aparell to lett & canott so cheplye lett the same as hyr hyghnes maskes be lett/ as knowytt god" (409). Records from other sources show that there was a fair market for costumes to hire, both in London and in the provinces, mostly, it would seem, for seasonal or occasional performances like those of the Inns of Court and the May Eve procession; most of the several instances Glynne Wickham cites seem to have been for amateur groups. Even the Revels, however, might occasionally hire costumes. It paid one of its suppliers, Christopher Myllener, "for the hiere of asute of vj Maskinge garmentes with thire furnyture of him hired by the Master and by him altered translated and of newe dysguysed into pylgryms shewed before the quenes Maiestie [Mary] on saynte Markes daye at nighte" (Revels 227). This may have been an attempt at economy, but perhaps, since they were "of newe dysguysed" for royal performance, Myllener had obtained these "garmentes" from the Revels stock. Probably someone thought they were no longer needed, since there was almost no court masking in the fourth and fifth years of Mary's reign and the hastily got-up St Mark's Day mask was (April 25, 1557) the last recorded. Fifteen years later the foreman tailor of the Revels, Thomas Clatterbock, also had costumes for hire, though the "iij deveils cotes and heades & one olde mannes fries cote for the Italian prayers [sic] at Wynsor" for which the Revels Office paid him 5s do not look as if they had originated with the Revels (R. O. Eliz. 228).15 Arnold's precedent, however, may have become a routine if unofficial or even clandestine function of the Revels Office; in 1592 Magdalen College, Oxford, applied to Tilney to furnish them with gear for a play, but in 1605 the university applied not to Revels but to a London haberdasher when it needed much apparel for shows to entertain King James. The Revels Office occasionally made special costumes for players; cloth of gold and silver was "cut for players" in Edward VI's first year, and in his third, eight tailors seem to have worked on costumes for a play by the "Kynges players at Shroftyd," costumes which included priests' apparel and crowns (Revels 22, 39). But plays were usually ordered on much shorter notice than masks or feasts of misrule; at Christmas 1551-52, letters from the Privy Council twice introduced the bearer(s) as King's players and authorized the Master of the Revels to "delyver. . . soche apparrell

58

DOCUMENTS

and other forynture as theye shall have nede of, for their playeng before the kinges maiestie this Christmas... ffrom Grenewiche on christmas Daye Ao 1551" (57), a letter described as "A warrant vnder vj of the counselles handes to ffurnish players to playe before the king on christmas daye dated the same morninge" (62); in a letter dated "twelf even" (1552), a counsellor authorized the Master to give John Birche and John Browne "such Garmentes as yow shall thinke mete and necessarye for them and their thre fellowes to playe an entrelude in before his highnes to morowe at night" (86). These players, however, were not "common players" but grooms in the king's household. Even as household members, they needed a warrant to borrow royal property from a household office, as did the Venetian ambassador (authorized by the comptroller, William Paget) and New College, Oxford (authorized by three privy counsellors). Even Sir Thomas Coppley, it would seem, was not among those likely to get a warrant to borrow Revels attire, for his letter entreats Cawarden "secretlie to lend me the vse of one of your maskes./ for one night ageinst this mi marriage" (Revels 250-51). Whether or not Cawarden obliged is unrecorded. Perhaps the different wording between the Christmas and the Twelfth Day warrants to the players indicates that when they were allowed to choose what they thought they needed, their choice was above their degree. The second letter leaves the choice to the Master, not to them. That the professionals of Elizabeth's time did not always possess apparel fine enough for court performance is implied by several entries in records of the 1570s. For Christmas, 1577-78: A history of the foure sonnes of ffabyous shewed at Whithall on Newe Yeares daie at [ni]ght enacted by the Earle of Warwickes servauntes wholie furnyshed in this offyce with garmentes some newe some altered and repaired whereon was Imployed for newe lynynge translatinge and alteringe of the Senatours gownes iij head Attyres with traynes for womens skarfes and girdles xiij ells of Sarcenett A Cytie a Mounte & vj paire of gloves. (320) A few days earlier, the Lord Chamberlain's servants had played "A History of the Duke of Millayn and the Marques of Mantua," "wholie furnyshed in this offyce some newe made and moche altered," though the

59

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

new-made part apparently consisted only of "iiij of newe head Attyers with traynes Scarfes, garters and other Attyers" (320), and the rest was made from used material. On this occasion, perhaps, the Chamberlain's Men were provided with a complete set of costumes because the Master of the Revels thought their wardrobe beneath the dignity of their characters, famous foreign noblemen. It seems likely that these costumes were retained by the Revels Office because they would be in good enough condition for reuse at Court by other players with or without alteration. Whatever the costumes the office supplied for professional players (as distinguished from the children of the Chapel and of Paul's), they normally were made from the oldest masking attire or from old players' garments, and in the 1570s may not have been given to the players "for rewarde" as was done in the 1550s; at least the records do not say so. Leicester's servants (whose prepared play for Innocents Day was not performed because the Queen "could not come forth to heare the same") were "furnyshed with sondrye thinges in this office," probably not amounting to much. The unnamed play they did perform on Twelfth Night received "many garmentes, vtensells, and properties, some made newe some translated and made fitt," including "head Attyers, scarfes and garters" (320). The Chamberlain's Men were "furnyshed" with "garnishings" of sarcenet for scarves, garters, headdresses, and hat linings for an unnamed second play; Derby's Men for "The history of the soldan and the Duke of " [sic] received two "Robes of blacke sarcenett," new made from several ells of sarcenet, as well as "head Attyers and scarfes"; they also were provided with "A citie and xij payre of gloves." The Children of Paul's were furnished "with sondrie garmentes and tryumphant ensignes & banners newe made and their head peeces of white sarcenett scarfes and garters... and xviijne payre of gloues" (321), a limited list which suggests that this company under Westcott stocked better costumes than the adult professionals of the time. The Children of the Chapel, who as members of the Queen's Household probably relied more than outsiders, whether children or adults, on the household Office of Revels, received "many garmentes newe made manye altered and translated whereon was Imployed for head Attyers sleeves Canons Cases for hoase Skarfes garters and other reparacions tenne Ells of Scarcenett" (320). These lists also suggest that for ordinary public performances players did not indulge the audience with banners, scarves, and gloves. Exactly what was done with the scarves is not very clear; soldiers wore scarves tied over one shoulder and under the opposite arm, and toward the end of the cen-

60

DOCUMENTS

tury an excess of scarves identified braggart soldiers, so perhaps already did so. Scarves also might have been flourished like the handkerchiefs of morris dancers; the illustration of Will Kempe on his dance from London to Norwich shows scarves tied to his sleeves. Gloves seem not to have figured very often in public performance. In 1598 the Admiral's Men owned only one pair. Shakespeare's Richard II is exceptional in the number of gloves it uses so conspicuously in two important scenes, while in the later Much Ado Hero calls attention to the scented gloves Claudio has sent her for their wedding, perhaps because gloves on the public stage were unusual enough to merit special notice. If this was true for prosperous acting companies in the 1590s, evidently the Revels Office never expected any of the troupes which acted at court to furnish their own gloves. Whether these troupes kept the scarves, banners, and gloves provided for their court appearance is not clear, but since these articles were not costly and were so regularly provided in such quantity for so many seasons, it seems probable that the scarves and gloves were too flimsy to last long if used in later public performances. Elizabethan portraits (usually with the sitter in "best apparel") seldom show gloves, but if so they are usually carried, except by falconers. The wealthy citizen in the foreground of Braun and Hogeberg's map of London carries gloves in his right hand and his wife a fan, but their servants have neither.16 In the Ditchley portrait, the queen holds her gloves, perhaps to show her hands, of which she was vain. The wearing, carrying, and use of gloves by the upper class had an etiquette of its own, especially in the ritual of challenge. Forming part of the costume for maskers and their torchbearers, gloves seem to have been required by court etiquette in the royal presence. Indeed, they came to be listed as "necessaries" among other routine purchases (R.O. Eliz, 236, 264, 296, 380, 390). While the gradations in their cost accurately reflected their wearers' rank, they were still unlikely to be the embroidered accessories worn or borne in propria persona by people of rank. Thirteen pair of "Calfes lether gloves" cost lod a pair in 1559, when "coorce gloves" were sixpence and so were "fyne gloves" from a different supplier who also received 12d a pair for "ix payer of cutt gloves" (82, 88). Sixpence was the price of a pair of masking shoes in that year, an entry that does not recur (92). The cheapest gloves were black at 35 a pair for Christmas 1573 (probably for blackamoors), and the next cheapest, bought in 1576, cost 5d a pair. An additional three dozen pair that year must have been bought at one time with a discount for quantity, for the

61

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

total price of sixteen shillings does not come out even (264). For maskers and their torchbearers gloves might cost 6-8d, once rising to the extravagance of tenpence. In 1573-74 purchases for Christmas revels included 10Sfor two dozen "Gloves for the Children of Eaten" (6d a pair), "Gloves for Maskers vj paier—iiijs [8d]./ Gloves for Torchebearers vj paier—iijs [6d]. . . Gloves for the children of wynsor ij dozen xxs [10d]./. . . Gloves for Munkesters boyes ij dozen—xs [6d] Black gloves xij paier—iijs [3d, unusually cheap]. . . Gloves j dozen for the Ladye Maskers—xs [10d] for the Lordes gloves—vjs vjd for the torcheberes gloves iijs" (174). At Christmas 1578-79, the Revels supplied eighty pair of gloves for eight plays by professional companies. Of these, the five adult companies got forty-four pair, with the Chamberlain's Men receiving six pair for each of their two performances, and Derby's Men getting twelve pair for one. The reason for so different an issue of gloves is not clear, unless inherent in the nature of the play. Evidently stage gloves were used for only a single court performance, but were worn through all the roles that an actor, at least an adult, might double. In contrast, two groups, the children of the Chapel and of Paul's, each received eighteen pair for a single play. Gloves must have been issued at the last minute, for Leicester's Men, who "on Innocentes daie at nighte. .. beinge in Readynes to have enacted [an unnamed play] wholly furnyshed with sondrye thinges in this offyce" received no gloves when the performance was cancelled (320-21), though they got seven pair on Twelfth Night. Three years later the glove issue had been standardized at eight pair for any group: the Chapel Children, Hunsdon's and Derby's Men for plays, Strange's Men for "Sundrey feates of Tumbling and Activitie," and "A maske of Ladies... for boyes and Torch Bearers" were all treated alike in numbers. No evidence survives for price, but seven dozen pair of gloves had cost 12d a pair in 157980; perhaps the price was rising. In the records of Christmas 1584-85 no gloves are mentioned in connection with any performance (365), yet six dozen pair were bought that season for 425, slightly over 6d a pair (370). In this year, there were no masks, only a tumbling act and plays by Oxford's Boys and the Queen's new company. The players received very little from the Revels Office even though five of the six plays were performed by the Queen's Servants: "Buffyn for Shepherdes coates xxxtie ells of sarcenet for fower matachyne sutes one greate curteyne and scarfes for the nymphes one mountayne and one great cloth of canvas and vj peeces of buccram... a greate cloth and a battlement of canvas and canvas for a well and a mounte.xv ells of sar-

62

DOCUMENTS

cenet. ix yardes of sullen cloth of gold purple... one hose & a battlement. .. one howse." Oxford's Boys supplied all their own apparel, while "Symons and his fellowes... ymployed the pages sute of Oringe tawney tissued vellet which they spoyled yardes of white Gotten/ a batlement and ij Janes sutes of canvas and iiij ells of sarcenett" (365). Other things may have been furnished for these performances, since there is a payment for "buskins and pumpes for nymphes & shepherdes" and for "Shepherdes hattes" (371) that fits the pastoral performed December 26. But this year and later the number and kinds of costumes and properties is far less than before. In 1587-88 Edward Kirkham, then Yeoman, spent 36s on "gloves geven to the Quenes players to ye tumblers & childeren of Poles" (380). Gloves (no longer itemized) were still "necessaries," "geven to the players the children of Poules & tumblers" in 1588 and 1589. After this year there are no detailed accounts, just totals submitted for payment to the Treasury, often covering several years and never amounting to the sums paid for apparel and properties twenty years before. By this time, however, other sources inform us that most court entertainment was being contracted to professionals or offered at their own expense by Inns of Court and City companies at great saving to the Queen during the expensive war years of the 1580s and 1590s. Whether the perquisite of gloves still came from the Revels Office is, of course, not to be known. An inventory of Revels garments and fabrics in April 1547, shows that the stock of festival finery at Henry VIII's death was very great: dozens of masking garments for men and women, though not all "servisable," yards upon yards of exotic fabrics, miscellaneous accessories like gold hair nets, and a great many rich trappings for horses. So much was there that when the City of London required an extensive wardrobe for the court celebrations tied to Edward's coronation, the Revels could and did provide it (Revels 249). For Edward's Christmas in 1551 and again in 1552, Revels furnished multiple changes of apparel for a Lord of Misrule and his large mock court, whose activities must have been hard on clothes. Though masking continued almost until Edward's death, Revels did not need to buy much of significance in his reign. Mary did not indulge in lavish court entertainment for herself. Garments and fabrics in stock were evidently made to do for the obligatory shows of her coronation and her wedding to Philip of Spain in 1554, with minimal purchases of sarcenet and trimmings. Indeed, soon after the marriage, the Master of the Revels, Thomas Cawarden, wrote to her that he

63

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

had "no other maskes thene suche a has byne shewd all Redy before the kynges hynes & for that he hathe syne meny fayer & Riche be yend the seys [he thought] yt not honorab that he shuld se the lyeke here." Mary replied that Cawarden could "make a schyffte for ned Requeryng [him] so to do" (Revels 245). A Revels inventory in March 1555 called as many as half the stored masking costumes "not servishable," and in a tone of desperation listed miscellaneous "Remnanttes & odde Stuf Remayenyng in a cheest... to be Cutt and made in garments" (190). After Philip left England in September 1555, court entertainment must have been meagre, for the Revels office records little but routine, mainly "airing" the garments in store. During Philip's brief return to England in the spring of 1557, he gave a "Greate Maske of Almaynes pylgryms and Irysshmen with theire incydentes shewen before the Quenes Maiestie in his highnes court at whightehal, on seynte Markes daye" (225). Unless Philip provided new materials, this must have been made out of the old garments, thereby taxing the ingenuity of the fourteen tailors employed upon it. Costumes for "Irish keyrens" had been "servisable" in 1555 (185) and could have dressed the "Irysshmen," but, perhaps to save time, some of the costumes were hired from Christopher Myllener. Most of the masks inventoried in 1555 were still in existence when "An Inventory of the Stuff of the Revells" was taken in 1560 (R.O. Eliz18-36). Evidently there was still enough old apparel to supply the needs of Elizabeth's coronation and her first two Christmases. After her second Christmas, Cawarden's successor, Thomas Benger, asserted that "the Chargies for making of maskes cam never to so little a somme as they do this yere" (R.O. Eliz- III), probably because the masks were still using the last of Henry VIII's purchases. By the time of preparation for Christmas 1560, however, these were clearly wearing out, and the household department of the Wardrobe accordingly delivered large supplies of rich fabric to the Revels "for the making of certeyne masking garments" under the Queen's warrant (December 10, 1560). The incomplete surviving copy of "all the whole warrant" lists silks, satins, and velvets, green, purple, red, blue, tawny, and black, most "wrought with golde," "striped with golde," sometimes both, or, rarest and probably therefore costliest, "with workes [embroidery] of golde" (112). In May 1562, a further warrant to the Master of the Wardrobe, John Fortescue, commands "that of soche our silkes as remayneth in your custodie in our great warderobe or otherwise to deliver or cause to be delyvered to our trustie and welbeloued Sir Thomas Benger knight master of our Revelles and Tryumphes for the

64

DOCUMENTS

better furnyshinge and settinge forthe of suche maskes and Revelles as shalbe shewed by hym," a formidable and multicolored list of cloth of gold, velvet, cloth of silver, satin, damask, taffeta, sarsenet, canvas, and lawn (114). These two issues of fabric apparently sufficed for several years of rather frequent official entertainments. In the summer of 1564, to entertain an embassy from France about a marriage between Elizabeth and King Charles IX, "thre masks and other devisses" were "translated and new made" with new sarsnet, canvas, and "ffrenge & tassales to garnesh the old garments to make them seme fresh Agayne" (116). At Shrovetide 1565, the somewhat incoherent description names a mask of "goodesses" and "foure masks too... fayre and Riche of old stuf butt new garnished with frenge and tassells to seme new and diuers showes made by the gentillmen of greys Ine" (117). For some years after this, necessities for masks and plays were bought at retail. Late in 1571, Benger ordered hundreds of pounds worth of silks from London mercers and drapers, perhaps to be used at Christmas and Shrovetide, and most certainly to prepare for another French marriage negotiation, this time to Henry Duke of Anjou. In July 1572, Elizabeth issued a warrant to the Master of the Wardrobe to deliver to the Master of the Revels fabrics of much the same types as in 1562, with less goldwoven fabric but far more yardage of each kind (187). Unless this was a post hoc authorization, the material could hardly have all been made up by August 17, the day of the St. Bartholomew Massacre which terminated the negotiations. Even so, Revels still had much to buy from haberdashers and mercers, whom the Crown, having more urgent expenses, did not always pay promptly. By the late 1570s, the officers of the Revels were in some distress because they were being sued personally for the unpaid bills. In December 1578, the Duke of Alengon's ambassador, Simier, came to negotiate yet another French marriage. Immediately after Christmas the Queen signed a warrant for delivery of "so much of our cloth of gold and of siluer and peces of Silkes... as shalbe namid in a bill" (not extant) issued by Lord Chamberlain Sussex (314), no doubt preparing to entertain the Duke later that year. But the negotiations went slowly, and when Alencon at last came to England in August he came incognito. Because he was in the country unofficially, his entertainment could not be public; the Spanish Ambassador reported that he watched Elizabeth dance at a court ball from behind the arras.17 Alencon's official visit did not take place until the spring of 1581, at which time Elizabeth gave him £30,000 to fight the Spaniards in the Netherlands. He visited again in the au-

65

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

tumn, this time lingering through Christmas, only to forever depart in early February 1592 with a loan of £60,000. At Christmas 1581 there were two masks and a combat at barriers after two Christmases and Shrovetides without masking. In 1579 Court diversions consisted of plays by the boys of the Chapel and Paul's and by the "servants" of Sussex, Leicester, Warwick, and Derby. In 1580 these companies again played, along with "Mulcasters children" and the servants of lords Hunsdon and Strange. After the Christmas masks during Alencon's stay, Christmas entertainment reverted to plays by Hundson's, Derby's Sussex's, and Leicester's Men and by Mulcaster's boys and the Chapel Children, and to "feates of Tumbling and Activitie" by Strange's Men. Its one mask, "of Ladies," was danced not by courtiers but by boys costumed in old Revels apparel with new lawn and "cipres" headdresses in Elizabeth's own black and white. "A Maske of Sixe Seamen prepared to have ben shewed, but not vsed" (R.O. Eliz. 349-50) turned out to be the last recorded mask furnished by the Revels Office; in fact, this mask seems never to have been shown in England; it looks more certain to me than it did to Chambers18 that its torchbearer costumes formed part of the "maske for six Maskers & six torchebearers," partly new made and partly "[altered and translated] of sondry other garments" (392), sent as the Queen's wedding gift to James VI of Scotland in September 1589. Two months after the economical Christmas 1582, on March 10, 1583, Tilney was summoned to court "To choose out a companie of players for her maiestie" (R.O. Eliz. 359). He stayed two days, evidently to some purpose, for within the next two months "twelve of the best [actors had been] chosen, and, at the request of Sir Francis Walsingham, they were sworn the queens servants and were allowed wages and liveries as grooms of the chamber: until this yeare 1583, the queene had no players."19 Queen's Men were playing in Norwich in June, 158320 where three of them, Bentley, Singer, and Tarlton, were involved in a dispute about an admission (apparently during a performance) during which a man was killed. 21 No records of the 1583 Christmas survive, but since Tilney had already chosen actors by June, the new troupe had ample time to prepare itself, probably performing at Court for the first time in the year of its formation. Why it was suddenly thought necessary for the Queen to have a company of actors does not seem to have provoked much modern curiosity. Gurr conjectures that it was a response to agitation against the stage by Puritans and the city government, joined with the desire to limit "the scramble of players around London" to a single company, and J. Leeds

66

DOCUMENTS

Barroll suggests an attempt to placate London while still providing for "the solace of the sovereign during established periods of revelry.. . . Only one company, rather than several, need be deferred to, and concomitantly other companies could be forbidden without the City being indifferent towards the recreation of the sovereign."23 To limit the number of companies would also limit the number of assembly places for unsupervised crowds, and so cut down opportunity for four Elizabethan terrors: plague, vagabondage, crime, and rebellion. Principal Secretary, Wakingham, had assumed part of the dying Lord Chamberlain's duties and as such was the privy counsellor most involved in the company's formation. But as he was normally responsible for the rudimentary Elizabethan security agencies, Gurr and Barroll may well be right. Still, placating the city and controlling crowds need not have been the only motive to provide the Queen with her own players. What the Revels Office records suggest is that this company was formed as a measure for economy. As an Elizabethan dramatic troupe the Queen's Men are an anomaly. At a time when other companies consisted of eight or ten men and boys,24 the Queen's mustered twelve men plus the boys apprenticed to some of them. It is an anomaly in other ways as well. Other companies were business partnerships among actor-sharers, each supplying some part of the playing apparel and properties, or funds to buy them. Such companies, if they did not simply buy playbooks offered for acting, might get their scripts from members who owned them as individuals, as did Edward Alleyn, or they might commission scripts for company use. In the first case, if a company member left the partnership he might take out what he had put in, but nothing suggests that he could appropriate plays unless he had owned the scripts to begin with. Exactly what was the status of the Queen's new servants vis-a-vis their former companies is by no means clear; perhaps, at least at first, they continued to play with their former companies25 except when actually serving at court, for in 1584 London's government complained to the Privy Council of how for the past year "all the playing places were filled with men calling themselves the Queen's Players."26 It seems improbable that, for instance, Leicester's Men would claim to be the Queen's servants without some ground for doing so. Three of the new Queen's Men had belonged to Leicester's company. Although this company was licensed by a royal patent, after the privilege of playing in London was withdrawn from all actors but the Queen's company members taken from it as royal servants might well have extended the protection of their higher status to their fellows, as might those chosen as

67

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Queen's servants from the other companies. Nothing seems to have prevented a player who officially served one nobleman from playing with the servants of another; Alleyn traveled with Strange's Men during the plague of 1592-93 but he remained the Lord Admiral's servant and returned to the Admiral's Men when London playing resumed. Singer, one of the original Queen's Men, joined the Admiral's Men, but as the Queen's sworn servant he probably retained honorary status, even when after January 1594 the Queen's Men ceased to play as a London company. Provincial records show that the Queen's Men usually split up in the country, at least part of the time playing with men of other patrons. To assume that Bentley, Singer, and Tarlton got into trouble at Norwich while playing with all or even some of the Queen's other newly sworn servants is no more than an assumption; testimony shows that local people knew the three were the Queen's servants and had seen them in their red livery coats, but no other member of the troupe they were playing with is so much as named, or said to have worn the royal livery. In fact, no record, even from Revels, proves that all twelve sworn as Queen's players ever played anywhere together as a permanent company. The fact that early in the winter of 1583 they were licensed to play in two different London inns, the Bell and the Bull, may mean that they were planning to play at court as two companies of six men and two boys each, an arrangement which would fit the plays then available. Yet another anomaly exists in the four specialist clowns appointed to the Queen's service: Tarlton, Singer, Adams, and Wilson. The few surviving plays from the 1570s and early 1580s all feature special turns for men like these, and the title pages of some printed texts advertise their roles as special inducements to buy. But none of these plays, Love and Fortune, Common Conditions, Mucedorus, Clyomon and Clamydes, and Three Ladies of London, has more than one clown part. It seems doubtful that Tilney, appointing "the best" from the other companies, was thinking in terms of theatre as a business. In fact, why he chose twelve players is uncertain; the number may simply reflect the usual size of a contemporary court mask, which consisted of six maskers and six torchbearers. The crews of clowns in later Queen's plays like The Famous Victories of Henry V and The Troublesome Reign of King John may owe themselves to the fact that the Queen's Men had more clowns than usual. There is no way of knowing how the Queen's new servants coped with their responsibility to entertain'at court. They were granted the privilege

68

DOCUMENTS

of public "rehearsal" for the court at the Bull and Bell Inns in the City. Before Christmas 1584 they also asked for privileges in Middlesex, which must mean the Theatre and/or the Curtain. But neither at the beginning of their service to the Queen nor later did they locate themselves permanently in any place in or near London, so they must have been limited in the number of costumes and hand properties they could manage. At least in their start-up season they must have been no less dependent on the Revels Office to furnish them with costumes fit for the Queen than the noblemen's companies of earlier years. At Christmas 1584, the Revels Office furnished them with "one greate curteyn," two "great cloths" and the standard "houses" of wood and canvas that noblemen's companies received: three called simply "howse" which probably represented dwellings, a mountain, a mount, three battlements, and a well. It supplied buffin (a cheap native fabric) to make shepherd's coats for a pastoral, sarcenet "for fower matachyne sutes" in the same play, a great deal more sarcenet and nine yards of "sullen cloth of gold purple" for unspecified use in "An Inuention called ffiue playes in one" (R.O. Eliz. 365). In comparison with the outlay of gold-woven silks in the 1560s and '70s, provision for the Queen's Men amounted almost to nothing. It may be that the skimpy formulaic records of the later 1580s actually represent the shrunken role of the Revels Office in producing court entertainment. The records for the employment of tailors suggest a declining role for Revels in physical production. From Christmas through Shrovetide 157273, there were six masks and six plays on which thirty-three persons, mainly tailors, were employed between forty and eighty days and up to seventeen nights. Besides these, twenty-three painters were employed, all but three for two weeks or less. Thirteen "propertymakers, Imbroderers, Habberdasheres, and their servauntes" were employed for about as long as the tailors' average: a total of sixty-nine men whose wages totaled £186 2s 8d (171-73). By contrast, in 1587 and 1588, only eighteen "Taillours & others [were] working and attending the premisses during the two yeares aforesaide" (189). Eleven of these got £6 10s each for "attending" on one hundred days and thirty nights, that is, for being on hand whether or not they did any cutting or sewing. The length and uniformity of this "attendance" suggests that this payment was a retainer fee that was reconciled to the unchanged shilling-a-day wage of a tailor, and that probably none of them did any actual work. Of the remaining seven, the aged Thomas Clatterbock, a Revels employee since 1547, was paid for fifty-six days and

69

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

thirty nights. Three of the men were paid for only two days and a night apiece, the others for nine, twelve, and eight days, one of these for six nights and the rest for three. In these years Tilney does not specify what was presented before the Queen but merely enumerates: in 1587, The Quenes Maiestie beinge At Grenewich ther wer shewed presented and enacted before her highnes betwixte Christmas &. Shrouetid vij playes besides feattes of Activitie And other shewes by the Childeren of Poles her Maiesties owne servantes & tthe gentlemen of grayes In on whom was Imployed dyverse remnantes of Clothe of goulde & other stuffe oute of the Store. (378) [In 1588] The Queenes Maiestie being at Richemonde at Christmas Newyearstide & Twelftide there were shewed prsented & encted before her highnes fryve playes & her Maiestie being at white hall at Shrovetide there were shewed & presented before her twoe plaies All which playes were enacted by her Maiesties owne servantes the children of Paules & the Lord Admiralls men besides sondry feates of actyvity tumbling & Matichives shewed before her highnes within the tyme & at the places aforesaide. (388) Tilney's summary of Revels activity in these years seems almost defensive: The chardges. . . did arise aswell by means of attending making choice perusing reforming & altering of such plaies Comedies maskes and Inventions as wer prepared set forthe & presented before her Maiestie in the tymes within the twoe yeares afoaresaide. (388) Elsewhere in the record he repeats himself, explaining payments due to himself, his clerk, comptroller, and yeoman: "for choice making & reforming of playes & comedies as also for there other attendance" (389). In the summer of 1589, Revels employed ten men for ten days each, three for seven, and four for four, with no nights. Some of the seventeen

70

DOCUMENTS

were tailors, probably hired to work on costumes for "a maske for six Maskers & six torchebearers and of suche persons as were to vtter speches at the shewing of the same Maske Sent into Scotland to the king of Scottes mariage by her Maiesties comaundement" (392). Siluester Bonnefoy got 18s "for washing tryming & putting in six fethers into a plume for a hed pece [and].. . other fethers for hatttes," and an unnamed haberdasher trimmed six hats and made two "hattes of clothe of gold" (393). This is the last year for which Tilney recorded payment for specific tasks. Except for Tilney's salary, the auditors' letters of later years concern payment of arrears rather than new charges. Records from 1590 through 1595 take smaller and smaller parts of a page in Feuillerat's edition, each employing the words "concerning plays only" (398-403). To be sure, Tilney and part of his staff were not idle, since they had the new duties of supervising professional actors and censoring their plays. These duties grew out of the Master's former responsibility to view plays offered for court performance and demand alterations in their texts. The Revels Office's original responsibility for making, maintaining, and disposing of apparel and properties declined abruptly after the formation of the Queen's Men, and decelerated further in the 1590s when the Queen's Men had faded away. In these years, masks sometimes entertained the Queen and Court, but were produced without Revels involvement by the Inns of Court and by the Queen's hosts during progresses. Forms of masking were also incorporated into plays by the men's and boys' professional companies, as in Peele's Arraignment of Paris, Nashe's Summer's Last Will and Testament, and Wilson's Three Lords and Three Ladies of London. Wilson's Three Lords, a sequel to his Three Ladies of London, is an occasional piece which celebrates the defeat of the Armada in August 1588, and includes a eulogy for Tarlton, who died in September. It probably was one of the "ffyve playes" "shewed presented & enacted" at Christmas 1588. Stage directions specify emblematic costumes for the London Lords, Policy "attired in blacke, Pompe in rich roabes, and Pleasure in collours" (Sig B1) and, for all, shields with specified impresas and mottoes. The costumes of the three Lords of Spain, Pride, Ambition, and Tyranny, are not described, but the stage direction for their entry goes into careful detail about their shields. Directions for costuming other English characters follow the formula "enter x like a y," and may specify color. Simplicitie is to come "in bare blacke, like a poore Citizen" (Sig B3), as mourning for Tarlton who had played Simplicitie in The Three Ladies. His eulogy for Tarlton forms part of his first comic exchange with the London

71

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Lords' pages. For court performance the shields and emblematic costumes might have come from the Revels storeroom, and this may have also been the source for the masklike garments of Summer's Last Will and Testament, played by the Archbishop of Canterbury's household at Croydon during the plague of 1593. Perhaps what remained stored with Revels in 1603 furnished the various entertainments given to King James and his family during their southward journey, but Dekker's Magnificent Entertainment of 1604 contains not a hint that the Office in that year lent the City so much as a tattered robe. When Anne of Denmark and her ladies needed rich apparel for Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, they went to the late Queen's wardrobe, not to the Revels Office. In later years Revels furnished lights for court masques, but that was all. Although the Master of the Revels had changed the duties of his office, the Yeoman of the Revels remained responsible for the "safe keeping" of "vestures" belonging to the crown. Yeoman Edward Kirkham's involvement with the haberdasher Thomas Kendall and the boy actors at Blackfriars and Paul's suggests what may have become of garments stored on Revels premises, perhaps by a gradual enlargement of some time-honored perquisites of Revels employees. To take unserviceable materials from the Revels stock "in ffees" was a right of Revels officers from the beginning, though early records hint that they were not especially greedy in appropriating such garments, perhaps because they were obliged to account for what they held. But under James, control of all Household departments became scandalously lax, while at the same time what was used for masking and other court entertainment seems to have been made up new of the costliest materials, rather than of recycled garments as in Elizabeth's time. The result would have meant an enormous increase of the Yeoman's charge, valuable material which would seldom be wanted again. While it is unlikely that lord and lady masquers turned over the costly attire they had paid for or had received as royal gifts, the silken garb of presenters and the grotesque attire of witches, satyrs, Cyclopes, and other fantastics would arrive at the house of the Yeoman of the Revels, doubly desirable to players and those who wanted to dress up because it was fine and because it had been seen at court. The right to rent out Revels stock may have been an unnamed perquisite of the Yeoman of the Revels as far back as John Arnold's time, despite Thomas Giles's indignation at the competition. Oxford University records connected with King James's visit in 1605 indicate that, instead of competing in the costume-rental business as had John Arnold and

72

DOCUMENTS

Thomas Giles in the 1570s, Edward Kirkham, Yeoman since 1586, had gone into partnership with the haberdasher Thomas Kendall, both connected with the child actors at Blackfriars from 1602 and Kirkham from 1605 with those of Paul's.27 Since Revels was no longer appareling masks or plays at court, "borrowing" the unused apparel would entail little risk; as Yeoman, Kirkham could declare anything in his charge "not servisable" and "taken for ffees" after years of dead storage. It is not improbable that the Master of the Revels knew what his Yeoman was doing, and would have supported him had the Lord Chamberlain inquired about apparel seemingly unwanted since 1589. Oxford University records for the royal visit of 1605 show the kind and quantity of costumes the university hoped to hire from Kirkham and Kendall, and what Kendall and Kirkham actually furnished.28 Aside from many wigs and beards, Oxford wanted a very large number of rich garments, more in fact than their suppliers could furnish: 8 Rich Robes for Kinges of cloth of glold or embrodered velvett. 20. mantles of severall coulors. 10 provyded.... 4. Rich garments loose for women of gold, Tissue, or the best can be gotten. 20 loose garments of severall coulors of sylke and saten for nymphes. The record-keeper later inventoried the garments actually received, describing them by fabric, color, and the embroidery patterns decorating them.29 The university order included some specified sets of costumes: ... eyght greene Robes of Taffatye wauved with ffrenge... 4 Sheppards coates of Taffata of severall coulors... 7 Hatts of Taffata30 These garments resemble the sets of maskers' and torchbearers' suits listed in Revels inventories over fifty years earlier. Kendall had a number of such sets, furnishing the University not only with the "8 greene Robbs of taffatye waued with frenge" but with "foure vpper garmentes of sea greene saten wth sleeves... four payre of [greene] wachet bases, all lymned. foure payre of sea greene bases all lymmed" and four "Sheppardes coates of Taffata of severall coulors"31 Besides these, Oxford wanted costumes for Apollo, Nestor, "a sea god," a crowd of "8 or 10. Kinges," twenty

73

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

nymphs, six morris dancers, ten satyrs, two or three silvans, four hermits, an old woman, and a magician. The university left the choice of the twenty loose gowns for nymphs to their supplier, either not expecting so many in a set or wanting variety; in the event Kendall was able to send only eighteen "lose gownes," no two alike, though all were made rich materials—"saten. .. tabine... Tafatye. .. vncutt velvett... chamled. . . Tiffanye. . . nett worke. . . Tynsell"—and all were elaborately decorated—"imbrodered over," "with workes," "florished all over," "laced round," or otherwise ornamented.33 While as a haberdasher Kendall might have made or dealt in wigs and beards (like the Ogles who supplied hair goods to both Revels and the Admiral's Men) and in costumes as had Thomas Giles, Thomas Clatterbock, and others, the costumes for Oxford look as if Kirkham might have been following John Arnold in hiring out Revels property. Although the garments described do not match any in the extant Revels accounts, no inventory survives from late in Elizabeth's reign, and there had been a number of pastoral entertainments for her and her successor whose costumes Kirkham might have "borrowed." Masking-style apparel could also have been purchased after Accession Day tilts. Each tilter might be escorted by over a hundred men in costumes which ran heavily to the pastoral and the pseudoclassic.34 As tilt array grew more elaborate and attendants more numerous in the 1590s, some of the finery seems likely to have come on the market in the years before Kendall surfaces as a largescale supplier of fancy dress. From whatever source, by 1605 there must have been a good many such garments available, and if the University sent an order for specific items it must have had information about what Kendall and Kirkham had to offer, whether from a catalogue or from previous dealings with them, the latter more likely. According to patents issued to William Hunt in 1611 and to Joseph Taylor in 1639 the daily wage of the Yeoman of the Revels was sixpence, as it had been when Edward Kirkham was appointed in 1586. Even in the 1570s this was half the daily wage for a tailor, and by 1639 was less than a single admission to see a play. The compensation did include "one liuery Cosae [Cassock] suche as the yeomen officers of o' Household haue of vs to be yearlie had. . . and. . . one sufficient Howse or mansion. . . for the sure better and safe keeping of or said vestures, "35 the house an especially valuable perquisite in expensive and crowded London, but still, a salary of under £7 a year hardly compares with the £180 which John Shankes asserts that Robert Benfield and two other King's Men received as sharers in

74

DOCUMENTS

the King's Men in the late 1620s. Even if in 1570 or in 1586 sixpence a day had been a desirable compensation (Flute imagines that Bottom "could not have scap'd sixpence a day... for playing Pyramus" [MND IV. ii.21-22]) it was evidently not expected to be the sole income of its recipient by 1611 when Kirkham was receiving it, let alone in 1639, when the office may have been a sinecure granted "in reward" to the leader of the King's Players. It seems likely that access to garments and other masque paraphernalia was in large measure what made the office so desirable to Kirkham, Hunt, and Taylor. Taylor could also have valued the chance to pick and choose costumes for the King's Men before disposing of what they did not want to the rental business or to sale. COSTUMES IN THE HENSLOWE PAPERS Through the Henslowe/Alleyn papers we learn of the purchase for many plays of "divers things," including costumes for the Admiral's and Worcester's Men: how much was paid for whole garments, parts of garments, and materials to make garments, which of the company's two regular tailors made garments, at whose instance garments were purchased, and, at times, to whom garments were sold. Two costume inventories also exist, one in Alleyn's hand without date, the other lost except for Edmund Malone's printed transcript, which both Greg and Foakes and Rickert in their editions of the papers consider authentic.36 Further information about costumes is found in letters and legal documents among the Henslowe papers. Most of these come from 1614 (when Henslowe and Meade built the Hope and engaged a company to perform there) and from the months following Henslowe's death two years later. Other companies left no such records; the information is only to be found in their plays, in stage directions and dialogue specifying costumes or costume changes, and dialogue describing particular garments or commenting on what a character wears. There is also independent testimony about the splendid show the actors made on the stage and at times in the street, perhaps using company costumes, as seems by a contract (April 1614) between Henslowe and Meade and the actor Robert Dawes of Lady Elizabeth's Men. It specifies a penalty "if he. . . shall at any time after the play is ended depart or goe out of the [howse] with any [of their] apparel on his body" or if he "shall be consenting [or] privy to any other of the said company going out of the howse with any of their apparell on his or their bodies." None of these

75

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

sources contains clear information about the normal size of a costume stock, and there are few indications of how long costumes might last, how well they were kept mended and cleaned, how much of his stage wardrobe an actor might provide for himself, or how much of the apparel available to a company might be the property of individuals in it. Still, some facts may be inferred from a 1598 inventory of Admiral's costumes and properties, from Alleyn's list of costumes in his possession, and from those purchases more specific than "divers things" recorded day by day in Henslowe's Diary. Henslowe took "Inventory of all the goods of my Lord Admeralles men" on March 10 and 13, 1598, soon after Alleyn had "left playing." About this time the Admiral's Men had come to a financial crisis, and Henslowe had begun to manage their business affairs on an increasingly regular system.38 Alleyn's costume inventory is dated by Greg about 1598, near the time of Alleyn's retirement, by Foakes and Rickert about 1602 when he returned to the stage.39 Alleyn's inventory lists costumes he had certainly worn and costumes his boy apprentice may have worn, but also "Will Somers cote," that Alleyn assuredly had no personal use for. He had also invested in costumes for years40 and sometimes sold them to the company. At some time after April 3, 1598, Henslowe bought "of my sonne v sewtes" for £20 and "iiij sewtes" for £17 more (Diary, 325); on October 22, 1602 he "pd vnto my sonne E Alleyn... at the apoyntemente of the companye for A grogren clocke ij velluet gerkens & ij dublets & ij hedtyers j payer of hosse" the sum of twenty pounds (206), a transaction entered in a second record minus the "hosse" (218). In 1602 Worcester's Men bought costumes from an actor, Christopher Beeston, in August a branched velvet gown and a doublet for £6, and in November a jerkin which cost something over 2os (215, 219). Beeston was just entering upon his long career as a theatrical entrepreneur, more flamboyant and with less profit than Edward Alleyn, and appears to have begun as Alleyn had, by investing in clothes. Some other actors may have made personal investments in costumes, whether for their own stage wear, for rental, for resale, or all three. But it is not usually possible to discriminate between a sharer's investment in a company (much of which went for costumes), his personal apparel, and his privately owned stage costumes. The case of Richard Jones illustrates the problem. In January 1589, he sold for £37 "All and singuler suche Share parte and porcion of playinge apparrell playe Books, Instrumentes and other comodities... as I . . . now haue Joyntlye with... Edward Allen John Allen... and Robert

76

DOCUMENTS Browne."41 Evidently this was Jones's share in a company's playing gear, like that bequeathed by Simon Jewell in 1593.42 Later in 1592, when Jones was leaving for Germany with Browne and others, he appealed to Alleyn to "healp me nowe J have asut of clothes and acloke at pane [pawn] for three pound and if it shal pleas you to lend me so much to relase them J shalbe bound to pray for you... for if J go over and have no clothes J shall not be esteemed of. "43 These clothes were probably finery to make a showy appearance in foreign streets, but Jones might also have worn them in roles he was to play abroad. When London playing resumed in 1594, Jones reappears among the Admiral's Men, and Henslowe records "Sowld mr Richard Jones player A manes gowne of Pechecoler In grayne [deep pink]... to be payd by fyveshellenges a wecke Imedyatly folowinge" (Diary 35). Jones paid off the debt in twelve weeks, so this bright pink gown cost him £3. Nothing indicates, however, whether he wore it on the stage, the street, or both. A couple of years later Jones bought two and a quarter yards of broadcloth (price 18s), that is, yardage enough for a cloak, paying Henslowe 45 a week (49). Other actors bought clothes from Henslowe; in 1595 he "sowld vnto Jeames donstall player... a manes gowne of purpell coller cloth facd wth conney & layd on the sleues wth buttenes" for 43s 4d to be paid in two installments (37). "Cloth" means woollen, and Donstall might have bought the gown either for personal warmth or for playing apparel. In 1596 Henslowe advanced £4 "vnto my sonne to by the saten dublet wth syluer lace" (50). For 24s he sold "vnto Thomas downton A payer of longe sylke stockenes of crymsone coller," still unpaid in March 1598/99 (81). Like Jones's "pechecolor" gown, these fine garments suggest stage more than street wear, if compared with the sober'Sounding doublet "of fuschen playne" and the "venesyones of brade cloth" sold in January 1595/96 to Steven Magett (perhaps the tireman) (37) and the cloak "of sade grene" sold to him in May 1596 (50). Garments like these were more typical of Elizabethan daily attire than pink, purple, and crimson in costly and fragile materials. Actors could also have been intermediaries between private sellers and the company, rather than investors for their own profit. Henslowe "Bowght for the company of Robart shawe the 6 of decemb3 1602 iiij clothe clockes layd wth cope lace for iiij li a clocke" (220). Shaw, one of three Admiral's Men who regularly bought "divers things" for play production, might also have been the company's chief agent to find secondhand clothes suitable for the stage. Most purchase records of alreadymade garments state only what had been bought, the date the money was

77

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

advanced, and how much, with the note "lent unto the Company" or "lent unto [Shaw, or Downton, or Juby] for" or "at the appointment of" the Company. But loans also go to Shaw directly, as when he gets 58s "to bye a[se] dublett & A payer of hosse of clothe of gowld layd thick wth black sylk lace," (102) and £3 "to bye A dublet & hosse of sewate grene satten" (136). Because Shaw purchased plays and playhouse gear for the company, these seeming records of personal loans may be no more than an abridgement of an entry like the following: Layd owt for the company the I of febreyare 1598 to bye A blacke velluet gercken layd thicke wth black sylke lace & A payer of Rownd hosse of paynes of sylke layd wth sylver lace & caneyanes of clothe of sylver at the Request of Robart shawe the some of.... )iij li xs.

(104) Garments such as Shaw purchased are almost never associated with a play title; the company probably was buying whatever suitable clothes came to its attention. Thomas Platter reports that noblemen's servants sold bequests and gifts of fine clothes to the players since the sumptuary laws forbade them to wear such garments. Other finery came from brokers (also called fripperers), whom men like Shaw must have visited regularly. Some garments may have been pawned to Henslowe and never reclaimed; his records show that he held much finery in pawn, sometimes for quite large sums of money, and that he sometimes did sell a suit or a cloak to the company. Companies may have bought garments in quite poor condition, if they were showy enough; beside "a newe sewte of aparell" at £7 10s (139) and a velvet jerkin, a round hose of silk and cloth-of-silver at £4/10s, a silk doublet and cloth-of-gold hose at under £3 seem remarkably cheap, so perhaps they were stained or badly worn, defects that would be less visible on the stage than elsewhere.

Alleyn's inventory of "apparel" is neat and organized, classifying garments by type. Its first section consists entirely of cloaks, the second of "gownes," and the third, headed "antike sutes," of a miscellany that includes two headdresses and a gown for the prophet Daniel, probably worn in the lost Nebuchadnezzar. All of these "antike sutes" are exotic garments

78

DOCUMENTS

of the kind the company might order for a single play, and would be usable only on the stage. The fourth section contains "jerkings and dublets," the fifth and sixth "frenchose" and "Venetians," breeches of two cuts. Almost everything for which materials are named is made of rich fabrics, including cloth of gold Venetians "for a boye." This is to be expected with costumes collected as investments, for there would be little point to an investor's paying for and storing ordinary street clothes for stage use, though companies did so. Six of Alleyn's costumes are identified by role "hary ye VIIJ gown," "daniels gowne," "will somers cote," "faustus Jerkin his clok," and "pryams hoes" (291-93), all but Will Somers's "cote" known or likely to have been for Alleyn's own roles. There are "wemens gowns," the plural indicating at least two, which with the four masculine garments "for a boye" might represent items in the wardrobe of an apprentice. The costumes for Henry VIII and Will Somers may have been very recent acquisitions, although in 1598 the Admiral's Men had owned "Will. Sommers sewtte" (318), for in May 1602 Thomas Downton received £3 to buy "wm someres cotte & other things... for the 2 pt of wollsey." (The company had ordered materials worth £39 for in Part I of Wolsey, more than is unambiguously recorded for any other play, although Chapman's lost Fountain of New Fashions might have cost more.) Alleyn's inventory lists a cardinal's gown as well as one for Henry VIII; he might have played either role. Henslowe's 1598 inventory must have been done against some existing list, for its first entry is headed "gone and loste" (317). Henslowe seems to have begun the inventory with a rationale like Alleyn's, for after the "gone and loste" items he headed a second list "the Clownes Sewtes and hermetes Sewtes, with divers other sewtes" (317). This indeed does begin with articles of the "antike sutes" type. But the intent to classify soon falters, and the principle for taking inventory looks as if it has become a search through successive storage places; one group of garments, mostly of leather, were "leaft above in the tier-house in the cheast" (319). On March 13, several garments thought "gone and loste" turned up, perhaps because stored in out-of-the-way places. Henslowe identifies garments as he does clothes pawned with him—by fabric, cut, color, and ornament, occasionally by role. He notes also when something is for a boy, identifying several garments as "for Pyg," Alleyn's apprentice. Once he labels a suit with the name of a role, Perowe, and the name of an actor, Will Sley (322) who by 1598 was acting not with the Admiral's but with the Chamberlain's Men. Henslowe

79

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

may associate other costumes with the names of actors; Foakes and Rickert suggest that "Andersons sewte" might have been worn by an actor of this name, since the only known character called Anderson (Sir Cuthbert Anderson) comes from Greene's James IV, which is not known as an Ad' miral's property. But given the number of lost plays once in the Admiral's repertory which might have had a character called Anderson, the reasoning seems stretched. "Anderson" aside, Henslowe assigns "Perowes" suit to an adult when a link between costume and actor might have been more useful in determining what clothes fitted whom. "Fierdraches sewtes for Dobe" and "Dobes cotte of cloth of sylver" (317, 322) may have been worn by a boy listed as Dab in the plot for The Battle of Alcazar (331)When Will Kempe was acting with Worcester's Men in 1602, Henslowe indeed "Lent vnto the company [30s]... to bye A sewte" for him, and 8s 8d "vnto your tyer man for mackynge of wm kempes sewt & the boyes" (215). These were most likely Kempe's trademark clown's outfit and a similar suit for his apprentice. They may have been made because Kempe had newly joined Worcester's after acting for over two years on the Continent and the company was supplying his and his boy's distinctive working apparel. The Admiral's Men owned several "clownes sewtes" in 1598, but only a "yelow leather dublett" is separately described. The rest may have been made to some standard pattern, like the suits in the 1560 court mask of "Cloynes," possibly with variations in guarding or color. The title page of Kemps Nine Days Wonder,44 reused in many forms to illustrate later ballads, purports to show Kempe's portrait in morris dancer's attire. Since he had acquired much notoriety by his stunt and his book about it, perhaps the tireman was to make something resembling this suit, but if so Kempe died too soon after to make much use of it. Garments identified by role in the inventory include "Harey the fyftes dublet" and "vellet gowne," "Longshankes seute" (317, 323), "Tamberlanes cotte with coper lace" (321), "Tamberlanes breches of crymson vellvet" (322), all for old or discontinued plays. From Munday's two new (1597-98) plays about Robert Earl of Huntingdon are "Roben Hoodes sewtte" (322), "j green gown for Maryan" (317), a hat "for Robin Hoode" (318), "the fryers trusse in Roben Hoode" (323), six green coats, two "whitt sheperdes cottes," garments of "friese" and sheepskin (317-18), a gray friar's gown which was thought lost and then found at the very end of the inventory (317, 323), and perhaps also some russet coats. Some of these may have remained from the Admiral's 1595 production of Peele's

80

DOCUMENTS

Famous Chronicle of king Edward the first, simamed Edward Longshankes. In this play as printed in 1593, a friar called Hugh ap David functions as an independent clown. Prince Luellen of Wales and his followers, "all clad in greene" (viii SD), assume names from the Robin Hood cycle, Hugh becoming Friar Tuck. For Munday's plays, however, the number of "greenwood" costumes was greater than for Edward I, and the new costumes needed were probably those for central characters. Once in the wardrobe, most could have served for any play with rustics or hunters; for instance, the lost Robin Hood's Pennyworths might have been purchased to take advantage of the same costumes, but although Haughton received earnest payments of 6os in December 1600 and January 1601, there is no record of its completion or performance. Edward 1 calls for many costumes and much costume change within roles. In an early scene Queen Eleanor insists on delaying their coronation "for preparation... of some fantastick sutes" by Spanish tailors (22531). At their "Coronations due sollemnitie" (690) the King is wearing a garment called "his sute of Glasse," a most unusual outfit sewn either with beads or bits of mirror, the outfit most likely among Edward's several costumes to have become known as "Longshanks suit."45 By 1598, the Henry V and Longshanks costumes were among those "gone and lost," so the plays were no longer in the active repertory; these lost costumes were found on March 13, probably late in the day since they come toward the end of the list. In August 1602 Alleyn received £4 for "ij bocke called phillipe of spayne & Longshanckes" (204); the latter must be the play in which some actor (probably the tall Alleyn) had worn "Loneshackes seute." The purchase of the script from Alleyn may indicate a projected revival of the play and possibly of the suit, though the Diary breaks off before recording any performance. Henslowe lists several types of garment in sets of four: "genesareyes gownes," "torchberers sewtes," herald's coats, priest's coats, friar's habits with separate hoods, and "knaves sewtes," which perhaps means liveries for servants (317-18). These are unconnected with play titles, though it is probable that some were first made to meet the requirements of a new play.46 Once in stock, such sets could be used for extras in any play needing symmetrical groups of nameless functionaries. Heralds, priests, friars, and "knaves" are frequent in history plays. "Genesareyes" are named in some of the popular "conqueror" plays with an eastern setting and might be used in any or all of The Battle of Alcazar, the two parts of Tamburlaine,

81

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Selimus, Stukeley, the lost Tamar Cham, and the lost Mahomet. Four garments each for roles of this kind indicate that up to four actors could be spared at one time to play them. Except for the "knaves sewtes," which must have consisted of a coat and plain breeches, all were the kinds of loose garment that could be slipped on and off for rapid doubling. There are also three "sogers cottes" (317), an interesting divergence from the symmetry of the other sets of costumes, and a confirmation that soldiers, at least when comic characters, traditionally came in threes, as they do in Cambyses, Locrine, The Famous Victories of Henry V, Shakespeare's Henry V, and others. (When soldiers are "serious" characters their number rises to four, such as the "four captains" in Henry V and Hamlet, and the soldiers who stand guard at the corners of the stage in Antony and Cleopatra.) Among the curious limitations in both Henslowe's inventory and Alleyn's is how few women's costumes they name. Before the date of the inventory, Henslowe occasionally provided funds toward making women's garments, like the "tensell for bornes womones gowne," the "payer of bodeyes of a womones gowne to playe allece perce" and the "payer of yeare [sic] sleavse of the bodeyes of pyges gowne" in December 1597 (7273), repeated in a later memo along with the purchase of "viij yrdes of clothe of gowl [e]lde for the womones gowne in bran/howlte" on November 26 of the same year (85). These, plus two rebatoes (wired collars worn mostly by young women) and a farthingale (a hooped petticoat) in January 1597/98, are all the women's clothes whose purchase Henslowe records before the inventory. Most of the few women's costumes are listed by role: Marian's gown, a "Mawe gowne of calleco for the quene," "Junos coat" and "didoes robe." Oddly, for all other female characters only the bodices seem to have been company property: "branhowltes bodeys," "Eves bodeys," "j payer of bodeys for Alles Pearce," "j gostes bodeyes" (beside "j gostes sewt" [318], a complete man's outfit of matched doublet and hose). Toward the end of the inventory three very sumptuous gowns for women are listed without a role, one cloth of gold (probably the one ordered for "bran/howlt" in November 1597 but not so named), one velvet, and one embroidered satin (323). The inventory does list four farthingales, underpinnings for upper-class fashion which would supply all the fine ladies in most plays, but there are no kirtles or petticoats. There are also four rebatoes but there are no ruffs, even though this style of neckwear was in fashion at the time. In February, 1598/99, Downton received £3 for "a sewte for phayeton & ii Re-

82

DOCUMENTS

bates & i fardengalle" (86), all likely to have been inventoried the next month. The farthingale and rebatoes may have been bought for several reasons: that the company's newest plays had more fine-lady characters than before, that the rebates and farthingales were wearing out, or, most likely, that the old farthingales and rebatoes were of an obsolete fashion, since by this time the wheel farthingale had replaced the earlier Spanish type. In 1602, John Duke received 40s "to bye Rebatose & fardingalls" (214) for Worcester's Men, probably to support women's costumes of whatever ownership, but by this time Henslowe was regularly lending to both the Admiral's and Worcester's Men for ready-made women's clothes and also materials for making them. The paucity of women's clothing probably means that at the time of the inventory most of the costumes for women's roles were not the property of the company but of the adult actors to whom the boys who played these roles were apprenticed. Only a few months before the inventory, Henslowe had financed "homes womons gowne" with "tensell" trim. Nothing resembling such a gown appears in the inventory, which almost has to mean that the gown belonged to Borne and not to the company stock. Since the company did buy what must have been distinctive "bodeys" and gowns, presumably company ownership of women's costumes coexisted with masters' ownership of such costumes for their apprentices, just as personally owned wardrobes like Alleyn's and Beeston's, and probably those of others, coexisted with company stock. In fact, in the months after Henslowe's inventory company purchase of women's costumes undergoes a rapid increase. In July 1598, Henslowe "lent vnto the [Admiral's] company. . . [33s 4d] to by a payer of sceartes of whitte satten for A womons gowne layd wth whitte lace" (94). On January 26, 1598/99, he lent Downton 55s "to bye the skyrtes of A womones gowne of sylver chamlett" and on January 31, £9 "to bye tafetie for ij womones gownes for the ij angrey wemen of abengton" (104). These taffeta gowns could have served for the sequel which rapidly followed up the success of Porter's play; at least, no new costumes are recorded for it. In April 1599, Downton received money "to macke vp a womones gowne.. .for the spencers" (107). In September, Henslowe lent Juby and Towne £10 "to bye wemen gownes for page of plemoth" (124) and two months later Downton signed a receipt for £10 "ffor wemenes gowns" (127) assigned to no play. In January 1599/1600 Shaw received 20s "to buy a grey gowne for gryssell" (130), though this

83

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

might not be for the play's heroine but for her father or some other lower class character, since more than one kind of garment was called a gown. In April 1602, Henslowe "pd at the apoyntment of my sonne. . . [40s] for a scertes of clath of sylver for a womons gowne" (199). This increase in company purchase of women's garments after the inventory may reflect more company investment in specialized or perhaps simply expensive costumes. Perhaps the stock of such costumes was also being deliberately increased, if indeed the Admiral's Men twice laid out £10 for women's gowns in the fall of 1599; Henslowe sometimes made two records of the same payment, and the second entry may no more than duplicate the £10 lent in September to costume women in Page of Plymouth. The inventory also lacks such essentials as shirts and footwear and ineludes only two pairs of stockings, one of white cloth (318) and the other "long black wollen stockens" in an addendum (325) of apparel bought after April 3. The inventory lists five shirts with no distinguishing characteristics (318), and "j white tafities sherte with gowld frenge" (323). Probably, as in nineteenth century stock companies, actors supplied their own shirts, stockings, and footwear.47 That actors normally procured their own shoes (for which proper fit matters more than for other clothes) is suggested by some records of court masques. Players in Prince Henry's Barriers were given 48s "for their Spanishe lether bootes bought by themselves" and the eleven priests in Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly got £2 each "to buy thir silke stockinges and showes" (H & S X, 521, 529). In November 1598 Henslowe "lent wm bird ales borne [20s]... to bye a payer of sylke stockens to playe the gwisse in.... lent wm borne to bye his stockens for the gwisse" (76). Borne's dealings with Henslowe sometimes sound as though Borne had a taste for stage splendor greater than the company was prepared to pay for; Henslowe records lending him 2os to buy "a wraght wascotte of sylke" (77), and taking in pawn "a longe taney clocke of clothe the some of xijs wch he sayd yt was to Imbrader his hatte for the gwisse," returning to him from pawn "ij gewells of gowld. . . which I dd to hime agayne wth owt money wch he owes me" amounting to 10s (82), besides the "sylke stockens" for the Guise. The form for all these entries differs from that used when the company is the purchaser, which reads variably but amounts to something like "lent vnto X for the company to bye." Before March 1598, Henslowe had sold a pair of crimson silk stockings to Downton. In 1601 Alleyn and Juby bought "sewttes & stockenes for the playe of the weaste enges" (182), perhaps because these

84

DOCUMENTS

were exotic costumes or because, as with Alleyn's own "frenchose: Rich payns wt Long stoking" (293), these stockings came with the suits. Silk stockings turn up fairly often in Henslowe's pawn lists; sixteen pairs between December 1593 and January 1595 secured loans from five to over twenty shillings (108-17). New, "a pair cost at least 20s, more if embroidered in gold and silver. In 1575, Sir Henry Sidney paid up to £3 for a single pair,"48 the price of admission for 720 spectators to the Theatre at id each, so it is easy to understand company reluctance to furnish them. The five shirts with no distinguishing characteristics might have been used in scenes like those in Doctor Faustus and Tamburlaine, Part 2, where the character is directed to stab his own arm (which meant puncturing a bladder of blood or vinegar concealed in a sleeve), or in other scenes where blood must flow. No actor, least of all a property-minded one like Alleyn, would have willingly risked damage by cut or stain to his own shirts in performance after performance, since such garments, basic though they were, seem to have been rather expensive; even Archbishop Parker's estate had only four, though he owned many other kinds of garments. 49 The inventory also includes several kinds of crown and exotic headdress, "iii donnes hattes" which may be for dons or more likely for Danes, since "ij Danes sewtes, and j payer of Danes hosse" (without matching upper garment) precede this entry by a few lines. The entry "xviij hattes and copes" (318) probably means "hats and caps," "copes" exemplifying Henslowe's aural spelling and having nothing to do with church vestments; he also lists "vj head-tiers," a combination of hairdressing and head covering for women, but no wigs or beards, though all acting companies needed them in numbers, and Oxford University expected to hire them from Thomas Kendall. The only advances Henslowe made for headgear are for head tires (one maker being a Mrs Gossen) and for crowns and the like to a craftsman called William Whitte. Something under 10s went to "Father Ogell," probably the elder John Ogle, a haberdasher who was supplying hair goods (including cows' tails) to the Revels Office in the 1570s (R.O. Eliz. 155 et sqq.). Some of the costumes described by role were made for this role according to entries elsewhere in the Diary, among them, hose and a jerkin for Valteger and "Valteger robe of rich tafitie," "Fayetone sewte," "Vartemar sewtte," "branhowlttes bodeys," and "j payer of bodeyes for Alles Pearce." Others were probably first made for the roles of Juno, Dido,

85

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Neptune, Robin Hood, Marian, and possibly "My Lord Caffes gercken, and his hoosse," "Cathemer sewte" (if "Cathemer" is a personal possessive and not some unrecognizable adjective), Eve's bodice, Tasso's robe, hose assigned to "Verones sonne" and a cloak for "Labesya," the last two characters in Chapman's Humourous Day's Mirth (317-22). Some costumes may not have originally been made for a specific role, but certainly became identified with it, like the "cloth clocke of russete with coper lace, called Guydoes clocke" (322). Such garments as "Tamerlanes cotte with coper lace" and "breches of crymson vellvet," memorable not only in themselves but because they appeared often in a popular play, or "Harye the Vs satten dublet, layd with gowld lace" (323), whether made for the role or simply identified with it, are a different matter from the anonymous "whitt shepherdes cottes" or even such gallant finery as an orange satin doublet with gold lace, a carnation doublet also with gold lace, or the gorgeous cloth of gold hose "with gowld corlle panes" (322), identified with no particular role and so usable in any number of plays, as the Henry V and Tamburlane costumes probably were not. Alleyn's gown for Henry VIII, "pryams hoes," and his jerkin and cloak for Faustus were also, presumably, usable only in the roles they are named by. Costumes like these could be "gone and lost," as were Henry V's satin doublet and "vellet gowne," if the play in which they had been worn was no longer being performed. Until audiences had time to forget the role they belonged to, these costumes would not be usable in another play; even costumes of minor characters, if memorable enough, might have their usefulness affected. "Verone's son," a very minor "Boy" who acts as a kind of presenter to introduce a lottery, wears hose that perhaps were a visual joke, like the "pair of large hose" (vii. 30 SD) brought to test the sanity of Dowsecer in the same play, hose so immensely padded he could use them as a seat. Why Labesha, whose "humorous" tag is "I'll go tell," should have a special cloak seems inexplicable, but it may have been some outlandish, inappropriate, or even deliberately misfitted garment, since Chapman's play includes many episodes that make comic business with clothing. Garments gone out of use, like Tamburlaine's jerkin and breeches and Henry V's doublet and gown, were valuable, if only for their materials, and so would not be discarded or sold. But even when current, these expensive garments might be less useful to a company than the anonymous sets of functionary clothes made of durable fabrics and wearable for years in many plays, or even than such gentlemanly sounding but probably not very memorable garments as a black satin suit, a green, a

86

DOCUMENTS

black, and a red jerkin with silver lace, or a "murey robe with sieves" (322). A count of the "sewtes," hose, doublets, and jerkins listed in the inventory gives something over eighty complete men's outfits not identified with any role or play and presumably usable in many parts. These outfits seem mostly for one social class, the gentry. Partly this is because of the variety of styles and still more the rapid changes of fashion worn by this class, compared with the conservative dress of countrymen and, in theory, of citizens. In January 1602/03, Henslowe lent 503 "to by a sytyzen cotte & sieves" (223), which needed no further specifics of cloth or cut. The costume of an apprentice, servant, or rustic could appear in play after play, since its cut and color represented what was fitting, even established by law, for the status of the character it clothed and was therefore not in itself very memorable. A gallant's doublet, hose, cloak, and hat, however, were subject to whimsical changes in the fashion, and so would become stale if shown too often. Chapman's lost play, The Fountain of New Fashions, probably satirized such changes (as does Jonson's Every Man Out of His Humor, written not long after), and may have been outfitted more lavishly than usual, for there is a sudden flurry of costume purchases about the time Chapman was paid for the script on "the 31 [sic] of September 1598" (99): "A blacke velluet gercken & a payer of harcoler clothe of syluer hoosse" on September 28, "A whitte saten womanes dublett & A blacke tynsell valle" on October I, "a Riche clocke" (very rich indeed at £19) October 4, two fine cloaks fetched "owt of pane" November 2, "dyvers thinges for the playe called th fownte of new faciones" November 8 and 14, "wemenes gownd & other thinges for the fowntayne of newe faciones" November 13, and perhaps even a "dublette & A payer of hosse of clothe of gowld layd thick wth blacke sylk lace" and a "shorte velluett clocke wraght with bugell & A gearcken of velluet layd wth brade cop syluer lace" as late as November 27 and 28 (99-102). Henslowe financed these purchases for a total of over £60; Chapman received, according to the record, only £4 instead of the usual £6, but as The Fountain of New Fashions came after his successful Blind Beggar of Alexandria and Humorous Day's Mirth and was thought worthy of considerable expense in its production, the company probably paid him the usual fee without borrowing all of it from Henslowe. For a company with twelve adult actors, the eighty or more complete men's costumes represented by the inventory give each man in the company six or seven suits, more if doublets and jerkins were mixed-and-

87

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

matched with the hose and each other.50 Besides these, there were specialty outfits like the six jerkins and hats for the clown, the seven "anteckes cootes" (318), and the costumes for priests, soldiers, heralds, and so forth, which have "minor role" written all over them. Obviously one role would rarely if ever call for six or more costume changes, though, allowing one costume per role in each play, the wardrobe the inventory represents could be shown entire to a regular playgoer in little more than a fortnight, especially with doubling. The more costume change in individual plays, the sooner all of the wardrobe would be seen. Many of the 15905 plays suggest that actors seldom got more than one costume per role unless that role demanded a traditional reason for a costume change, and that experienced playwrights, especially if company members like Shakespeare, took some care to keep the changes few and functional. Such care would prevent too quick a familiarity with a company's apparel, and help prevent the rapid wear of its costumes. Yet not all the playwrights were so careful of company property. As we shall see, Thomas Heywood (both actor and playwright) calls for multiple changes within major roles as early as The Four Prentices and Edward IV, even though these plays also require a great deal of doubling. He multiplies these demands on the wardrobe in later work such as Woman Killed with Kindness and the masquelike Age plays for Worcester's/Queen Anne's Men. It seems likely that in 1598 the Admiral's Men's stock of apparel was somewhat reduced, in part because the company, or individuals in it, may have pawned some of its more valuable items, perhaps including many of the costumes thought "gone and lost." To pawn clothing and household linens was common for both rich and poor when they needed cash quickly, so it seems a likely recourse for a financially embarrassed acting company. Richard Jones perhaps pawned his own "best apparel" in 1592, rather than a fine stage costume he had invested in, but actors also used their own stage apparel to secure loans, as did Downton, who before November 1597, pawned two "rich cloaks" with Henslowe for £12 IoS, which he somehow used as collateral for another loan while getting them back on September 28, 1598 (99). On October 4, 1598, Henslowe recorded a complex-looking transaction with Jones, Shaw, Downton, and Bird/Borne; "the same time they pd mr langleyes his money for the agrement & feched home the Riche clocke frome pane wch the stocke is not to paye," Henlsowe lends them £3 as a group (68). The "Riche clocke" also figures in large payments made to Langley, including part of a £12

88

DOCUMENTS

loan to Downton on September 29 "to feche home a Riche clocke wch they had of mr langleyes" (98), and on October 4 a £19 loan to the company "to by a Riche clocke of mr langley wch they had at ther a grement" (99). (If "Riche clocke" represents one garment it eventually cost the company £34, more than the total production costs of most plays; if it represents three garments the prices were still very high.) These payments are connected with Langley's raid on the Admiral's to augment Pembroke's Men, who were to play at his Swan Theatre with Langley supplying their apparel, an enterprise which soon failed thanks to their performance of the offensive Isle of Dogs and which ended with the return of the defectors. Langley received compensation; he may also have sold to his former employees some of the costumes he had bought for their use. Bernard Beckerman's analysis of Henslowe's increasing involvement with the business affairs of the Admiral's Men at the Rose between 1598 and 1604, especially the loans he made to the company for buying plays and to individual playwrights with and without requests from the company, makes clear that the business arrangements between the company and its theatrical landlord grew in an ad hoc fashion, very likely because they were both convenient for the actors and profitable for Henslowe. Beckerman remarks almost parenthetically that "the evidence from the purchase of costumes and properties" supports his belief that Henslowe did not exercise "the kind of responsibility associated with a theatrical manager"51 by which he means control of decisions about what plays and stage gear to purchase. Beckerman writes nothing about the records of cloaks in pawn, or the sudden increase in the purchase of costumes for both men and women which begin soon after the inventory. Nor does he say anything about what looks like a changing system for providing the apprentices with costumes, especially but not exclusively the costumes for women's parts. Given the intermittent and inconsistent state of Henslowe's records, and the known disappearance of some of them, we cannot say how fully his papers represent his transactions either with the Admiral's Men or with his "sonne" Alleyn. The company does not seem to have paid its capital and ongoing expenses through the owner of the Rose Theatre, or to have financed purchases of plays, properties, and costumes from any source but current income, until the crises connected with Alleyn's departure from the stage, the secession of some actors to the Swan, and, most serious of all, the Privy Council order to close all theatres after the

89

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

scandal of The Isle of Dogs.52 After these embarrassments, the company seems to have met nearly all its capital costs for plays, costumes, and properties with serial loans from Henslowe, who kept track of expenses as they occurred and took his payment at first with half the gallery receipts and later with all of them. As the Diary ceases to record dealings with the former Admiral's Men after March 16, 1603/04, when Henslowe wrote that "all Reconynges consernynge the company [now the Prince's Men playing at the Fortune] in stocke generall [are] descarged & my sealfe descarged to them of al deates" (210), we do not know whether he and this company ever resumed the convenient financial routine for securing and producing plays which they had developed over a seven-year period. However, since Alleyn retained a lifelong connection with the Fortune and its company, he may have dealt with them as Henslowe had at the Rose. Beckerman believes that once Alleyn had retired from the stage, his and Henslowe's position became more distant from any troupe playing in their theatres.53 Their partnership led more toward speculative building of structures for public entertainment, as they successively constructed the Fortune, the Bear Garden, and the Hope. On the other hand, the records of Henslowe's transactions with Worcester's Men at the Rose are far more routine than those kept earlier for the Admiral's at the same theatre, suggesting that the system developed earlier had proved so workable and mutually advantageous that both financier and company agreed to it from the start. But in 1614 the agreement of Henslowe and Jacob Meade with Lady Elizabeth's Men at the Hope provides for the financiers to supply all the apparel for the company's initial repertory (as Langley had for Pembroke's Men at the Swan in 1597) whether "suche stock of apparrell as the saide Phillipp Henslowe hath already bought" or whatever apparel "ffower or ffive Sharers of the said Company chosen by the saide Phillipp and Jacob shall think fittinge... towardes the settinge out of their newe playes. "54 This agreement may have been at Meade's instance, not Henslowe's, and it contributed to the troubles, exacerbated by Henslowe's death, that induced the company to leave the Hope for a less troublesome theatre. Amid the claims and counterclaims, exactly how much the financiers had spent, how much the apparel was worth after two years, and even who owned it disappears in controversy; Henslowe's heir Alleyn, probably to get clear of litigation, eventually settled that the actors should pay him £200 for the moveables.

90

DOCUMENTS

What the combined information from the 1598/99 inventory and the costume purchases recorded in Diary entries shows is the minimum stock of costumes and properties the Admiral's Men owned or acquired during approximately a five-year period. These records reveal nothing about the condition of any of the apparel, though both Henslowe and Alleyn inventory white satin doublets (which would show soil early) as "old," nor do they indicate how or why garments were disposed of, or what were the companies' routines for maintaining the garments in their possession. An undated letter from William Birde to Alleyn about a dishonest gatherer called John Russell proposed that "he shall haue his wages, to be a necessary atendaunt on the stage, and if he will pleasure himself and vs, to mend our garmentes, when he hath leysure, weele pay him for that to,"55 but this mending looks like make-work for some Henslowe-Alleyn connection, so that it may not have been part of any backstage employee's regular duties, even those of the tireman. Henslowe records only two payments definitely connected with maintenance. In the first he lent the company 75 6d in November 1601 for "the mending of hew daves tanye cotte. . . wch was eatten wth the Rattes" (184). An unspecified number of "tanye cottes" had been bought the previous August "for the playe of carnowle wollsey," the bill of 305 also including the ubiquitous "diuers things" (179). Given their cheapness, these tawny coats probably were old liveries bought secondhand from a broker. Tawny coats were the normal livery for a churchman's servants. In Shakespeare's Henry VI Part i, Cardinal Beaufort's servants are called "tawny coats," and Sir John Harington recalls how Whitgift, when Bishop of Worcester, was met by Bishop Aylmer of London "with... an orderly troop of Tawny Coats."56 The name Hugh Davis appears elsewhere in the Diary as a long-time tenant of one of Henslowe's houses and as an occasional witness in Henslowe's business documents, but only this payment connects a man of his name with the theatre. Indeed, there seem to have been two Hugh Davises, one, perhaps the father, who signs with a mark, the other the son, who writes a signature. Either could have been in the service of a bishop, and the damaged "tanye cotte" might therefore have been a badged livery that he needed for his period of service after the company had borrowed or hired it for some unspecified purpose. On January 2, 1601/02, Henlsowe paid IoS "at the apoyntment of the companye vnto the syldkier for dienge of the Imbradered klocke" (186). One common way to prolong the life of unwashable garments in light or

91

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

bright colors was to have them dyed a darker color when they grew soiled or perhaps out of season. How many times the process might be repeated is not clear, but black would cover any color and hide the most staining and dirt. This is evidently the point of Donne's sneer at a shabby courtier in Satire 4: His cloths were strange, though coarse; and black, though bare. Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had beene Velvet, but 'twas now (so much ground was seenne) Become Tufftaffatie; and our children shall See it plaine Rashe awhile, then nought at all. (30-34) A simile in Webster's Duchess of Malfi shows how familiar were both the practice and its dulling effect on cloth: "I do not think but sorrow makes her look/ Like to an oft-dyed garment" (V.ii. 109-10). While in Bristol on tour with Lord Strange's Men, probably in 1593, Alleyn asked his wife to see that his "orayng tawny stokins of wolen be dyed a very good blak against I com horn to wear in the winter" (277). Henslowe does not say what color the "Imbradered klocke" had been, why it went to be dyed, or what color it received; the color would have had to be as dark or darker than before, and the operation would have obscured the embroidery unless this was in the same color as the cloak or a metallic thread that dye would not affect. Embroidered garments were too valuable to discard, at least until they grew obviously ragged; perhaps the cloak had been stained too conspicuously to remain usable, or had become so soiled that it no longer suggested sumptuousness.

The Revels accounts indicate a routine for regular maintenance of a wardrobe. Soon after Elizabeth's accession, Blagrave, Holte, and Leys of the Revels Office begin their year's work (before "christmas Neweyeres tyde/ & Twelf tyde") by "Translatinge newe makinge garnysshinge fumysshinge and fynysshinge of dyuers and sundrye garmentes Apparell vestures and propertyes aswell of Maskes as for playes and other pastymes sett forthe and shewen in her Maiesties presence with the chaunge and Alteracion of the same to serve her Highnes pleasure and determynacion as occasion required from tyme to tyme upon comaundement to be in

92

DOCUMENTS

Areddines when it was called ffor" (R.O. Eliz. 79). Though the word "Areddiness" may owe something to staff anxiety to please the new Queen at her first Christmas season, the verbals at the beginning of the sentence amount to a formula for Office activity at this season in the reigns of Edward VI, Mary, and, in years to come, of Elizabeth. The language describing what the office did at the end of the Whitsun revels season in Elizabeth's first regnal year is more repetitive than other such entries, but merely expands the formula: "lune 1559 in dicto anno primo Reginae": Eyringe repayringe lainge abroode turninge sowinge mendinge tackinge Spunginge wypinge brusshinge makinge cleane foldinge and lainge vp of the Maskes garmentes vesturs and other Stuffe Store and Implementes of the office for the Safegarde and refresshinge of the same with the gatheringe and compylinge of the Imploymentes and remayne of the stuffe and Store of the office betweene the laste daye of maye and the xiiijth daye of lune dicto anno. (102) Unfortunately little besides two meagre Henslow entries suggests that the professional companies kept their apparel clean and in repair as a matter of routine. One sign of a routine may be the frequent purchase of copper lace, sometimes specified as "white copper lace," "silver copper lace," "gold copper lace," or "broad copper lace," from a person called simply "the copper lace man." Copper lace was a widely used inexpensive trimming, imported in huge quantities; excise was collected on three tons of the thread used to make copper lace between the years 1594-98,57 and more may have been smuggled in. Henslowe once notes that it cost lod an ounce; in 1600 before going on tour the actor Richard Bradshaw paid him 145 for eighteen ounces, or about 9 i/2d an ounce (165). The Admiral's Men bought anything from an ounce and a half to eight pounds at a time, and for a while were evidently purchasing substantial amounts on credit; in 1601 Henslowe was paying the company's old debts to "the copper lace man" in installments of £5 a week. The greatest part of the copper lace looks to have been purchased as much of the ready-made clothing was purchased, without reference to the cost of any particular play. While some of it must have replaced real gold and silver lace removed from the clothes bought directly or through inter-

93

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

mediaries from members of the upper classes, the quantities bought, especially when the company or some members of it were about to travel, suggest that perhaps copper lace could be used for emergency repair of the wardrobe when replacement of a damaged or shabby garment would be difficult. Copper lace did tarnish quickly and it may have frayed more rapidly than the garments it adorned. Perhaps also copper lace could be applied to old costumes, or costumes from plays no longer in the repertory, so as to make garments familiar to regular playgoers seem like fine new apparel, as had the tassels and fringe used on masking garments in the 1560s. Dekker's satiric comment in The Gull's Hornbook, "By sitting on the stage you m a y . . . examine the play-suit's lace, and perhaps win wagers upon laying "'tis copper,"58 may depend upon the near-certainty that, close up, the cheap substitute for silver or gold would be evident even to a credulous novice. Between December 1597 and March 1603, the Admiral's and Worcester's Men between them borrowed £69 6s 9d from Henslowe to buy copper lace, including £20 toward their "old debts." In May or June 1601, a single purchase of £3 i8s 4d (at Iod per ounce) was used on one suit and one gown for the revival of Chapman's popular Blind Beggar of Alexandria, a play which had had at least twenty-two performances in 1596-97 and for whose continuing production "divers things" were periodically bought; the trimming of the suit and gown must have been sumptuous indeed, for over five pounds of copper lace adorned them. The weight of ornament on these two garments is not excessive; for Jonson's Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue in 1616, one Thomas Peake supplied 314 ounces of "white Copper plate lace" and two hundred yards of "white copper lace sprigged and spangled" to adorn the suits of Prince Charles and two of his gentlemen (H & S, X 579) so that each suit carried over six pounds of copper lace trimming. (The price had also risen. The Exchequer paid 145 an ounce instead of the tenpence paid by the Admiral's Men.) For some plays, copper lace was almost the only production purchase recorded; for Valteger, with three purchases, copper lace cost somewhere between 40 and 65 shillings, for The West Indies three payments out of the five for this play, totalling 23s 9d, were for copper lace, and for Six Yeomen of the West three lots were bought for 6s, 95, and again 6s. None of these was an exceptionally high-priced production; Six Yeomen, costing £6 is, and West Indies, costing £13 75 9d, were being produced at the same time as the very expensive Cardinal Wolsey, whose recorded pro-

94

DOCUMENTS

duction expenses were £39 los 6d. Stone the mercer received £21 for velvet at 205 a yard, satin at 125 a yard, and taffeta at 125 6d a yard, over £3 for linings and trim, besides £8 to the tailors for making these materi' als (Diary, 182). Only 55 6d of the total went for copper lace. No copper lace was bought for The Rise of Cardinal Wolsey later in the same year.

Henslowe records 127 production payments for sixty named plays. Of these payments, forty-eight are for "things" or "divers things," ten of these in addition to a specified payment for a suit, a woman's gown, rebatoes, or the like, one to a tailor, one describing "divers" materials bought for 245, "to macke coats for gyants in brute"; a subsequent purchase of buckram to make Kempe a pair of giant's hose suggests that here "divers" meant largely buckram and bombast. For some plays, "divers things" represent the only purchases; Perce of Winchester cost a total of £29 2s, an exceptionally large production cost exceeded only by the lavish Cardinal Wolsey, one payment of £10, one of 40s, and one of £12 going for "divers things," the remaining £5 2s for copper lace. The vague "divers things" is normally used only in connection with named plays; the company did not make, or at least Henslowe did not finance, random unspecified purchases. When the company bought ready-made garments, it was seldom for a named play. For Chapman's Fountain of New Fashions, the company may have contacted brokers for the most up-to-date garments available. But this was an unusual kind of situation. Ordinarily, secondhand garments were for "the stock." The chief evidence for costuming most roles from whatever was in the wardrobe is the word "stock" itself. One loan to the company of 305, made between October 14 and 29, 1596, went "vnto the tayller for the stocke" (51). In November 1597 another loan of £12 IOS went "vnto Thomas dowton to feache ij clockes owt of pane... [the one an] ashecolerd velluet embradered wth gowld the other a longe black velluet clocke layd wth sylke lace wch they exsepted into the stocke the 28 of septemb3 1598" (99) seemingly by company vote. On October 4, 1598, in the aftermath of Langley's raid on the Admiral's Men for his shortlived Swan company, Henslowe agreed to lend Jones, Shaw, Downton, and Birde £3 "the same time they pd mr langleyes his money for the agrement & feched home the Riche clocke from pane wch the stocke is not to paye" (68), although he does not say who would. In January 1601, some

95

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

indirect evidence for purchase for the stock may lie in the "x dossen of lace to lace the harecolerd clocke the some of xs & vj dossen more vjs" (187). Possibly these extra laces, like the copper lace so often bought, were for anticipated costume maintenance or alteration. Further evidence for costuming almost all roles from stock is the purchase of so many garments without reference to plays, and the presence in both Henslowe's and Alleyn's inventories of so many garments identified by the name of no play or role. In fact, only about ten percent of the many costumes and properties Henslowe records in the Diary and inventory are directly or inferentially attached to named plays. Most of these costumes belong to the years after 1600, when both the Admiral's and Worcester's Men were purchasing more fabrics to be made up by their tailors and rather fewer existing garments. Up to the end of 1600, Henslowe made only ten payments averaging slightly over 195 to one tailor, Radford (also called "the little tailor"), one of these on behalf of William Borne to make a woman's gown, perhaps for his apprentice, perhaps for his wife. Beginning in 1601, both the number of tailors and the number and size of payments to them suddenly rise for the Admiral's Men, and rise further in 1602-03 when Worcester's Men had succeeded the Admiral's at the Rose. From January 1601 till the records cease in 1603, thirty payments went to Radford, to a second tailor named Dover (the two employed sometimes separately, sometimes together), to "the tailor in the borough [of Southwark]" who made one suit, and to "the tayller wch made the blacke satten sewt for the womon kyld wth kyndnes" (225) who was paid IDS. For Cardinal Wolsey, Radford, Dover, and the property-maker William Whitte received £8 45. No matter how this sum was shared among the three, it greatly exceeds Radford's average charge of 195 before 1601. With the large Wolsey fee, the average payment to tailors rises to between 25 and 265. On October 10, 1601, Whitte's bill and Radford's together totaled 575 for unspecified work (182), but there is no way to tell how this was split between them; Whitte had received 505 in August 1601 for "mackynge of crownes & other thinges for mahewmet" (178). In October 1602, the tireman of Worcester's Men got IDS 9d for making suits for devils and spirits and a witch's gown in The Three Brothers' Tragedy. Perhaps this means that Worcester's Men had hired a tailor to attend to their apparel and its readiness during performances, although Dover and Radford also continued to be employed and, apart from suits for Kempe and his boy, this tireman was not paid to make anything else.

96

DOCUMENTS

Given the velvet, satin, and taffeta with which the company trusted Radford and Dover (although they also made buckram garments)59 against the cheap fabrics "say" and "soutage" it trusted to its tireman, the difference must have been between highly skilled tailors and a man little above a botcher. If Worcester's tireman did make costumes other than those named, he probably made up cheaper materials for his regular wages; perhaps the special payments represented some form of overtime, though the proposal to pay John Russel extra for mending garments "when he hath leysure" may also indicate an unusual assignment for someone whose main tasks more closely approached those of a modern theatre's dresser. It may be that the Admiral's tireman was not a tailor; if the Steven Magett who paid Henslowe in tiny installments for a doublet and hose in 1595 and a cloak in 1596 was the same as "Steven the tireman," these commonplace garments would be unlikely purchases for a man who could sew his own clothes. If the Admiral's Men increased both the number of plays they bought and the expenses of their production in 1598, when Beckerman believes they were financially embarrassed, the increased expenditure was made possible by their arrangement with Henslowe. The company may have been making itself more attractive to playgoers by a rapid increase of the repertory so as to bring in more "repeat" spectators, and by greater visual spectacle in both new and old plays. The reported stage splendors might then entice new theatregoers or draw off habitues from the other playhouses. Even so, the available information about production costs indicates that many plays were mounted for very moderate sums, and that expensive spectacle was confined to one or two plays a year. That is, even with increased expense on costumes and other visibles, most plays were dressed from the stock, and many plays, especially those with second and third parts, economically used expensive purchases from Part One to clothe characters in the sequels.

97

This page intentionally left blank

The Companies of the 1590s

THE ADMIRAL'S MEN AT THE ROSE AND FORTUNE Thanks to Henslowe's diary, the extent of the Admiral's Men's repertory is better known than that of other companies between 1594 and 1603. Many of the titles recorded in it are of plays whose scripts have disappeared; most of the costumes Henslowe records belong to this lost part of the repertory. Some surviving scripts, such as A Knack to Know an Honest Man, Edward I, and Sir John Oldcastle, reached print not from prompt books or even from playwright's fair copy, but from foul papers (the author's draft form) that are full of inconsistencies and that may contain alternative versions of some scenes. Such imperfections make these unreliable guides to costuming, although they may indicate what playwrights thought possible. Others, like Marlowe's Massacre at Paris, Dido Queen of Carthage, and Doctor Faustus, are extant only in cut or revised versions that may no longer show the playwright's ideas for costuming, though they do preserve company methods of costume economy. Dekker's Old Fortunatus seems to include alternative versions for public and court performances: choruses for the Rose audience, spectacular dumb shows for the Court. That of Stukeley shows a major and perhaps incomplete rewriting of the 1596 play Henslowe records, which must have been set from a version quite impracticable in the theatre. Although Chettle was paid earnest money for The Tragedy of Hoffman in 1602, the extant version may not have been acted by the Admiral's Men but by Worcester's (Malone ed., v); so mangled is the extant text that it hardly provides usable evidence for any company's mode of costuming. In spite of this, most ex-

99

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

tant scripts can be used to discover Admiral's costume policies, and as a group, the titles of lost plays extend what we can learn about these poli' cies to a surprising degree. The surviving plays and the Diary lists show that the Admiral's Men were quite conservative about their repertory, retaining old plays for years and repeating successful formulas in new plays almost as persistently as Hollywood and the television industry. The record of Admiral's plays suggests a tendency to repeat successes like the plays about Eastern conquest and adventure, or to follow successful "getpennies" with second, third, and even fourth parts, like the plays about the French civil wars. This conservatism is a likely child of success with such plays, especially Alleyn's in his star parts as Tamburlaine, Hieronymo, Orlando, Barabbas, Faustus, Edward I, and possibly Stukeley. At least some of these scripts were Alleyn's personal property; he did not sell the right to play Longshanks to the company until 1602, although the disappearance of one special costume for this play by 1598 implies that it was no longer performed. Alleyn's interest in older scripts may have contributed to their persistence in the repertory. Some had belonged to the Admiral's Men before the plague hiatus of 1592-93; others came, by purchase or by the appropriation of printed scripts, from companies that "broke" and sold their scripts and wardrobes. When the Admiral's Men, Henslowe, or Alleyn picked up bargain scripts, they are unlikely to have bought failures; in 1594 they may have felt themselves so well supplied with plays that had stood the test of London and provincial audiences that they would not soon need new ones, at least nothing experimental and therefore risky. Alleyn's preference for the "epic" roles in which he had made his name, roles affording opportunity for physical spectacle and declamation, may explain the low incidence of comedy in Henslowe's day-to-day records before 1596. More comedies were added to the repertory after Alleyn "left playing" in 1597. When he returned to the stage from 1600 to 1603, additions were made to The Spanish Tragedy and Faustus, and possibly other heroic roles were revived without recorded changes to the scripts. From 1594 to 1597 the Admiral's repertory was dominated by plays with an exotic setting, especially "eastern conqueror" plays with spectacular processions, battle scenes, coronations, and feasts. Most of the locale in these plays was created through the rich and colorful garb of the actors. The costume requirements of this "oriental suite" overlap with the requirements of an Ibero/African suite that probably began with Kyd's Spanish Tragedy and Peele's Battle of Alcazar. In both of these plays, Span-

100

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

ish and Portuguese characters need to be visually distinguishable, and in Alcazar not only must the Christians look different from their enemies but perhaps Moors must also look different from Turks. Such a "special effects" play as Doctor Faustus does introduce different kinds of exotica, including both the undisguised inhabitants of Hell in devil suits and the devils who appear in the forms of Alexander, his paramour, and Helen of Troy, whose famous beauty was probably communicated by splendor of dress and jewels. No script survives to show the nature of a suite on classical themes. Hercules, Phaeton, Cupid and Psyche, and Troilus and Cressida must have been popular, as more plays on such themes were purchased and costumes for them sometimes replaced. The extant plays of all these suites include "rants" for their central characters and parades of actors in exotic garb never seen on a London street; probably the lost scripts shared these features. By 1598 the company's inclination to repeat earlier successes seems to have contributed to a fall in audiences, who were enticed by new kinds of plays at the Curtain and the novelty of boy actors at Paul's. To be sure, its problems were not entirely the fault of the repertory; they were exacerbated by the defections of some actors to Pembroke's Men, by the Isle of Dogs inhibition, and by the retirement of Alleyn from his sure-fire star parts. The Admiral's Men's discovery that they could not rest on old laurels may explain the explosion of new scripts at the end of the decade, scripts put together by teams of poets with a speed hardly matched before television: thirty-three new plays in 1598, twenty-seven or twenty-eight in 1599, nineteen or twenty in 1600 (the year the company moved to the Fortune and could perhaps count on the new playhouse and Alleyn's return to bring in audiences), nineteen in 1601, and in 1602 twenty-three. Only six new titles are listed for 1603, but playing was suspended for most of that year. Lavishness in costumes and properties was made possible because of the company's financing arrangements with Henslowe to purchase plays, properties, and costumes, but an examination of the actual requirements for spectacle shows that the company was not extravagant. Though primary costs might have been high, many of the spectacles and special effects were carried through a succession of plays using the same dress and equipment. For instance, Lodge's Roman tragedy, Wounds of Civil War, written in 1587-88 but still being played in 1594, includes a scene of Sulla drawn by Moors in a triumphal chariot, apparently devised to use the notorious property from Tamburlaine Part 2. As late as 1599 the existence of

101

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

this chariot and its harness may have inspired the triumph of Fortune drawn by bridled Kings in Dekker's Old Fortunatus. The garb distinguishing Persians, Turks, Egyptians, and Arabians was also reusable, not only in such obvious plays as the two parts of Tamburlaine and of the lost Tamar Cham but in Jew of Malta, Blind Beggar of Alexandria, Stukeley, and Four Prentices of London (if this was an Admiral's play), all of which are set wholly or partly in Moslem lands. Lost plays like Diocletian, II Godfrey of Boulogne, possibly Love of a Grecian Lady and (if not the same play) The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the Fair Greek, which the Admiral's Men may have played in 1594,l are likely to have featured "paynim" characters that could have used the same costumes. Besides such "oriental" garb as Tamburlaine's coat and hose and perhaps "Cathemer sute," Henslowe lists four "janizaries gowns." These are specifically called for in The Jew of Malta (V.II. 16) but could be used to identify any army as Turkish. The Iberian plays come rather later; Alcazar may not itself have been played by the Admiral's Men, but their repertory came to include "Stewteley" (1596), Sebastian King of Portugal and The Spanish Moor's Tragedy (1601). The lost Conquest of Spain and the lost Conquest of the West Indies (both 1601), for the second of which were purchased "sutes and stokens," may also have used the Spanish costumes. When new purchases for an Iberian play were made the additional costumes could have also been used in old favorites like The Spanish Tragedy when they needed to be refurbished. The presence in the repertory of the popular Massacre at Paris may have had something to do with the writing of I Civil Wars of France in 1598, with production expenses of £6 recorded, followed quickly by II Civil Wars of France and in 1599 by First Introduction to the Civil Wars of France. The success of these plays may have promoted the revival of Marlowe's old play in 1601, when Henslowe advanced £6 45 6d for costumes and "divers things." Another suite from 1598-1600 dramatizes myth, and includes the two parts of Hercules, Dido (probably Marlowe's play), Phaeton, Polypheme, and Cupid and Psyche, for all of which Henslowe lent production money, including sums to revive or refurbish Hercules and Phaeton. This suite probably should include two old plays as well, Phocas and Pythagoras bought from the actor Martin Slater, and one or perhaps two plays on the Orestes story, Orestes Fures and Agamemnon, also with no record of production expenses so perhaps not played. Also in 1598, the company acquired in quick succession a suite of plays on ancient British history. They are all lost, though their costume requirements may be suggested by Locrine (printed 1595), their possible

102

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

model, though itself not an Admiral's play. It is reasonable, however, that the two part Conquest of Brute, Brute Greenshield, Conan Prince of Cornwall, Arthur King of England, Mulmutius Dunwallow, and perhaps Tristram of Lyonesse could all have used much the same costumes, with limited additions for each new play's special requirements. A second suite centred on King John, the two parts of Robin Hood (1598) and Look About You (1599), still extant, probably required a new stock of English costumes and properties that were then usable for further histories and pseudohistories: The Spencers (with a large outlay for costumes) in the spring of 1599, II Henry Richmond and the two parts of Sir John Oidcastle in the fall, I Blind Beggar of Bednali Green/Tom Strowd (comic pseudohistory) in 1600. In 1601 came the lost second and third parts of Tom Strowd, which may have emphasized comic rather than "historical" scenes. The Life of Cardinal Wolsey, with its magnificent costumes, was soon followed by The Rising of Cardinal Wolsey. Richard Crookback and Chester Tragedy came later in the same year. The extant plays of this English suite romanticize history, especially by making Kings and nobles repeatedly disguise themselves. This suggests that the lost plays did the same. Even in late 1603 or 1604, it seems likely that the fine and costly Wolsey costumes were still usable in When You See Me You Know Me, probably played soon after the theatres were allowed to open in April 1604, and printed in 1605 with much title-page advertising that the company were now servants of Henry Prince of Wales. Comedies and titles of lost plays which sound like comedies remain infrequent before Alleyn "left playing." Not long after his retirement, a suite of comedies set in London seems to have begun with Englishmen for My Money (1598), followed by The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599) and the comic part of Blind Beggar of Bednall Green/Tom Strowd (1600), with its second and third parts in 1601. The two-part Six Clothiers (1601) may have been allied with this suite. Three of the four lost plays from 1603 may also have been comedies; whatever genre they were, the two parts of The London Florentine and The Boss of Billingsgate are clearly localized in London. The Siege of Dunkirk evidently had English characters and may also have set some scenes in London. Plays of similar "local interest" continued to be part of the repertory after the Admiral's Men became Prince Henry's in 1603. Though both parts of The Honest Whore are placed in Milan, the Italian setting is quickly overlaid by local London references, and each play ends at a notable London institution, Part I in Bedlam and Part II in Bridewell. The Roaring Girl of 1608 shows the company at the

103

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Fortune still exploiting the Londoners' evident interest in seeing themselves on the stage, although this play, unlike its predecessors, was influenced by the boy companies' satiric city comedies. These lists of related plays show that once the Admiral's Men acquired a play for whose production they laid out money, they would follow it with other plays which could use much the same costumes and properties, whether these plays were sequels or merely similar in their setting. While a successful "starter" play was necessary for creating a suite, the greater expense of costumes and properties than of scripts, and also their greater durability, encouraged the company to get as much use from their capital investment as they could. This practical approach is particularly evident in the British and French suites, where the plays were written in too rapid a succession for crowds in the theatre to have encouraged the commission of sequels. The successive suites may also respond to changes in audience tastes, for late in 1597 the titles of new plays show comedies and histories set in western Europe (especially Italy, France, and England) replacing oriental spectacles. This would have been convenient for the company, whose oriental splendors must have been growing "not servishable" after much repeated use, and would need costly replacements if they were to continue to attract audiences who had already seen plenty of such plays. Furthermore, plays set closer to home would need lavish expense only for displays of magnificence, as did The Spencers and Wolsey, in their probable comic scenes with "low-life" characters modeled on Falstaff's entourage, worn finery or cheap secondhand English clothes would often serve. The same is true of the London comedies, for which costume needs that could not be met from stock would seldom be very expensive. In discussing the typical costume habits of the Admiral's Men, it is wise to remember that many of the plays they were best known for might not have been written for them. They acquired some time-tested older scripts even before 1594, and had to decide which company member might best play a role written for Tarlton or Bentley or Knell, who had played under different conditions than those at the Rose. They had also to acquire costumes and properties demanded by those scripts, perhaps in part to continue a tradition of performance set by the scripts' first owners. Henslowe's Diary shows that after 1598 the company paid for revisions and additions to such old plays—to Jonson for additions to The Spanish Tragedy, to Bird and Rowley for additions to Doctor Faustus, and perhaps also to Dekker for drastic compression of an originally two-part Fortunatus, before his subsequent changes to fit it for the Court. Almost nothing in

104

THE COMPANIES OF THE 15903

Henslowe's earlier records indicates that the company was adapting the old scripts to suit itself. Still, the extant versions of Peele's Edward 1 and Stukeky show that extensive changes could be made in a script without rinding their way into the theatre-owner's business documents. Many actors were at least occasional playwrights; when some of them became playwrights more than occasionally they are likely to have first served an apprenticeship by revising scripts, for instance, to fit them to the talents of a new actor. Such revision seems to have been treated as a routine contribution to the company, like Shaw's or Downton's as costume buyers. The payment for the Faustus additions to actors in the company is a late and unusual event; unfortunately, not enough later Henslowe records survive to show if the payment set a precedent for paying company members to revise other plays. One of the old plays acquired by 1594, The Spanish Tragedy, remained a company staple into the seventeenth century, being updated from time to time with "addycions" by various hands. These do not, however, alter the minimal costume changes of the 1592 text. The Spanish Tragedy divides its characters between those whose roles last through the play, like Hieronymo, Balthazar, Lorenzo, and Bel-Imperia, those who are removed early on by death, like Viluppo, Horatio, Serberine, and Pedringano, those who vanish as named speakers but perhaps remain anonymously in role, like Alexandro and most of the Portingale nobles, and those who appear as virtually anonymous interlocutors or mutes in one or two scenes. The actors of those who die early and of those with small parts were of course used to double elsewhere in the play. There seems little expectation, and little opportunity, for actors who are not doubling to change their basic costume. Rather, what is demanded is the addition of symbolic garments for scenes of ceremony, as when the Spanish King receives his returning soldiers, the Portingale embassy, and the Portingale viceroy. Other such scenes are those in which the Viceroy enters amid his nobles to condemn Alexandro, and the parallel scene in Spain when Hieronymo sits to condemn Pedringano. Alternatively there is the scene in which Hieronymo, as he enters "as from bed," "in his shirt &c." (II.v.so), finds Horatio's corpse. Probably the "&c" means "hose," slippers, and nightcap, which Hieronymo seems to be wearing in the illustration. This removal of outer garments serves more than one purpose. First, it is realistic; a man summoned by screams from his bed will be undressed, and probably will not pause to put on the decorous night-gown. As well it is symbolic, for a state of undress is often associated with both death and

105

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

insanity, so that Hieronymo's entry "naked" emblematizes what will befall him later in the play. The Spanish Tragedy requires almost no costume change within a role, except for removing or adding outer garments. When the murderers enter to surprise Horatio and Bel-Imperia, the direction reads, "Enter Lorenzo, Balthazar, Serberin, Pedringano, disguised" (so 918-19). This could mean "muffled" like the conspirators in Julius Caesar, but the 1615 illustration shows Lorenzo wearing a black mask, a quick and convenient form of disguise that probably had thirty years of stage tradition behind it. Since Hieronymo recognizes the victim as his son by his garments, not his face, perhaps Bel-Imperia was supposed to recognize Lorenzo and Balthazar by their garments even though they concealed their faces. This would also have verified their identities to the audience, even though their plan for killing Horatio and kidnapping Bel-Imperia is already clear from earlier scenes and will be clarified again, so that audience recognition of the four in disguise is not vital at this point. There is in fact only one likely change of costume within a role, that of the Viceroy of Portugal. In his first speech the Viceroy speaks of "this sable weed" (327, I.iii) worn in mourning for Balthazar, whose survival he discovers in Act III. After this, mourning seems inappropriate, at least in terms of stage realism, especially when he enters as a royal visitor expecting to attend Balthazar's wedding at the Spanish court. During Act III the Viceroy has ample time for a costume change, even if the actor were doubling one or more small parts in Act III (besides those of the additions), perhaps Hieronymo's Deputy and/or one of the "Portingales" and/or a Citizen or the Old Man. All these roles could be dressed in a neutral kind of costume, even in royal array if it were covered by a gown or robe that could be replaced by one more splendid when the actor resumed the role of Viceroy. But realism may not have been intended. In his first scene, the Viceroy has been mistaken in thinking his son is dead, which the audience knows to be false. In the last scene he will see him killed and not realize it though the audience knows otherwise. His dress might, therefore, be as inappropriate on this second occasion as on the first, whether in realistic or symbolic terms. Large-scale doubling is the rule in Marlowe's plays and in plays modeled after them, so that costume change within roles is rare and confined to main characters, usually with a change in their fortune but sometimes in their mental state.2 Very soon after Tamburlaine's first entrance as the captor of Zenocrate and her escort, he casts aside his shepherd's coat:

106

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

Lie here, ye weeds that I disdain to wear! This complete armour and this curtle-axe Are adjuncts more beseeming Tamburlaine. (I.ii.41-43) Perhaps capturing a princess makes him at last decide he is better than the bandit the Persians call him in the opening scene; now he is worthy to go openly as a soldier, an occupation he seems to equate with "nobleman" or "prince. " His disdained "weeds" must have been some kind of loose and easily discarded overgarment, like the "cassock" in the 1610 version of Mucedorus: Though base the weed is, 't was a shepherd's Which I presented in Lord Julio's masque. (ii. 50-51) He then brings in "a shepherd's coat" (56 so). A cassock was a workman's garment, loose like the later smock frock, though worn as mourning by some participants in funerals;3 Henslowe's inventory lists two "shepherd's coats" in the stock of the Admiral's Men in 1598 and also a cassock. Presumably Techelles and Usumcasane, like Tamburlaine, are clothed as shepherds in the second scene. At some unspecified time, perhaps between this scene and the one in which they confront the Persians, they also remove their "Scythian" garments to reveal the armor they will need in the many battle scenes to follow. The title page of the 1615 edition of Heywood's Four Premises of London may show how the "complete armour" of Tamburlaine and his lieutenants looked. All four are shown wearing "body armour to the waist, and armour on the shoulders and arms" with bases almost to the knee, and full breeches; three of the four also wear "curtle-axes" (cutlasses) like Tamburlaine's, and one a straight sword. While the picture was clearly made to illustrate Heywood's play (each wears the apprentice's flat cap and is labeled with his name and shield), the "scimitars may link them with the Crusades and wars with the Soldan of Babylon and Sophy of Persia";4 if the Godfrey of Boulogne performed at the Rose in 1594 was Heywood's play or a sequel to it, then the company might be expected to use the same apparel as for the similar Tamburlaine, and we may therefore take this illustration as a hint for the costuming of Tamburlaine, Selimus, the lost Tamar Cham, at least the "eastern" parts of Alphonsus King of

107

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Aragon, and even such dramatizations of recent history as The Battle o/AIcazar and Stukeley. Armor seems Tamburlaine's most likely costume until Act IV, when a Messenger describes his three emblematic costumes to the Soldan: first, "on his silver crest/; A snowy feather spangled white," then "as red as scarlet.. .his furniture," and last, "Black. . .his colours" (IV.i.50-59).5 Tamburlaine's black costume probably was a long funeral-style gown or cloak with a headdress of black plumes, rather than a suit, for the actor has only sixty lines (some three minutes) between his exit in scarlet from the banquet where he humiliates Bajazet, and his reentry in black, "very melancholy" (V.i.so). From Henslowe's inventory we know that at least part of the Tamburlaine costume was "crimson velvet," but no cloak is assigned to the role in the Diary or either of the inventories. In 1598, however, the company owned two long black velvet cloaks with black lace trimming, and about 1603 Alleyn owned no less than four black cloaks, one "long" of taffeta, and also two black gowns with black trim and one black gown with red trim or lining. Furthermore, when Tamburlaine returns after the massacre of the Virgins (either at V.ii-339 when he "enjoys the victory" or at 369 when he enters in triumph with prisoners) a black costume seems less appropriate for the triumph and betrothal which ends the play than the crimson costume Henslowe's inventory assigns to him. But Marlowe may have intended an ironic contrast between the happy victory and betrothal being celebrated and the mourning Tamburlaine has caused. He even points to the corpses of Bajazet, Zabina, and Arabia and boasts of how much mourning he has caused at the moment when he confers Egypt upon Zenocrate's conquered father—a grotesque mingling of "mirth in funeral and. . . dirge in marriage." The time available for Tamburlaine to change would necessitate a quickly-assumed cover-up, of which several were in stock in 1598, but whether retaining the black or restoring the red would mean the greater irony I am not certain; either was possible within the conventions. Costume change in Tamburlaine Part 2 functions like that in Part i, showing changes of status and fortune. The play runs on radical contrasts, between military triumph and defeat, between the glory of coronation and the ignominy of death. The first two scenes present threats to Tamburlaine, the first an alliance between Turks and Christians against him, the second the escape of Callapine. In response Tamburlaine gathers his own forces, arming his sons before Theridamas, Techelles, and Usumcasane join him "with drums and trumpets" to report triumphs in remote

108

THE COMPANIES OF THE 15908

regions. Act II shows that Act I's threats were weak, for the Christians betray the Turks and the Turks destroy them. But in Act II we see Tamburlaine defeated for the first time, not by an enemy but by Death's triumph over Zenocrate, whom neither the "three Physicians... tempering potions" (II.iv.so) nor Tamburlaine's threats to the gods can save. Hard upon her death comes Callapine's coronation as "Emperor of Turkey," the costumes for which might have been the splendid robes and jewels worn by the Persians in Tamburlaine Part i. The scene that follows this coronation shows Tamburlaine conducting an elaborate funeral for Zenocrate, "the drums sounding a doleful march." For this Tamburlaine, his sons, and Usumcasane were probably to be dressed in mourning cloaks or gowns, and the "/our [extras] bearing the hearse of Zenocrate" (III.ii, SD) clad as were such attendants at real Elizabethan funerals. It seems likely that the hearse was carried off and that Tamburlaine, Usumcasane, and the sons were to remove their mourning after line 52, when Tamburlaine commands them to "leave off, and list to me" (53). What follows is a lecture-demonstration of warlike valor in which Tamburlaine wounds himself in the arm and bids his sons "with your fingers search my wound" (127). This action would be difficult in enveloping funeral garments. More important, however, such enveloping garb on both the central figure and on three others who come close to him would keep most of the audience from seeing so sensational an action. Like Tamburlaine Part I, Part II employs much doubling of parts as characters from early scenes die and allow their actors to assume new robes. Occasionally this would require unmarked exits so that the players of minor roles could dress for others. For instance, although three physicians and Tamburlaine's three sons are present at Zenocrate's deathbed, at the scene's end only Tamburlaine and his friends Techelles, Theridamas, and Usumcasane have anything to do onstage, while for the coronation of Callapine that succeeds this deathbed, "attendant lords" need to be dressed suitably. "The arras is drawn" about her bed after Zenocrate dies, but since no exit is marked for anyone, this arras may be drawn about the mourners as well. The drawn arras serves as the background to Callapine's coronation, followed by Zenocrate's funeral procession, which includes Tamburlaine, his three sons, and Usumcasane. Techelles and Theridamas, oddly, are not part of this funeral, which suggests that the players of these roles were co-opted as "attendant lords" in the coronation or even as bearers of the hearse; they reenter after Tamburlaine's lecture on soldiership, for the assault on Balsera. Obviously the boy who "died" as

109

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Zenorate spent the interval of coronation and funeral being recostumed for Olympia, and one of Tamburlaine's sons (conceivably the actor of the sensitive Calyphas) perhaps ran off early for a new coat and headdress as the Captain's son. There is plenty of time after the boy's death for the ac' tor to dress again as Calyphas, who does not reappear until the first scene of Act IV. In this scene, "Amyras and Celebinus issue [armed] from the tent where Calyphas sits asleep" (IV. I. SD) and exit to the battle, while Calyphas passes the time gambling with a servant. He may have worn garments that suggest the feminine, which, after Tamburlaine stabs him, would have expedited the actor's change to one of the mute "Turkish concubines" given to Tamburlaine's "common soldiers" after Callapine's defeat. Contrast between coronation and defeat recurs in the battle between Tamburlaine and Callapine, for Callapine defies Tamburlaine by crowning the traitorous guard Almeda "King of Ariadan... near to Mecca" (III. v. 130-31) just before his own defeat. Unlike other allies, Almeda escapes capture, and we never hear of him again. But the greatest contrast between crowning and defeat comes in the sequence of scenes ending the play. First, Olympia tricks Theridamas into helping her to kill herself, and, after a threnody that echoes Tamburlaine's over Zenocrate without his bombastic actions, Theridamas exits with her body. In the greatest contrast to this quiet exit, there succeeds the most spectacular of Tamburlaine's many spectacular entrances, "drawn in his chariot by Trebizon and Soria with bits in their mouths, reins in his left hand, in his right hand a whip, with which he scourgeth them" (IV.iii. so). This is the first time we have seen these captives since they entered before Olympia's death as Tamburlaine's prisoners, defiant and still wearing their armor and regalia. It is not clear whether the actors took off this regalia before putting on the bridles. This would show their abasement but not that these draught animals of Tamburlaine's triumph are the Kings we have seen as Kings since the play's opening. The chariot and the captives remain Tamburlaine's adjuncts to the end. When he conquers Babylon he hoists the Governor to an "exalted" death, a parallel to his own exaltation in the chariot, and destroys Babylon's scriptures as a parallel to his defiance of the gods at Zenocrate's death. This time Tamburlaine's triumph leads not directly to a scene abasing someone else but to the return of Callapine "with drums and trumpets" (V.ii.so) and his promise this time to "assail" Tamburlaine "and be sure of victory" (59). But instead of this avenger defeating Tamburlaine, he is

no

THE COMPANIES OF THE 15908

himself quickly defeated in offstage battle. This easy victory, however, is Tamburlaine's last, for he returns from it sick, exhorts and crowns his successor, arranges his own funeral, and dies.6 These concluding actions require the transfer of Tamburlaine's emblems of power to Amyras. During all his scenes in the chariot Tamburlaine has worn his regalia, in the tradition of Renaissance depictions of triumphs historical and imaginary.7 He begins his surrender of these emblems of power by displaying a map of his conquests (an image of the world he is leaving), and ordering his survivors to conquer the rest of the world. He then bids his followers "remove me [from the chariot] that I may resign/ My place and proper title to my son" (176), whom he commands: First, take my scourge and my imperial crown, And mount my royal chariot of estate, That I may see thee crowned before I die. (177-79) The next line, "Help me, my lords, to make my last remove" (180) marks the moment he comes from the chariot. After two lamenting lines by Theridamas, perhaps accompanying the removal of the robe and crown, Amyras appears to have mounted the chariot, for Tamburlaine commands him to "sit up," just before the direction, "They crown him." As Amyras sits crowned behind the captive Kings, Tamburlaine tells his attendants to "fetch the hearse of fair Zenocrate" (210), probably borne by four actors, as when used earlier. With an ominous warning to the new chariot driver against "the pride of Phaeton," Tamburlaine utters his final line, "for Tamburlaine the scourge of God must die" (244-48), and the new King from the chariot speaks five lines of eulogy. But the bare direction "Exeunt" may prevent our seeing what Marlowe demanded of his actors. This clearing of the stage involves removing not just a body. Even if attendants do not wear mourning or so clothe Celebinus, Theridamas, Techelles, and Usumcasane, they have to lay Tamburlaine on Zenocrate's hearse, perhaps cover him with a pall, then line up for a slow and decorous exit to the sound of a dead march. Tamburlaine departs the stage in a grand procession worthy of a world-conqueror, mourned by a crowned King riding in a chariot drawn by other Kings, and by everyone else in the company. Lodge's Wounds of Civil War uses almost all the scenic and costume devices from both parts of Tamburlaine. It came into the Admiral's repertory

III

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

at about the same time as Tamburlaine, perhaps from the same source, and may have been written with an eye to the spectacular costumes and properties in the hands of the company who first owned it. When Marius and Scilla order the Roman senators to choose between them, there is a stage direction, "Here let the Senate rise and cast away their gowns, having their swords by their sides." (1.1.243 SD) after which those who have chosen Marius follow him out. In Act III Scilla, like Tamburlaine, enters "in his chair triumphant of gold, drawn by four Moors before the chariot; his colours, his crest, his captains, his prisoners.. . . After the Chariot, his soldiers bands. . . beside prisoners of divers nations, and sundry disguises" (III. iii. SD). The second scene of Act V opens with the direction "enter young Marius upon the walls of Praeneste with some Soldiers, all in black and wonderful melancholy" (V.ii. SD), which "improves" on its source in Tamburlaine by ending with the group's mass suicide. At once Lucretius enters "in royalty," an ironic contrast to the mourning and death just displayed. In senate scenes, consuls sit robed, probably as were Kings in other plays. The device of contrast between robes and what befalls their wearers appears twice, first when the consul Octavius is derided for "sitting in his robes of state" (IV.i.91) just before his murder, and again at the start of the final scene when "Scilla [tyrannizes] seated in his robes of state," until a sudden change of heart makes him abdicate as dictator followed by his equally sudden death. Old Marius changes his costume from the senatorial richness of his first scenes to poor clothing as a prisoner at Minturnum. He either retains this costume or changes to one still more ragged in the scene that follows Scilla's triumph, when, a fugitive, he enters "solus from the Numidian mountains, feeding on roots" (Ill.iv. SD). These scenes use costume change to illustrate the sudden changes of fortune suffered by characters who choose civil war to advance their own condition, whether by contrast between their high and low estates or between the high estate signaled by their costumes and their real moral poverty, as in A Looking Glass for London and England, which Lodge later wrote with Greene. The costume requirements of The Jew of Malta could easily be met by a company with Tamburlaine and The Spanish Tragedy in its repertory, needing only the addition of gaberdines and distinctive hats for Barabbas and three other Jews and habits for two nuns and two friars. Costumes for the Turkish commanders at the beginning and again at the end, where janizaries are mentioned by name, are required in both parts of Tamburlaine. Though the Maltese are not Spaniards, they are friendly to the Spaniard

112

THE COMPANIES OF THE 15908

Martin del Bosco, and let him sell his Turkish captives in Malta, later appointing him Malta's general against the Turks. The Spanish honorific title "Don" is used for both of Abigail's suitors, Lorenzo and Mathias. Thus the costumes used for Spaniards and Portuguese in Kyd's play might serve well enough for Maltese. Habits for friars were probably stocked by every company (Henslowe inventories five with their hoods), since friars are common as minor characters. Although nuns are not frequent, they do appear in such pre-1594 plays as The Troublesome Reign of King John and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, the second of which may have belonged to the Admiral's Men. Costume change in The Jew of Malta consists mainly of the inconspicuous donning of outdoor garments when a character leaves his home and their removal for scenes indoors. Abigail specifies that she is to be "a novice" and not a nun when she joins those going to live in her former home. This indicates that she wears her first costume when she appears at the window to throw down Barabbas's hidden coin, and continues to wear it for her later scenes with Lorenzo and Mathias and with the friars. For her death scene, however, it seems necessary that she be in a nun's habit, probably a loose robe and veil. Ithamore, costumed as a ragged slave when Barabbas buys him, probably remains so clad even after Barabbas makes him his heir, for, though Barabbas bids him "Go buy thee garments" (III.iv.47), Ithamore is never given enough offstage time for a costume change. When the courtesan Bellamira approaches him he promises himself to "go steal some money from my master to make me handsome" (IV. ii.52-53), and soon after this she is asking "Shall Ithamore my love go in such rags?" (89) and proposing to send for silks and jewels for him. Nothing indicates that Ithamore gets better clothes before Barabbas poisons him. The costume of Barabbas himself is partly made explicit by various speeches and partly to be inferred from traditional garb for Jews and usurers. For the scene in which he poisons Ithamore, Bellamira, and PiliaBorza he is said to enter "with a lute, disguised," and the dialogue at once makes clear that the disguise is "A French musician" with a "posy in his hat" (IV.iv-3o-37). Ithamore's later drunken comments on his master bring forth from the disguised Barabbas the information that Barabbas is fastidious, for he changes his shirt twice a day, and that his hat was "a present from the Great Cham" (70-73). Since he never conceals the extent of his wealth, these speeches show that his normal indoor costume was rich. When he dismisses Zaareth, Temainte, and the nameless third

"3

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Jew he promises to look to himself, and exits for a thirty-five line absence, ample time to put on and fasten the long coat called a gaberdine that seems to have identified Elizabethan stage Jews. When he reenters to the Governor and his knights he is with the other Jews. Since Ferneze greets them as "Hebrews" (I.ii.38), they must have all been dressed in much the same style. At once, however, Ferneze singles out Barabbas by name, so he probably stood out from the others, probably because of a magnificent hat, perhaps embroidered with gold thread or with a jeweled band, or both. Although the Maltese seize everything of his that they can find, Barabbas has hidden "infinite riches in a little room" (1.1.37) under the floor of his house, and soon gets it back with Abigail's help. For this scene before his house he enters "with a light" (II. i. SD) and speaks of himself as like a ghost haunting a treasure. Since Abigail does not recognize him at first, he probably is cloaked and hooded, maybe in something that suggests a shroud. While the next scene is being played he has ample time to change to his gaberdine and enter to the slave market. Here, for the first time in the play, is named the most distinctive item from the wardrobe needed for Barabbas, an artificial nose to which, evidently, only a privileged fool like Ithamore may allude: "I worship your nose" (II.iii.175); "I have the bravest.. . bottle-nos'd knave to my master" (III.iii.9-10). Probably when Barabbas disguises himself as the French musician he dons a false beard and a hat that minimize this appendage, and removes these disguise accessories before he is haled in by the officers for the murders Ithamore and the courtesan have revealed to the authorities. He seems not to have resumed his gaberdine after taking off the disguise, since he must verbally identify himself as a Jew to Calymath. Perhaps when he reenters with the Turks he is wearing some kind of Turkish overgarment, but for the final scene, when he is "very busy" (V.v. so) about the trapdoor he almost certainly wears only doublet and hose, without an overgarment. This is realistic, since Elizabethan men worked (or were "very busy") so clad. But it was also a necessary precaution for the actor of Barabbas, since he must drop into the cauldron on the main stage through the trap in the upper, and a loose gown or a cloak could endanger the actor by catching on something or entangling him as he fell. Such Ibero-Oriental plays as Captain Thomas Stukeky and Lust's Dominion are extant only in printed versions too distant from playhouse copy to be fully trusted as guides to costuming. On December 8, 1596, Henslowe advanced £3 for "stewtleyes hosse" (Diary 50), the only known pro-

114

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

duction expense for this play. Stukeley's first recorded performance took place December n, three days after the loan for "hosse." According to Henslowe's records, it was played ten times more before July 1597. The 1605 quarto seems a revision; its title page says only "it that been Acted," giving no company name.8 Its first nineteen scenes form a continuous and coherent unit called a "Comicke historic," which concludes with a transitional chorus. The earlier scenes of this look very like borrowings from Quicksilver and Sir Petronel Flash's enterprise in Eastward Ho! and incorporate a constable, named Blurt, who seems to have received his name from a 1601 Paul's play, Blurt Master Constable. Later scenes closely resemble the first act of another old play, the anonymous Edward III, and the final ones may be infusions from the Philip of Spain which the Admiral's Men bought from Alleyn in 1602. The ten short scenes which make up the play's tragic second half look like a much-abridged version of a play about the Battle of Alcazar, but these might have been adapted from three or perhaps four old plays: from Peele's 1580s Battle of Alcazar, "mvlamvlluco," a 1592 play which may be the same as Peele's, the 1596 "stewteley," or a 1601 play by Dekker and Chettle called Sebastian King of Portugal. Evidently the Alcazar story was one that the Admiral's Men milked repeatedly, but the 1605 text is not usable evidence for their methods of production. Neither is the 1657 printing of Lust's Dominion, which may be rooted in Day, Dekker, and Haughton's Spanish Moor's Tragedy of 1600 but which, Fredson Bowers acknowledges, may also include "scenes or parts of scenes. . . added to the originals or altered in the reviser's hand"; Bowers is clear that "the printer did not set from a prompt-book. . . [and that] the manuscript given to press was nontheatrical and consisted of papers in more than one hand."9 About all that can be said of either is that, in the Admiral's versions, they could use the same costumes and properties as the other plays set in Spain, Portugal, and North Africa. Among the plays that survive from the Admiral's known repertory is the "pastoral-comical-historical" Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon and the "pastoral-historical-tragical" Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, which tells the same story as the later King John and Matilda, with imperfect adjustments to graft Robin Hood onto its beginning. The Downfall looks as if it were modeled on the old Edward I, with some contributions from a Richard III play, perhaps Shakespeare's and/or its sources. Unlike the surviving Robin Hood ballads and folk plays (probably including the lost Pastoral of Robin Hood and Little John) and such a pseudohistorical an-

115

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

alogue as George a Green, The Downfall promotes its Northern yeomanhero into the nobility and is almost half over before he and his band put on their green and take up the outlaw life. Maybe the Sherwood world was too much without incident for that "best plotter" Anthony Munday. The first scene of the outlaws in their green looks as if the author were following almost speech by speech the scenes of Prince Llewellyn and his followers in Edward 1 as they play at being Robin and his band. Although "wicked Queen Eleanor" owes some of her character to the Queen Eleanor of The Troublesome Reign of King John and of Shakespeare's play, it must not be forgotten that the Queen in Edward I is also Eleanor, and in the ballad additions to Peele's text she is represented as tyrannical and unchaste, like the Eleanor in Downfall. Possibly the greenwood costumes in Downfall were indeed those in stock from Edward I, although their introduction into that play looks itself like an interpolation designed to use greenwood costumes rather than "some necessary question of the play" as Peele wrote it. Such greenwood dress is needed by the Prince and his companions during their hunting scenes in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay as well as by the Keeper of Fressingfield, for disguises in John a Kent and John a Cumber, and for the brief scenes of Robin Hood and his men in George a Green, which was played by Sussex's Men at the Rose in December and January 1593. Henslowe's 1598 inventory lists many of the costumes for what he calls simply "Roben Hood," including Marian's green gown, Robin's suit and hat, the Friar's gown and "trusse," and six green coats, evidently for Little John, Scarlet, Scathlock, and perhaps Much, though as his part was designed for the company clown he may instead have worn one of the six clown outfits the company owned in 1598. Toward the end, the fugitive Prince John puts on a green disguise, and King Richard's entry for the final scene sounds like a greenwood coronation procession: The trumpets sound. . . . Enter first, bare-head, little John and Scarlet; likewise Chester, and Lester, bearing the sword and scepter; the King follow, crowned, clad in green: after him Queene mother, after her Salsbury and Richmond.

(2697-701) Among these characters only the King is said to be "in green," but since the first third of The Death (through Robin's funeral procession) consists largely of hunting scenes, for which green was the traditional color, it is

116

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

likely that all wore green in the earlier play. In the choral transition to King John and Matilda it is made clear that the noble Chester has been in green and all the others who have worn it are now changing their attire to garments more suited to tragedy. If Chester is in green in The Death, in The Downfall he and his processional partner Leicester were probably in green too, even if the Queen Mother's attendants were not, and since the greenwood scenes of The Death seem to have been meant originally to conclude The Downfall, probably Leicester was green-clad in The Death as well. Downfall and Death seem the first in a suite of "pastoral... historical" plays combining historical and pseudohistorical material from the reigns of Kings Richard and John with ballad material from northern England. The two are primarily the work of Munday, with varying contributions from Chettle, Drayton, and Haughton. In The Downfall Scarlett relates how he and his brother Scathlock lived seven years as outlaws: Good George a Green at Bradford was our friend, And wanton Wakefields Pinner lou'd vs well. At Barnsley dwels a Potter tough and strong, That neuer brookt, we brethren should haue wrong, The Nunnes of Farnsfield, pretty Nunnes they bee, Gaue napkins, shirts, and bands to him and mee. Bateman of Kendall, gaue us Kendall greene. (Downfall 1284-90) Besides these, Scarlett mentions an arrowmaker called "Sharpe of Leedes" and a bowyer at Rotherham called Jackson, both unknown to extant legend. Sharpe seems a name fitted to the trade, like Snug the Joiner, but nothing about Jackson goes with the bow, so the name may have belonged to a character in some lost ballad. The list may make two men out of George a Green the Pinner of Wakefield, hero of the extant Sussex's play performed at the Rose in 1593 and possibly an Admiral's property by 1598; the Potter of Barnsley is known in drama only from a May Game of 1560. The Stationers' Register of 1594 does record a Pastoral of Robin Hood and Little John, where any or all of these characters might have figured, and if it had been printed it was probably extant four years later. More to the point, however, are Henslowe's payments for plays between February and July 1598. Final payments were made for Downfall on Febru ary 15 and for Death only five days later. On May 22 he made a final pay-

117

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

merit for I Black Bateman of the North, on June 26 for The Funeral of Richard Coeur de Lion, and on July 14 for Black Bateman of the North 11, all three now lost. What these titles suggest is a suite of plays set in the days of King Richard I and King John, with heroes and/or clowns from northern outlaw-archer ballads. The two Huntingdon plays were printed from foul papers. Although a play so printed does not show as plainly as one printed from a clean authorial manuscript or a prompt book what costumes and properties the Admiral's Men eventually supplied new or from stock, it does show what an experienced playwright like Munday thought the company would willingly furnish, probably basing both on familiarity with their stock and with what they had supplied new for earlier plays.10 At times The Downfall looks as if its main purpose was to exhibit as many possible. Most are used for some sort of disguise, some as visual characterizations. Some mark transits from the world of Kings' affairs to the greenwood. Robin (as Earl of Huntingdon) and Fitzwater's daughter Marian first enter for their betrothal feast, which implies that they are wearing upper class "best apparel." After Robin has been outlawed, Little John (in a blue coat as his servant) proposes that they hire horses from the Bell or Belsavage Inn as if they were citizens on a pleasure jaunt. Marian confides their plans to the Queen, who suggests that she and Marian exchange garments without telling Robin. Then Warman's wife makes one and only one brief appearance, "odly attyred" (456) and speaking "Frenglish," a scene whose purpose seems to extend time for Robin to reclothe himself "like a citizen" and for Marian and the Queen to make their exchange. Prince John recognizes Robin despite his disguise, but takes his mother for Marian long enough for Robin to escape with the right woman. But when Robin and Marian later enter, Marian seems to have shed the royal robes even though she has not yet donned Sherwood green. Meanwhile the Queen must have returned to royal garments to support John in the council where he is made King, and in his subsequent "coronation." When Robin, Marian, Much, and John reach Sherwood, they may all be wearing the neutral cloaks of travelers. There, to save Scarlett and Scathlock from the gallows, Robin declares "I will change my habit and disguise" with a "poor blind man" (905-6). Though he reenters "like an old man" (950), he seems not to grope with a staff like stage blind men, since no one comments on his "blindness" when he offers to substitute for the missing hangman.

118

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

The playwrights, however, do not abandon the blind man, for when the exiled Fitzwater arrives in Sherwood "like an olde man" (1468) and discovers "Robin Hoode [asleep] on a greene banke, and Marian strewing flow^ ers on him" (1490-91), he decides (in phrase reminiscent of Bottom), to "close [his] eyes as if [he] wanted sight/ That [he might] see the end of their delight," and he "Goes knocking with his sta//e" (1496-98) to attract Marian's attention without telling her who he is. Again he plays the blind man in a later scene, but in those intervening he not only seems to be sighted but also to be known for Fitzwater. In another scene the fugitive Bishop of Ely, dressed as a woman and carrying linen and a meteyard, is captured. The captors are a pair of clowns dressed as colliers who have no other scene in the play. While Ely's disguise is based on a chronicle, the scene exists more for the clowns than for the Bishop. Perhaps, having called for an adult actor to dress as a woman, the authors decided to use him further, and brought the Widow Scarlett into the Sherwood band for a ten-line speech. When the fugitive Ely next appears, he is dressed as "a country man with a basket" that he says contains eggs, a textually garbled scene that spins out the "eggs for money" jest which Shakespeare completes in two lines of The Winter's Tale. Late in the play Prince John enters in Sherwood green claiming to be Wodnet, a new member of the band. But Scathlock and Friar Tuck prove him an imposter, apparently to introduce sword and buckler fights. These were perhaps substitutes for the Sherwood archery that in a playhouse would have been extremely hazardous. The actor's freedom of movement while fighting seems the reason to bring in the Friar in "his trusse, without his weed" (2490), and he is given a long speech to explain his state of undress.n Costume change in The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon follows different principles than those of The Downfall There is a greater need in the second play for doubling, since Robin Hood dies and his men disappear early. Costume change otherwise is for occasion, its decorum sometimes conforming to Elizabethan social propriety but more often violating it. Time for many actors who double to change is provided by the reversion of two characters into their player personas: Friar Tuck into the persona of the presenter playwright Skelton, Chester into a nameless spokesman for those now "shifting" in the tiring house. This time is especially important for the actor of Prince John, who is required to change most quickly to his King costume so that he can be "discovered" asleep. It is also important for those who impersonate the dumb-show characters of

119

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

his dream. A chief reason to dispatch Warman, Doncaster, and the Prior to execution early in the play was to permit the actors to dress for the first dumb show of Austria and Ambition and for Insurrection in the second. Only two of the dumb-show characters, Matilda and Queen Isabel, have anything further to do. These two appear only at the end of John's dream. The Queen has earlier played Jinny in the dress and foresleeves of an Elizabethan cook, and must change to garments for a physically active role. Matilda has earlier been known as Marian, and though she does not change identity, in the Sherwood part she has worn greenwood dress with "a white apron" to lay tables for the hunters. To become Matilda she must change to the black she will wear until her funeral. These two need, and are given, the most time offstage. For the new cast of characters in the Matilda tragedy costume change means mainly switches between war gear for battle and court dress for palace scenes. One character, called "Aubery de Vere" in the dialogue, is supposed to wear an old man's clothes. In domestic scenes with Matilda, Fitzwater may have worn similar garb. Old Bruse probably is not "old" in the same sense as de Vere, but is being distinguished from his son Young Bruse; once the father is killed the age designation for the son disappears. Characters like Hubert de Burgh, Leicester, Chester, and so forth need "nobleman" dress but are not otherwise specialized. Brand the murderer is called "devil"; he might have doubled this role with the treacherous Doncaster, and perhaps both were given costumes that suggested "the devil's apparel." Costuming like this differs little from costuming in other history plays. More interesting costume directions deviate from Elizabethan social convention for funerals and for masking. In fact, Robin Hood's funeral violates almost every known Elizabethan funereal convention, especially for a dead earl. The dying Robin orders his own arrangements, which had to take as little time as possible so as not to delay the remaining action: Bring forth a Beere, and couer it with greene; A Beere is brought in. That on my death-bed I may here sit down. Beere brought, he sits. At Robins buriall let no blacke be seene, Let no hand giue for him a mourning gowne.12 ... in this order make my funerall;

120

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

When I am dead, stretch me vpon this Beere, My beades and Primer shall my pillowe bee: On this side lay my bowe, my good shaftes here, Vpon my brest the cross, and vnderneath, My trustie sworde, thus fastned in the sheath. For holie dirges, sing me wodmens songs. (754-814) When Robin dies some fifteen lines later, King Richard orders the "yeomen bold" to "fall to your wod-songs. . . and deck his herse with flowers" (835-36). The rest of his speech and the Friar's answer give time to order the body on its bier and form a procession. The song, like Robin's speeches, incorporates stage directions; its eighth line directs the singers to "cast on flowers," its penultimate line directs the onlookers ("thus cast yee flowers"), and with its last, "on to Wakefield take your way" (85559), the procession begins to leave the stage, probably with the song's first quatrain and last three lines heard from offstage as Marian, the King, and his men in their green follow the green-draped bier and its green-clad bearers. The uniform green, though unorthodox, must have been thought effectively ceremonious. To assure such uniformity Much may have been sent in his clown's suit (perhaps yellow) to accompany those going to execution; it would then explain why he does not return. From her entry in the dumb-show until she dies Matilda seems to remain in one costume, the nunlike black dress and veil of upper-class Elizabethan widows;13 though at one point Hubert recognizes her through what seems a disguise, this was probably no more than the "muffled" cloak often used for ad hoc concealment of identity. There seems little reason for a new costume when she has entered Dunmow Abbey, and little time for anything but a more concealing headdress than the widow's veil which the Queen has disordered earlier. But when Matilda has died the Queen gives the order for her funeral: . . . take in The blessed bodie of this noble maid: In milke white cloathing let the same be laid. Exeunt with tine, bodie. Vpon an open biere, that all may see. (2673-77)

121

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Almost at the end of the play, Matilda's body, "borne with Nuns, one carrying a white pendant" (2908-10) is brought to John at the siege of Windsor Castle, to the sounds of a "march for burial, with drum and fife." According to the Queen's command, Matilda is evidently clothed rather than merely shrouded in white. The script allows about ten minutes between the removal of her body and the entrance of her funeral, time enough to put on a white robe and headdress, perhaps the "hair" of a virgin bride, upon which the Queen places a garland of chastity in John's presence. Young Bruse, guarding his dead mother and brother "above," is shocked at this white funeral: Let sorrow in a sable sute appeare: Doe not misshape her garments, like delight, If it be griefe, why cloth'st thou her in white? (2925-27) Munday evidently thought the "unusual weeds" of this funeral important, for neither Bruse's comment nor de Vere's and the Queen's explanations are needed to clarify anything to the audience. Matilda's bier with its white-clad occupant bracketed by two white tapers, remains at the centre of action as messengers bring tidings of the Dauphin's claim to England and as the lords debate their allegiance to John. Only after John has expressed his grief and repentance and the lords their decision to accept him as King does the white procession depart, to conclude the play. The third violation of costume propriety occurs between the green funeral and the white, and though it is less spectacular and involves no costume change, it is less a theatrical trick and more a symbolic revelation of character than either funeral. Like Mercutio and his friends in Romeo and Juliet, John comes to Fitzwater's house in masquerade. Fitzwater has been persuading Matilda to forget Robin and accept a good marriage offer, and comments on her unsuitable appearance for festivity: Cheerly: the maske comes in. O God, this veile & looke Fit not this sport. (1321-22) When the masked John offers to take out Matilda in her blacks and veil, her father insists that nothing is improper about her dancing in private

122

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

when a masker lacks a partner. But as they dance the King tells her who he is and what he wants, using complimentary language but ending threateningly with the word "rape." "In the first course Matilda flings from him: lohn followes" (1339-42). Her father still thinks her behavior unwarranted, and insists "Daunce out your Galliard... daunce" (1343-44), but when she continues to "fling away," "Iohn roughly puls her" (1346). This forced dance of a lady in black with a masked man whom she cannot escape may owe something to the Dances of Death that in the sixteenth century were still to be seen in paintings and prints. Since John's frustrated pursuit of Matilda makes him command her death, this scene, festive before it turns ugly, is connected both with the green funeral of the poisoned Robin that precedes it and with the white funeral of the poisoned Matilda that is to follow from it. The impropriety of compelling a mourner to dance thus fits into a visual pattern more subtle than the dullness of the Huntingdon plays as printed would lead a reader to expect. The "comical-historical-pastoral" printed as Look About You in 1600 is the only other play in the "Richard and John" suite to survive. It appears to be influenced both by Shakespeare's Henry IV plays and by Chapman's very popular tour de force, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, discussed below. It needs more costumes for ladies than the Robin Hood plays, and costumes for country and London lower-class characters, including servants, a hermit, a footpad, the Keeper of the Fleet, a stammering professional messenger (the principal clown) who wears a red cap and takes his name from it, and at least two drawers in a tavern. Its chief use of costume change, to change and exchange identities, is based on the premise that if two characters put on each other's clothes they will be mistaken for each other by their relatives, spouses, and friends, even at the closest range. The women's changes are made offstage, with a time-allowance of about ten minutes for Robert of Huntingdon to disguise himself as Lady Faulconbridge in order to trick Prince Richard and for the Lady to disguise herself as a citizen's wife to punish her husband's jealousy. Robert enters not yet wearing the Lady's headdress. His entrance without it makes his identity clear to the audience before he puts it on and assumes hers. When Skinke and Gloucester masquerade as the Hermit they also change offstage, but they verbally identify themselves when they enter in the hermit costume. Most memorable in Look About You are its absurdly frequent exchanges of garments that drive the plot and raise laughter in almost every possible permutation. These exchanges involve multiple outer gar-

123

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

ments. Over and over again characters trade a cloak and hat for someone else's gown, a gown for someone else's jerkin and cap or cloak, most of the time onstage, and they are then invariably taken for their new costume's original wearer. These misidentifications provoke audience mirth while they send characters in pursuit of the wrong people. Though most of the mistaken identities serve to drive the plot, some characters (especially Gloucester and Skinke) switch costumes merely to make mischief. Since only a few of the changes take place offstage, they seldom need the time provided by secondary plots and clownage, as in other plays that use much disguise. Evidently the idea of costume exchanges preceded almost everything in the planning of Look About You, for the anonymous playwright invented more than one stage action which has no other motive than to rationalize the exchange. For instance, when Gloucester is in prison, Prince John visits to gloat and threaten his death, then challenges him at bowls. John takes off his cloak and hat to play, and in the midst of the game is summoned to see another prisoner. His absence enables Gloucester to remove his own gown and put on John's cloak and hat, then summon the Keeper who, thinking he is John, unlocks the gate for him. A less pleasant contrivance for costume exchange makes Gloucester dose a pursuing pursuivant with an emetic, and although the effects are not displayed, the tavern servants provide a graphic account of them. Redcap the stammering messenger is the victim of anyone who for the moment needs a new identity. Although Chapman's very successful Blind Beggar of Alexandria ran on frenetic costume change, keeping track of the changes in Look About You inclines one to side with his comment on the device in May Day: . . . though it be the stale refuge of miserable poets by change of a hat or a cloak to alter the whole state of a comedy, so as the father must not know his own child, forsooth, nor the wife her husband... for say you were stuffed into a motley coat, crowded in the case of a base viol, or buttoned up in a cloak-bag even to your chin, yet if I see your face, I am able to say, 'This is Signer Lorenzo,' and therfore unless your disguise be such that your face may bear as great a part in it as the rest, the rest is nothing. (11.i.479-89)

124

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

Sir John Oldcastle (early 1600), though lavish with costumes and costume changes (involving both doubling of minor parts and multiple disguises for both the rogue parson John of Wrotham and Oldcastle himself), involved no expenditure for its production. Instead, it drew upon the company stock, taking, it would seem, garments found during the 1598 inventory after being "gone and lost," from long-obsolete plays like Edward I and the old Henry V, as well as from more recent plays like the two on Robin Hood and Look About You. Among its requirements are costumes for a bishop and a summoner, royal judges and other officers of the law, the King and a fair number of noblemen, Oldcastle's lady and two doxies, citizens and such respectable tradesmen as two innkeepers and a carrier, a recognizable Frenchman, an Irishman wearing "strouces," and some comic Welshmen. Much of the costume change is exchange of garments, as in Look About You. Many of the devices seem adopted from that play, as when Oldcastle escapes from the Tower by stripping the Bishop and leaving him bound in his place. The play also exploits the company's worn and dirty costumes for groups of poor men and beggars. Oldcastle was evidently an immediate success, since Henslowe rewarded Munday and the other poets with a 10s "gefte" after only one performance. If the reward was not also given for devising a script that would cost nothing to produce, it should have been, for when Worcester's Men took over the script in 1602 they had to borrow close to £15 to buy suitable apparel, including a satin suit and doublet, another suit of unspecified fabric, and two women's gowns (Diary 214). The Admiral's Men did indeed borrow 30s to pay a tailor for "thinges" made for the lost second part (132), the kind of expenditure normal for second parts or for related suites of plays. Oldcastle shows almost more than any other play in their repertory how their system of costume management could reconcile lavish production with minimal expense. The record of comedies by the Admiral's Men looks a bit thin in Annals of English Drama, although most of the titles Harbage classes as "Romance" and "Pseudohistory" an Elizabethan would probably regard as comedies. No comedy survives from 1594 or 1595, and only three titles of lost plays seem to Harbage unequivocal about genre: The Venetian Comedy, The French Comedy, and A Toy to Please Chaste Ladies. He styles seven other plays with ambiguous titles "comedy (?)," including The Love of an English Lady, Crack Me This Nut, and The Wonder of a Woman. Extant plays begin in 1596, with Chapman's very popular Blind Beggar of

125

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Alexandria, which held audiences for at least twenty-two performances and was revived in 1601. From 1597 survive A Humourous Day's Mirth and the title The French Comedy which may be the same play; toward the end of the same year Chapman also provided the lost Fountain of New Fashions, which may have been satiric.14 From 1598, the year of so many new plays by the Admiral's Men, two quite different comedies survive, the rural Two Angry Women of Abingdon and the urban Englishmen for My Money, whose London setting and usurer main character give it a good claim to be the first "citizen comedy."15 From 1599 comes a very different London comedy, The Shoemaker's Holiday, and the romantic tragicomedy Patient Grissel. The title of The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green (1600) suggests that its authors were trying to capitalize on memories of Chapman's popular Blind Beggar of Alexandria while supplying the local interest of a setting near London. Its Tom Strowd scenes, which contain adverse comment about yeomen's sons who beggar their fathers by their lust for fine clothes, may imitate The Fountain of New Fashions. Tom parades in finery until his cloak is stolen (by a trick Jonson perhaps recalled for the robbery of Cokes in Bartholomew Fair) and until his father makes him exchange his embroidered jerkin for one of plain yeoman russet. This play also contains a good deal of costume switching by the Blind Beggar, really a banished earl, as he changes from one disguise identity to another. Laughter in The Two Angry Women of Abingdon is mainly evoked by the two quarreling matrons and the benighted wanderings that climax the play, but some subsidiary jokes involve clothes. The Goursey servant Dick Coomes wears the regulation blue coat, but he insists he is an expert on weapons and oaths, and Mrs Goursey makes him carry his weapons when he escorts her. The Barnes servant Nicholas Proverbs is mainly a tongue uttering "wise saws," but his costume seems unorthodox for a servingman's everyday wear, since it includes red ribbon shoe-ties and a green hat ornamented with the nosegay and bride-laces worn at weddings. Henslowe records the purchase of two taffeta gowns for this play; probably these were worn by the two matrons, and carried over to the lost second part. Porter was killed while working on The Two Merry Women of Abingdon, perhaps a sequel which would have used the same costumes, and his death seems to have caused the play to be abandoned. The situation Porter created in his one surviving play centred on aberrant behavior of middle class characters, as orthodox comic theory demanded. For this sort of play costume helps identify the rank, sex, and age of its wearers but rarely has further functions.

126

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

The remaining comedies which survive from the Admiral's repertory rely heavily on costume changes, and do so for disguise. As well, they incorporate jokes dependent on some garment or other. The Blind Beggar of Alexandria is the earliest of these comedies, and looks as if it was written so Alleyn could use in comedy his special skills in the declamatory verse and ironic prose for which he had been acclaimed in Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and especially Tamburlaine.16 Blind Beggar incorporates trickster comedy into a story of the eastern-conqueror type, involving a threatened attack on the aged Ptolemy's Egypt by the Kings of Ethiopia, Arabia, Phasiaca, and Bebritia. This forms a background to the machinations of an Egyptian shepherd's son (masquerading as four different men) to acquire wealth and women and seize the crown. Only in the eighth of the play's ten scenes do the invading Kings at last enter, speaking Tamburlainesque threats against Egypt, but when they next appear they have been defeated, three of the ex-shepherd's four guises have been disposed of, and in his fourth he takes the dead Ptolemy's crown. The play evidently used costumes and properties from the "oriental suite"; indeed, much of it imitates the Marlowe plays in which Alleyn was also performing. Critics of Chapman who have noticed the resemblance have attributed it to a literary motive like Beaumont's in Knight of the Burning Pestle,17 Chapman's belief that these Marlowe plays often deserved ridicule. But the Admiral's Men, and Alleyn, would have been unlikely to ridicule their own getpennies, yet might want to try a new approach to the oriental material that would use both their existing costumes and their tested styles of acting. The printed text is truncated and part of the heroic plot has disappeared, but the trickster plot with its many costume changes has lost little if anything. This, like the many performances, suggests that the experiment was so successful that the old-style heroics had become expendable. Chapman's complicated intrigue required him to make clear to the audience the fact that the title character would appear in four different guises and what those guises would be. At the end of the first scene, Irus the Blind Beggar, whom the Alexandrians think a holy man and to whom they come for prophecies, confides in soliloquy that: I am Cleanthes and blind Irus too, And more than these, as you shall soone perceaue, Yet but a shepherdes soone at Memphis borne,

127

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

My Father was a fortune teller and from him I learnt his art, Such mony as I got by palmestrie, I put to vse and by that meanes became To take the shape of Leon, by which name I am well knowne a wealthie Vsurer, And more than this I am two noble men, Count Hermes is another of my names, And Duke Cleanthes whom the Queene so loues. (i. 110-22) The costume of Irus was probably one of the "Hermetes sewtes" in Henslowe's 1598 inventory, a ragged loose garment, perhaps worn with a hood or bandages to indicate blindness and conceal much of the actor's face. Although the script does not say so, Irus may also have had a staff to "knock" with, as does Fitzwater in the contemporary Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon when feigning blindness. When Irus is to transform himself to Count Hermes, he exits "to my wardroppe for my veluet gowne" (i.32o), the brevity of his absence perhaps marked by his exit on a half-line, "Now doth the sport beginne" (321). The stage has to remain empty long enough for Irus to shed rags and put on the velvet gown, which he explains on his return is the garment of his Hermes identity, In rayne or snow or in the hottest sommer, And [I] neuer goe nor ride without a gowne, Which humour doth not fit my frencie well But hides my persons forme from beeing knowne, When I Cleanthes am to be descried. (335-39) While telling Elimine's fortune earlier in the scene, he says that Hermes wears a "veluet patch" over one eye (256). This Irus can put on, along with the Hermes "pistole" with which "I... haue slayne two or three as twere my mood" (323-25), during the soliloquy that describes his appearance and behavior as the Count. Unlike the "mad" Count Hermes, the usurer Leon is a type-character, "old" with "a great nose" (Sc.2.141) like the "bottle nosed" Barabbas, whose facial accessory he must have worn. Leon's costume is therefore likely to have been the gaberdine Barabbas wore.

128

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

During Scenes 3 and 4 the actor must shift into and out of these three costumes several times, with especially rapid changes required in Scene 4, where Leon, Hermes, and Irus appear in rapid succession to witness Antistenes' debt to Leon. Not counting a probable pause after Pego's halfline as Leon exits, Alleyn would have had only four lines to change from Leon to the Count and only six to change from the Count to Irus. These times could be extended somewhat by silent business among the actors still onstage. In fact, the suspense generated by a delayed entrance for each new disguise might be dramatically advantageous. When Irus exits to his cave after giving his testimony, he also exits permanently from the play. The first seventy lines of Scene 5 involve the wives of Pego the Burgomaster of Alexandria, of Irus as Count Hermes, and of Irus as Leon, after which Leon returns for a scene with his wife Elmine. On Leon's exit in Scene 5, the actor has time to remove the nose and gaberdine and put on Hermes' gown and eyepatch, which he is to wear in three of the next four scenes. Count Hermes exits for the last time in Scene 9, and the actor is offstage for over fifty lines before he returns as Leon, ample time for the last change to this costume. What Irus says about Hermes' velvet gown shows that under the costumes of his three other identities he wore the suit of Duke Cleanthes. This unseen character is conspicuous in many speeches, so his importance long antedates his eventual entrance in Scene 10, after battle with the three invading Kings. Since Cleanthes enters "from war," Chapman probably intended him to wear at least plumes, a cloak and scarves, and weapons. Perhaps he made his first entrance during this battle, but the more additions needed to his costume to make him look as impressive as long anticipation required, the more backstage time the actor would need. All Alleyn had to do in this final disguise was duplicate Tamburlaine claiming a crown and a bride. In A Humourous Day's Mirth, Chapman developed comic situations centred on clothes into satire of extreme fashion of all kinds, though in this play most of the costumes simply identify a character's social station and very few are changed. Labervele's wife Florilla, identified as "the Puritan" at her first entrance, treats clothes as a shibboleth. Her first speech shows this as part of the generalized anxieties attributed to puritans: What haue I done? put on too many clothes; the day is hote, and I am hoter clad then might suffice health; my conscience telles me that I haue offended, and Ile put them off; that

129

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

will aske time that might be better spent, one sin will draw another quickly so, see how the diuell tempts. (I.iv.i-5) Labervele fears that her preciseness and her garments "like a milkmaid" (47) mask hidden lechery. To test her he argues that dressing beneath her degree is irreligious, urging her to "wear these jewels and a velvet hood" (51). Although she reacts with an invective against "A toy made with a superfluous flap" (53), he and the courtier Catalian, disguised "like a scholar," persuade her to change her dress. After her exit she returns 230 lines later "in her best attire" (Sc.6. SD), but her attitude remains as it was: . .. when I am attyred thus Countesse-like, Tis not to worke, for that befittes me not, Tis on some pleasure, whose chiefe obiect is One mans content, and hee my husbande is, But what need I thus to be attyred, For that he would be pleased with meaner weed? Besides I take no pleasure thus to please him: I am content, because it is my duty To keep to him, and not to seeke no further. (II.i.5-13) But the outcome shows that Labervele's fears were not baseless, for when Lemot courts her, she is the one who devises the trick which will make her husband think she is rejecting Lemot while really accepting him. Lemot, however, is not a seducer, but a satirist; she declares she loves him and he responds with passionate fustian, offers to kiss her hand and when she gives it "he bites." Outraged, Florilla reverts to her former ways; when she next appears she again looks and talks "like a Puritan" (V.ii. 78 SD): Surely the world is full of vanitie, A woman must take heed she do not heare A lewd man speake, for euery woman cannot When shee is tempted, when the wicked fiend Gets her into his snares, escape like me, For graces measure is not so filled vp, Nor so prest downe in euery one as me. (79'85)

130

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

She does not notice that she has an audience for this speech until the King interrupts her with, "What, Madam are you so pure now?" (89), irony she does not perceive. Satire of fashion may have taken visual form in the dress of the smart young men who frequent Verone's Ordinary. There may have been something especially absurd about Labesha's cloak and the hose Verone's Boy wears, whether in all his appearances or only when he is the presenter in the lottery, since Henslowe's 1598 inventory identifies two garments by the names of these minor characters.18 But satire of fashion is overt only in the scene which introduces Lord Dowsecer, whom the others report to be mad. Preparing to exhibit his "madness" to the King and the young men, Lavel brings in "a picture, and a paire of large hose, and a codpeece, and a sword" (II.ii.49 SD). The hose and codpiece probably resembled what the sillier men observing Dowsecer are wearing, and may have been among the garments later used in The Fountain of New Fashions, Though Dowsecer talks rather like Florilla as he examines these objects, and at last uses the bombasted hose for a cushion when he sits for further meditation, the rest of the play seems to prove that he is, as the King says, "more humane than all we are" (136), especially when, immediately after this, he falls in love with the rational Martia after looking at her portrait, a love which she reciprocates and which leads to their betrothal. Chapman's two comedies for the Admiral's Men are distanced from the audience by their foreign settings even when scenes like those in Verone's Ordinary seem based on London prototypes. Haughton's Englishmen for My Money opened a successful new suite of comedies set in well-known London localities. This type of play evidently remained popular as it continued to be written as late as 1608 with Dekker and Middleton's The Roaring Girl. Unlike the writers of "city comedy" for the private theatres, who evidently took up Haughton's plan with enthusiasm, Haughton distances his unsympathetic usurer Pisaro by making him a Portuguese who wants his three daughters to marry comic foreigners dressed in outlandish garments and speaking barely intelligible broken English. The daughters are "mere English," in love with English gentlemen whose lands are mortgaged to Pisaro. The servant Anthony who helps them is a poor Oxford scholar, and neither he, the three daughters, nor the English lovers know any modern language but English, which they think is a sign of virtue. Much of the humor depends upon characters blundering about unfamiliar places in the dark, but additional humor arises from disguises and other deliberate deceptions, especially by the clown Frisco.

131

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Haughton specifies costuming by identifying the three foreign suitors as Dutch, French, and Italian, dressed differently from each other and from the three Englishmen. He embeds costume directions in the dialogue for the garb of Pisaro and the Dutchman, for Anthony's disguise after his dismissal, and for Walgrave's and Laurentia's disguises to enter and leave Pisaro's house by pretending to be other people. Pisaro's costume seems that of a London merchant, since he speaks of his ruff and his gown, but there is one explicit mention of the usurer's traditional bottle nose, probably the same used in The Jew of Malta and Blind Beggar of Alexandria, which were still in the active repertory. Nothing is specified for the French and Italian suitors' costumes beyond the names of their nations; probably the Frenchman wore "frenchose" and the Italian "Venetians." Dutch breeches were notoriously large and baggy; Frisco wishes he "had the Dutchmans Hose, that I might creepe into the Pockets" (1612-13) when he needs to hide; Frisco also steals his "Dutch cloak," a style with a distinctive collar unlike those of other nations. Anthony is not an ordinary servant but a tutor, so is unlikely to be costumed in a blue coat. After Pisaro dismisses him from his service, he disguises himself under the name Le Mouche. Heigham later tells Frisco that "his Beard is blacke,/ Such is his rayment" (337-38) so that the clown can recognize him. Toward the end of the play, when "Le Mouche" is sent to find if the parson is ready for the daughters' triple wedding to the foreigners, Laurentia puts on his hat and cloak and slips out to marry Heigham at the Tower Chapel. Evidently this cloak was long enough to hide her petticoats, and had a hood or collar in which she could muffle her face, since she does not also borrow "Le Mouche's" black beard, still needed for Anthony's disguise in subsequent scenes. The Englishman Walgrave disguises himself as neighbor Moore's young daughter Susan so he can enter Pisaro's house and share Mathea's bed. For a man to disguise himself as a woman is unusual in Elizabethan drama. Unlike the disguises of young women as men, which put boy actors into their normal male apparel, a woman's garments on an adult man are unconvincing unless the man is of slight build or (like the Old Woman of Brainford whom Falstaff impersonates in Merry Wives) unless the woman is supposed to be old and bulky. Not surprisingly, then, Walgrave is regularly called "little," so the actor playing him was evidently a boy or a small man. Haughton creates comic suspense by making Pisaro woo the supposed "Susan Moore" with clumsy obliquities when "she" arrives to spend the night, as her father has provisionally arranged. The next morn-

132

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

ing Pisaro keeps hinting at marriage intentions to the real Susan's father, who is bewildered by Pisaro's assumption that she is inside because he knows that his daughter has slept in her own home. When Walgrave and Mathea emerge from Pisaro's house after their night together, he is wearing his "Susan" disguise, which causes a comic delay before he identifies himself and reveals their de facto marriage. Indeed, when everyone exits to the triple marriage feast, Pisaro's new son-in-law still looks like Pisaro's hoped-for bride. Dekker and most of his collaborators worked with the Admiral's Men for several years and must have known their stock as well as did Henslowe and the actors. Costume change in his plays, though frequent, differs from costume change in Chapman's and Haughton's comedies of intrigue and in Look About You. Instead of making his characters change costume mainly to deceive one another, Dekker usually makes them wear costumes that show their status and change costume only when their status changes. Changes are also sometimes made for an occasion, mainly a wedding, though usually these go with change of status for the bride. One can see in the requirements of plays in which Dekker had a hand not only awareness of what would be available for the performance, but also an increasing sense of how these costumes could be used to emphasize visually important themes and issues stated in the dialogue. He draws on the stock not only to create coups de theatre (as in the Huntingdon plays and Look About You), to give information (as when costume shows status or status change, or is used for disguise), or to make a scene realistic by putting characters into black for funerals and best clothes for weddings. He also uses costume to guide the audience's thinking about characters' actions, often reinforcing this visual comment by speeches that depend on what the audience sees. In the way he creates means to use the existing costume stock, the Admiral's Men must have found Dekker a poet after their own hearts, whether or not they realized that he, like Shakespeare of the Chamberlain's Men, was using their costumes more artistically than Munday and Chettle. In The Shoemaker's Holiday social status and the propriety of changing it are major issues. Costume therefore has a thematic function missing from Haughton's and Chapman's comedies of intrigue. The issue of clothing and status is raised in the first twenty lines. The Earl of Lincoln tells Sir Roger Otley of his dismay that "my cosen Lacie/ Is much affected to your daughter Rose" (1.i.5-6). Otley as snobbishly answers that "courtiers. ... will in silkes, and gay apparell spend/ More in one yeare, that I

133

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

am worth by far" (12-13), implying that, though silk is proper for courtiers, they are prodigals to wear it. Lincoln adds that Lacy lacks a proper sense of his status, for after spending all his money in Germany he learnt the shoemaker's trade instead of coming home "bankerupt." Otley respects Lacy for choosing work over bankruptcy, but "yet I scorn to call him sonne in law" (44). When Lacy enters soon after, dressed for the wars, his appearance may confirm Otley's contempt for silken courtiers, since his clothes do suggest the prodigal; as Sibil tells Rose: "I scant knew him, here a wore a scarffe, and here a scarfe, here a bunch of fethers, and here pretious stones and iewells, and a paire of garters: O monstrous! like one of our yellow silke curtains" (I. ii. 25-28). Rose and Lacy do not agree with their older kinsmen about status and clothing, for Rose promises her maid some of her own rich accessories if she will find out if Lacy has gone to France. In the next scene Lacy himself enters "like a Dutch shooe-maker (I.iii. SD), declaring that "It is no shame for Rowland Lacy... To clothe his cunning with the Gentle Craft" (3-4) for the sake of love. Although his appearance is greatly altered from the flamboyant dress of a soldier two scenes earlier, the change he has some five minutes to make would not have been very difficult, for soldiers and Dutchmen both wore full breeches, and removing his jewelry, scarves, and garters, exchanging a laced doublet for a plain workman's coat, and donning an apron would make him a convincing journeyman while distinguishing him from Eyre's London shoemakers. Lacy keeps his shoemaker dress throughout the play, causing no confusion since in his scenes with Rose he is called Lacy while wearing the Dutch disguise. To the entry direction for the final scene Fredson Bowers adds, "Lacie [as himselfl]" but this is impossible, since, also according to Bowers, he exits at the end of the previous scene "[... in the attire of] Hans," and there is not time for a costume change. A somewhat different status change connected with costume is Rafe's from journeyman shoemaker to soldier; when he enters pressed for a soldier, he seems already different in dress from the shoemakers Hodge and Firk, for Hodge bids him "cram thy slops with French crownes" (221). Eyre and his men are evidently of two minds about Rafe's soldier status. On the one hand it glorifies their trade, as joining the First Crusade does the trades of Heywood's Four Prentices, but on the other hand it separates him from his former equals. Unlike Lacy, self-conscious in his disguise, the shoemakers are at ease in the clothes of their trade; Eyre's "Prince am I none yet am I princely" is not a mere eccentricity of language but ex-

134

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

presses his sense of intrinsic worth. At the same time, Eyre recognizes that finery has its use; to negotiate with the Dutch skipper he dons "a veluet coate, and an Alderman's gowne" (II.iii.93 SD) over his work-day hose, though his awareness that he is fine does not make him feel superior to his journeymen. When the deal with the skipper makes him rich and he is called to the expensive office of sheriff, he returns wearing his chain of office, and brings with him the French hood for which his wife Margery has longed. She puts it on either onstage or as soon as she exits, since the entry direction for the next scene specifies that she is "in a French hood" (III.iii SD). When Eyre subsequently becomes Lord Mayor, Margery replaces her straight-hanging citizen's gown with a farthingale, and we also hear of a wig. But though Eyre is proud of the distinction that their new garments display, he puts no class barrier between himself and his former workmen, Hodge, Firk, and Hans, even when he finds that Hans is really the nephew of an earl: Lady Madgy, thou hadst neuer couerd thy Sarcens head with this french flappe, nor loaden thy bumme with this farthingale, tis trash, trumpery, vanity, Simon Eyre had neuer walkte in a redde petticoate, nor wore a chaine of golde, but for my fine lourneymans [Hans-Lacy's] portigues.... Prince am I none, yet beare a princely minde. (V.i.13-19) Their entry direction here does not specify the "redde petticoat," Eyre's deprecatory phrase for the Lord Mayor's gown, but since he is to entertain the King later in the act, for which the Mayor's ceremonial gown would be requisite, he probably wears it when he speaks these lines. At the same time, Eyre shares Otley's view of fine clothes for their own sake: Rose. .. marrie not with... a courtier, wash, go by, stand not vppon pisherie pasherie: those silken fellows are but painted Images, outsides, outsides Rose, their inner linings are torne. (III.iii.38-42) Rose Otley appears in three specified places, which may call for some variance in her costume, though probably not complete changes. In the first scene, in London, her father decides to send her to his country house

135

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

at Old Ford. When she enters for the first time in the next scene, she is "making a Garland" (I.ii. SD), a country activity that suggests she is in Old Ford even before she asks her maid "Sibil, what news at London?" (19); here her costume would probably include a plain apron and cap. Her city costume may be indicated by the reward she offers Sibil for more news, "My cambricke apron, and my romish gloues,/ My purple stockings, and a stomacher" (54-55). In Act III, when Hammon woos Rose and she rebuffs him, she has evidently returned to the City, for Otley again orders her to Old Ford before repeating that he has immediate business at the Guildhall. For her scene in London Rose is probably wearing a "cambricke apron," ornamented stomacher and headtire, both because this is London and because her father plans her formal betrothal to Hammon, an occasion for "best apparel." Rose's London costume would remain appropriate for the rest of the play, since she is the hostess at Old Ford for the Eyres' formal visit and nothing in her remaining scenes demands a change. The scene in which Hans/Lacy fits her shoes as they plan their elopement is costume-neutral, but for their wedding, sponsored by the Mayor and Mayoress (in French hood and farthingale), Rose's fine "bethrothal" costume would be decorous, as it would for her presentation to the King. Lacy, however, marries her still wearing his workman's garb, a costume fit neither for the occasion nor his rank, and time forbids a costume change even when the King knights him and restores his military command. Clothing is also a mark of changed status in the scenes involving Jane, Hammon, and Rafe. When he leaves for the war Rafe is wearing his new soldier's clothing. When he returns, "lame," which means using a crutch, Hodge calls him "a tall souldier" (III.ii.57), so he is probably wearing a shabbier version of this costume, enough changed that Margery Eyre does not know him. Since Hodge at once reemploys him, he evidently was to put on the common workman's hose and coat and the shoemaker's leather apron. When Jane at last recognizes him, after he and his fellows, "with cudgels, or such weapons" (V.ii. SD) block her marriage to Hammon, she calls his clothes "humble weedes" (V.ii.55). Hammon is always called a wealthy gentleman, though he is of citizen origin, so his costume must suggest the "silken courtier," at least as fine in civilian terms as was Lacy's in his scene as a departing soldier. At the beginning of the play Rafe's new wife Jane is a maidservant in the Eyre household. Margery Eyre reports that "because she was married [she] grewe more stately then became her, I checkt her, and so forth,

136

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

away she flung, neuer returned" (III. ii.80-82). Soon after this Jane reap original costume, since the audience is unlikely to remember her from her one earlier scene and needs some sense of knowing her before she identifies herself as Rafe's wife. Hammon's entry "Muffeled," Jane's name, and the way in which he first approaches her seem like echoes from the scene in Heywood's I Edward IV in which the King woos Jane Shore in her husband's shop. Dekker probably expected the audience to see the parallel and feel suspense about Jane's moral danger before Hammon changes his equivocal offer to "buy" her to an offer of marriage, which she accepts only conditionally: "If euer I wed man it shall be you" (122). When Jane enters to wed Hammon in "Saint Faiths Church vnder Paules" (IV.ii.28), she is masked and dressed in the fine clothes Hammon has given her to mark her new status as a rich man's wife. Once she has chosen Rafe, she declares that she "will... put off his attire,/ Returning it into the owners hand" (V.ii. 58-59), but Rafe's master Hodge insists "Not a ragge lane,... he that sowes in another mans ground forfets his haruest," while Firk adds "Rafe, the appurtenances are thine owne" and tells Hammon's advancing "Blew coate," "touch not a ragge, least I and my brethren beate you to clowtes" (60-71). Jane's willingness to surrender her fine clothes when she returns to her husband shows that she is not as proud as when she "flung away" from the Eyre household and that, unlike the notorious Jane Shore, she cannot be corrupted by wealth and higher status. Her virtue is nonetheless rewarded when Hammon gives her both the clothes and a £20 dowry. Her fine clothing and mask then contribute to the comic discomfiture of Lincoln and Sir Roger Otley, who take Jane for Rose Otley and Rafe with his apron and crutch for Rowland Lacy in disguise. The Shoemaker's Holiday ends not with a marriage feast but with a royal visit to Mayor Eyre and with Eyre's pancake feast for all of London's prentices. "Silken" courtiers are invited to join the "leathern" shoemakers' festival and the King accepts the invitation. This union of King and city hadfiguredin Heywood's Edward IV, played by Derby's Men not long before The Shoemaker's Holiday, and was to recur in Rowley's 1604 play about Henry VIII, When You See Me You Know Me. Both plays deliver the message of London's importance to the crown also expressed in Dekker's Magnificent Entertainment, a description of the street shows and speeches on King James's passage through London in March, 1604. Dekker's Pleasant Comedy of Patient Grissel also uses costume to show

the irrelevance to moral worth of high rank and the fine clothes that dis-

137

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

play it. It ridicules those who, like the Marquess's "silken courtiers" and the fashionable gallant Emulo, do not see beyond "the outward shows." Although its Italian setting and Chaucerian origin distance it into romance, most of its several incidents that turn on dress differ little from incidents in plays with an English setting like The Shoemaker's Holiday. Evidently almost all the costumes needed were already in stock, thanks to earlier purchases; the only certain new expense is the "gray gown for Grissel" (which may mean the play, not the character), bought in what seems an unusually complicated transaction: Henslowe advanced to Shaw the rather large sum of 20s to give to a tailor who would buy, not make it (Diary 130). Perhaps part of the sum was a finder's fee, Shaw not having been able to locate what was wanted in time. Costumes show the rank of the characters and their changes of dress show their changes in rank except in the final scenes, where fine clothes are decorous for both the Marquess's intended new marriage and the celebration of Grissel's return as his wife. Dekker and his two collaborators, however, give these costume conventions some subtleties they do not always have, similar to those in Shoemaker's Holiday and to some extent in Old Fortunatus. When the Marquess and his courtiers enter for the first scene they are "all like Hunters," probably in the Kendal green from the Robin Hood plays. "As they go in" after his courtiers have pressed him to choose his bride from among several princesses, "Enter, Ianicola, Grissil, and Babulo" (I.ii. SD), all wearing what the play calls russet, "A coarse homespun woollen cloth of a reddish-brown, grey, or neutral color, formerly used for the dresses of peasants and country-folk" (OED). They are soon joined by Grissel's brother Laureo in the shabby dress of a poor scholar. Since in the Robin Hood plays hunters' green is a leveling costume, making king, prince, earl, and yeomen fellows in the forest, and since later in this same scene the Marquess will offer to marry Grissel for her beauty and virtue, the hunters' apparel visually expresses what the Marquess then believes. After Grissel, her father, and her brother consent to marriage, the Marquess does promise to replace "this base attire" with "robes of honour, " but these are only "that the world may say/ Vertue and beautie was my bride to day" (I.ii. 272-74). The long first scene of Act II introduces the comic Welsh characters of the underplot and the dandy Emulo. Rice, the second clown, wears a long fool's coat with guards, unlike the rustic Babulo in a Tarlton-like country outfit. Sir Owen and Emulo are both booted, and Gwenthyan is evidently

138

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

dressed as a widow since so much is made of her status. Much of this 300line prose scene, and of subsequent scenes with Emulo, is devoted to ridicule of fashionable clothing and high-flown language, but its purpose here is to give time (at least fifteen minutes) for the main-plot characters to change their green or russet for garments appropriate to high rank. First the Marquess enters with a courtier, then Grissel joins them wearing the promised "robes of honour," no doubt with a fashionable wheel farthingale like Margery's in The Shoemaker's Holiday. This time, however, instead of honoring her the Marquess first displays "thy russet gentrie" (II.ii.63), evidently herfirstcostume hung up to be discovered at this moment19 and then forces her to stoop and do servile offices for his menservants because she is a mere beggar. In the next scene Janicula, Laureo, and Babulo are stripped of their new finery as they are driven from court. This implies that their new clothes were limited to overgarments and hats. In the next scene Emulo, "His arme in a scarfe" (III.ii.5) recites a long story of a duel he has just fought, naming, with their prices, the many fine garments injured during the combat. Probably this verbal finery contrasted with Emulo's somewhat worn and outdated suit, maybe one left from The Fountain of New Fashions over two years before. By making a vain coward like Emulo brag of finery just after we have seen other courtiers violently divesting Grissel's family of their court clothes, Dekker seems again to be deprecating fine clothes as indexes of worth, and he continues this theme for several scenes more. Grissel next appears after giving birth to twins. This is an entrance "from bed," which calls for a lady's rich night-gown and headtire. The courtiers Furio and Mario remove these fine garments but only hand her russet gown to her, so under the night-gown the actor must have worn a woman's underdress of waistcoat and petticoat, as in similar scenes from The Fair Maid of Bristow and The Honest Whore. Wearing her russet, Grissel rejoins her russet-clad family. The scene continues while they engage in honest labour, emphasizing that they are not beggars, as the Marquess and his courtiers have called them. For the farcical scene that follows, Gwenthyan enters "meanely" with Rice "like a Cooke" (IV.iii. SD). They fetch a crew of beggars to a disorderly feast that underlines the distance between such people and Grissel's family. The Marquess and his henchman Furio have a scene in disguise that emphasizes the Marquess's irrational cruelty; Furio then returns in his own person to take Grissel's chil-

139

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

dren. As he leaves he drops a purse, evidently meaning it as charity, but the family will not take it. This is a further "proof" that they are not the beggars the Marquess and the courtiers call them. In the play's final scene, Grissel and her family are again among the courtiers, who have gathered for the Marquess's marriage to Gratiana. The "bride's" fine clothes are subjects of comment. In contrast Grissel is wearing her russet gown with the willow garland of a forsaken lover. Indeed, fine clothes become a centre of violence when "Furio, Ianicola, and Laureo [enter], striuing about attyre" (V.ii. SD 158) Furio trying to force the others to put on fine cloaks or gowns for the wedding, Laureo angrily insisting, "Give [the Marquess] his silkes, they shall not touch my back" (159). When the Marquess at last reveals that the supposed bride and her brother are his children by Grissel and that he is taking Grissel back, there is no time to reclothe her; instead, the Marquess removes her willow garland and replaces it with the bridal crown from Gratiana's head. This time, the russet garments that she and her family wear are explicitly made signs of virtue, while the fine clothes of the flattering courtiers, like those of Emulo, explicitly stand for their vices. Before the scene ends these courtiers are driven from the stage as were Laureo and Janicula earlier. The play ends with its characters costumed rather like the virtuous and the vicious in A Knack to Know an Honest Man, which Dekker might have seen at the Rose seven or eight years before, or in much older moralities. T H E LORD CHAMBERLAIN'S MEN

When in 1594 the Burbages gathered their sharers and hired men at their Theatre under the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain, we might have expected them to have furnished their new poet William Shakespeare with a rich accumulation of gear to stage not only the plays he had brought them, but also any new play he wrote. Yet the first plays Shakespeare wrote for the Chamberlain's Men were written with an eye to strict economy in both hired men and costumes. Like other playwrights he made use of two or more costumes for one character for the traditional reasons: disguise and change of moral position, status or profession, and, perhaps more often than other playwrights, for decorum of occasion. Still, he limited costume change in ways that the writers for the Admiral's Men seem not to have been held to. Whether his motive was art or profit (he was, after all, a sharer), Shakespeare's care for costume economy is

140

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

marked. His doubling schemes permit a maximum number of characters to be played by a minimum number of actors' costume change within roles is kept down, but when needed is often original both in purpose and in handling. Shakespeare's first play specifically written for the Chamberlain's Men seems likely to have been Romeo and ]uliet. Having at least forty-one speaking parts, it needs almost as much doubling as his Henry VI plays and Richard 111. Except for the man who played Romeo (no doubt Richard Burbage) and the boy who played Juliet, every actor in the company got at least two speaking roles. Most had more, and some besides were recostumed as mutes. For this reason the play may well have strained the wardrobe resources of a company which, it would seem, had not accumulated a great store of rich apparel. Not only does Shakespeare limit the number of roles needing more than one costume, but also seems to have felt it necessary to explain why some characters do not change clothes. In particular, he emphasizes that Romeo never goes home between his first entry late in the opening scene and his farewell to Juliet at the end of Act III. Romeo's costume may have remained the same even after this, merely augmented by the boots and cloak of a traveler when he comes to open the Capulet tomb. As well as any play of its time, Romeo and ]uliet demonstrates how costume conventions might be squared with realistic social decorum and as much economy as possible. Unlike many earlier plays, it requires no markers of new occupation, status, or moral condition, and only limited masquerade. Its characters change costume within roles almost entirely to suit the occasion. By parsimony with some characters' costumes, Shakespeare may have been compensating (or overcompensating) for the lavishness of apparel at the Capulet feast late in Act I, an occasion for which Elizabethan decorum would expect fine clothes. This feast calls for many actors to portray servants, maskers, and guests, though only eight of these have speeches, and two have only a line each. Among the "GUESTS and GENTLEWOMEN" are an elderly Capulet with two lines, and "the son and heir of old Tiberio" and "young Petruchio" who probably dance but do not speak; these must have been hired men doubling frantically in minor parts. Although "best apparel" is not specified, some features of scene arrangement indicate changes from "working day" to "holiday" appearance, even if effected only with outer garments and headgear. Capulet, with no likely part to double, is offstage for over 300 lines (some fifteen minutes), ample time to change to festive costume; his wife and Juliet get

141

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

only 124 lines, or six to seven minutes, though stage business preceding the guests' entry is an evident time extender, including the ''march about the stage" and the entry of the Capulet servants "with napkins." The servants' entrance, a likely signal to end the march, could be delayed and the march prolonged until most costume changes were completed. Comic business among the servants provides an additional margin to complete the changes, and the entry of the guests in procession could be strung out to cover any last-minute delays in the recostuming of those last to enter, the female Capulets. It is then that Romeo for the first time sees Juliet, wearing "best robes" finer than the costume of her previous scene. The "balcony scene" follows hard upon the breakup of the feast. Juliet must still be wearing the "best robes" when she and Romeo declare their love and plight their troth. (A betrothal regularly solemnized would be an occasion for "best apparel.") After the balcony scene Juliet is off for two long scenes before her reentry in Act II. The senior Capulets (and all the players of minor roles) are likewise absent until after Mercutio's and Tybalt's deaths in the first scene of Act III. These absences give the Capulets time enough to resume their "work day" costumes. But during the later scenes of Act HI and throughout Act IV, the Capulets are on stage a great deal, with only brief absences. Though they might be expected to put on festive clothing for Juliet's wedding to Paris, Capulet's embarrassment when Paris arrives so early in the morning suggests that they are still in their "workday" apparel. When they enter Juliet's chamber expecting to lead her to church, they carry, as tokens of festivity, "bridalflowers"and "rosemary" (used at both weddings and funerals) which they cast upon her "corpse" before closing the curtains of her bed. But it is unlikely that they have made any other changes in their appearance. It is important that Juliet wear her "work day" costume when she marries Romeo, because their ceremony is irregular. The secrecy and haste with which Friar Laurence is asked to perform their marriage makes him uneasy, and he agrees to do so only because he hopes the marriage will end the Capulet-Montague feud. When Juliet bids Romeo farewell the next morning, a night-gown (needing almost no time to put on) would show she has entered "from bed." This, however, seems a cumbersome bit of realism. Romeo is fully dressed, and after his exit, Juliet begins an almost uninterrupted series of scenes with her mother, father, and Nurse in the house, then with Paris and Friar Laurence at the cell, and again with her family at home. Drinking the potion, "she falls upon her bed." When

142

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

the Nurse, Juliet's parents, and her bridegroom open the bed curtains Juliet must therefore lie "dead" in her everyday dress. In this scene where the Capulets grieve, Shakespeare could not verbally draw attention to the bride's dress. Still, the sameness of her costume would visually imply that this wedding is no less irregular than the stolen one to Romeo. Though the wedding to Paris is consented to by the bride, the bridegroom, and the parents of the bride, and though the Church, through the voice of Friar Lawrence, voices its permission, too, in fact this marriage would be bigamy. When Friar Laurence offers Juliet escape through his drug, he tells her how, seeming dead, she will be carried to the family tomb in her "best robes, uncovered on the bier" (IV.i. no). This means that when Romeo opens the tomb (a large property on the stage floor, not a grave trap) in the final scene, he and the audience are again to see her in the festival clothes worn the night she and Romeo met and plighted troth. The sight of these garments, last seen at a feast and a trothplight, emphasizes the irony of Romeo's festal gesture as he toasts her—"Here's to my love!" (V.iii. 119)—in a poisoned cup. As he did for the Capulet costume changes in Act I, Shakespeare makes time for Juliet to resume her "best robes" and enter the property tomb. According to the directions in Qi she is enabled to leave the discovery space by the ceremony of the mourners, who exit after "casting rosemary upon her, and shutting the curtains" (IV.v.95 SD). Peter's tragi-

comic scene with the musicians, hardly needed in terms of plot or characterization, prolongs the time necessary for Juliet to complete her costume change and for the stage attendants to replace the bed with the tomb. Romeo's scene at Mantua (even with its long description of the Apothecary before this minor character enters), the scene between Friars Laurence and John, and thefirstfiftylines of the scene at the Capulet tomb total only 198 lines. Peter and the musicians extend this to over 250 lines or almost fifteen minutes; a further two or three minutes could be added to this if Romeo's fight with Paris and his lament over his rival's body (ending with the words "a triumphant grave") came before he pried up the tomb to "discover" Juliet lying within it. Shakespeare's anxiety to extend time in so long a play indicates that Juliet's costume change is as complete as her change for the feast, where the time needed for 130 or so spoken lines between her exit and the entry of the Capulets also needs to be lengthened by the "march about the stage" of the maskers and the business of the servingmen. Shakespeare might not yet have known how much efficiency to expect from his new colleagues; this, in turn, would

143

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

noticeably affect what would occur upon his stage. In later years he does not go out of his way to provide extra time for costume changes. Probably, too, the company became more efficient backstage during their many years together.

The plays Shakespeare wrote before he joined the Chamberlain's Men seem to have become their property and remained in their repertory. Included in this category are plays such as the Henry VI—Richard III cycle, Titus Andronicus, Taming of the Shrew, Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and, possibly, Love's Labours Lost. The bad quartos of some of these plays are too poor to determine whether any revision took place, and since none of them reached print in good quartos before becoming Chamberlain's property, there is no reliable way to tell whether Shakespeare revised some or all of them to fit not only the talents but also the wardrobe of his new company. Henslowe records a performance of Titus Andronicus in 1592, and it was published in 1594 with the title page advertisement "As it was Plaide by t h e . . . Earle of Darbie, Earle of Pembrooke, and Earle of Sussex their Seruants," all companies which by then had disappeared from London. Titus was played by the conjoined Admiral's and Chamberlain's Men in January 1594; as it does not recur in the Admiral's repertory it must have become or remained Chamberlain's property when these companies went their separate ways. No evidence exists that the Chamberlain's Men performed it at the Theatre, while its publication by Danter in the same year suggests that they may have regarded a play needing an outsize cast as no longer useful. Two Gentlemen of Verona was probably revised for the new company; Clifford Leech suggests that Launce was created for Kemp as a replacement for a boy-servant like Speed, and David Wiles finds further evidence for such rewriting. The play has a doubling scheme for a company of eight and calls for a very modest costume stock. The only character who must make a full costume change within role is Julia, whose change from female to male attire takes place during her absencefromAct III and the first hundred lines of Act IV. The actor of Silvia, who might have doubled Lucetta in a small company, would have to rush in Act II, with only about 180 lines (partly prose) to change for Silvia, although the re-

144

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

turn to Lucetta's costume could be leisurely, and that to Silvia's in Act IV even more so. Both Proteus and Valentine require the conventional boots and long cloaks of a traveler; indeed, the Duke plucks just such a cloak from Valentine's back to discover the rope ladder by which Silvia is to escape. Later, Silvia and Eglamour need similar travel garb, and for the final scene in the forest, probably everyone is wearing it. Henslowe's records and the demands of plays for both men and boys show that every company stocked as many cloaks as it could for just such situations. Since cloaks are as much needed in early romance-adventures like Clyomon and Clamydes, it is evident that, while they may have had less choice among what the cloaks might cover, companies before 1590 collected outer garments for the same purpose as their prosperous successors. In Comedy of Errors a pair of identical gentlemen's suits for the Antipholus twins may have been made to order; Henslowe, in 1602, recorded payment of £6 18s for "ij sewtes a licke" (Diary 205) for the lost Mortimer. A second suit might also have been copied from one already in the wardrobe. The two Dromios could have been made as identical as necessary with the inexpensive blue coats of servingmen, whose mention in Henry VI Part 1, The Case is Altered, Every Man in His Humour, The

Roaring Girl, and many other plays belonging to every company shows they were common to all wardrobes. Comedy of Errors calls for no costume change within roles, and its small number of characters would require very little doubling by the Chamberlain's Men, except for the mute attendants of the first and last scenes and such one-scene characters as First Merchant (I.ii), Balthasar (IH.i), and Pinch (IV.iv).21 Taming of the Shrew may require more costume change than Two Gentlemen or Errors, especially if all the Players enter the Induction together, for they would then have to recostume themselves appropriately for their play. However, since much of the real company would be among the Lord's attendants before taking roles in the taming play, this is unlikely. Indeed, the actor of the Lord disappears, probably after Sly dismisses his attendants at Induction, ii. 116. Most likely he was to double as Petruchio (as in some modern productions); the 300 lines before Petruchio's arrival in the second scene of Act I, give him ample time to change his costume and beard. Within the taming play, costume change is minor but meaningful, for from the time Sly is put into the Lord's "robes and furred gowns" until

145

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Bianca and the Widow defy their husbands, the whole play is about want of decorum. While Katherine's improprieties of language and behavior are its focus, much of the indecorum consists of the wrong clothes for the person or occasion. Lucentio (a gentleman) and his servant Tranio exchange outer garments onstage, scandalizing Biondello, who enters soon after and at once demands who has stolen whose clothes. Later, to gain access to Bianca, Lucentio dons a poor scholar's dress and Hortensio, also a gentleman, that of a professional musician. In Act IV Hortensio reverts to his gentleman costume for his visit to Petruchio's house, but Lucentio resumes his only in the last scene, at the same time as Tranio returns to his blue coat to serve at the banquet. Kate may change from her "everyday" dress of Act I to "best apparel" for her wedding, although decorum in this scene could also be gained by altering her headtire to the "hair" worn by maiden brides22 and adding favors to her dress. Favors would serve additionally to mark the occasion for the others in the wedding party. Petruchio's exit line after his betrothal to Kate promises "rings and things and fine array" (II. i. 314) from Venice, which implies that when he next appears he will not only be wearing a new wedding suit but that it will also dazzle the eye. His absence of almost 300 lines provides ample time for change to a fine suit. But when at the wedding he arrives late, the audience must have been surprised by his unseemly outfit, for Petruchio's only new or "fine" garment is his hat. "Fine array" turns out to mean "an old jerkin; a pair of old breeches thrice turned; a pair of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled, another laced, an old rusty sword.. . chapeless; with two broken points" (III. ii. 41-45), garments that could have been culled from the company's worn-out and mismatched apparel. Grumio's costume is of a piece with his master's, rags and fragments topped by a braggart's feather, "not like a Christian footboy or a gentleman's lackey" (68-69). Though the wedding party has been prepared by Biondello's description (Biondello evidently wearing what he regards as impeccable livery), everyone is appalled at the bridegroom's want of decorum: "Not so well apparell'd as I wish you were," "An eyesore to our solemn festival," and "so unlike yourself" (88, 99, 102). Though we know that Lucentio's servant Tranio is even more misappareled in Lucentio's clothes than is Petruchio in his mismatched tatters, in this scene he must perfectly look the gentleman, and as Lucentio he begs for more propriety: "See not your bride in these unreverent robes,/Go to my chamber, put on clothes of mine"(iio-n).

146

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

Petruchio answers these demands for propriety with "To me she's married, not unto my clothes" (115). In their tatterdemalion outfits, Petruchio and Grumio exhibit a constant feature of Shakespeare's costuming, a motivated use for everything in the costume stock until it fell to pieces. While not all his plays provide for using worn and even ragged garments, such characters as Armado, Falstaff, and his crew, Barnardine, and Autolycus show that he made a practice of extending costume viability by inventing characters for every state of wear. This may even have been a Burbage policy before Shakespeare joined them, though without much preserved from the preShakespeare repertory it is impossible to be sure. Petruchio retains the same vagabond garb in the first scene at his house. Kate, without time for a full costume change between her exit with them and her reentry, might enter in a safeguard and cloak, like the traveling women in The Merry Devil of Edmonton. These garments might easily be assumed during Grumio's scene with Curtis, and might have been splashed or spattered to fit Grumio's tale of their muddy journey. The unreadiness of Petruchio's servants emphasizes his own indecorum, climaxed by his "sermon of continency" to Kate in their bridal chamber. Only in his soliloquy at the scene's end are all his improprieties clarified as part of a design. Later he is given enough offstage time to remedy the indecorum of his wedding garments, but his insistence that they "will unto [her] father's,/ Even in these honest mean habiliments" and still more his gnomic "Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor" (IV.iii. 166-68), suggest that for the rest of the play he remains in his wedding's unconventional hose and jerkin, though probably not in his mismatched boots. Kate obviously does not wear her cloak and safeguard during the scenes in Petruchio's house, but when Grumio and Petruchio bait her in IV.iii she may still be wearing her wedding dress and "hair," for Petruchio's "sermon of continency" implies that their marriage remains unconsummated as part of the taming. A "hair" headtire would be simultaneously proper for her as a virgin and improper for her as a wife. Another part of the taming involves the tailor's display of a married gentlewoman's "fine array," a small round cap and a "loose-bodied gown" which may have been among the company's newest apparel. Petruchio refuses delivery after mocking them: "Go, take [the gown] up for thy master's use," but privily tells Hortensio to "see the tailor paid" (IV.iii. 154, 161). Although

147

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

in some modern productions Kate wears a new gown for the concluding banquet, Petruchio's insistence on the "meanness" of their clothes implies that such a change is incorrect. For the return to Baptista's house all the travelers need cloaks, the men boots (Petruchio's now possibly matching), and Kate again a safeguard. Since Lucentio's wedding to Bianca is secret, neither requires a costume change, or even the favors of Kate's wedding, when they confess their marriage. But in the last scene, which is the wedding feast for all three couples, wedding favors probably were meant to be added to all the costumes. Only in this scene, where Kate tells the other brides their proper duty, are most of the clothes more or less conventional for class and occasion, with servants and masters returned to their proper attire. The four early history plays belonged to some other company or companies before they came into the hands of the Chamberlain's Men. The New Arden editions attempt to make sense of their successive owners before 1594; that these plays became the permanent property of the Chamberlain's Men when Shakespeare became a sharer suggests that the plays were part of his sharer's contribution. If this is the case, then the layers of revision, especially in Henry VI Part 3, may be owing to changes in cast from company to company. (So, probably, are some of the more drastic alterations in the pirated versions published under different titles.) Whatever revisions Shakespeare himself made, however, the amount of doubling could hardly have changed much. The costume changes needed for doubling, for the dizzy shifts from war (arms) to peace (gowns) and back again and the equally dizzy switches of the crown from Henry to Edward to Henry to Edward would become different for a different company only if Shakespeare completely altered the story. All of these histories need much the same kinds of costumes for the kings and nobles in peace and war. The company could accumulate new costumes and keep all the plays in repertory by replacing garments as they grew shabby and by augmenting its stock of coats painted with armorial bearings. In fact, the conflation of some nobles who are separate in the chronicle source, though primarily a limit on doubling, would also limit the need for more painted coats. The dynastic succession of sons to their fathers' hostilities is thematic in these plays, but it also means that a coat did not have to be replaced when a father was killed and his son succeeded him. The date of Love's Labours Lost is uncertain, and its original composition may have been, like that of Summer's Last Will and Testament, for country theatricals in a plague year, since it needs five or even six boys

148

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

rather than the usual four. (Much Ado does show that five boys might sometimes be available.) The names of its two kingdoms and those of Navarre's lords had been publicized in newsbooks that reported events in Henry of Navarre's struggle for the French crown. English interest in the struggle is shown by these newsbooks and also by the popularity of Marlowe's Massacre at Paris. The fundamental importance of a broken oath to the entire action suggests that the play might have been written in response to Henry's 1594 conversion to the Roman church, not long before Shakespeare became a sharer in the Chamberlain's Men. William Ringler's doubling scheme assigns one actor to play Margaret and Jacquenetta, yet makes no provision for Marcade. Since in the final scene Nathaniel is hustled off the stage after his disastrous appearance as "Alisander," and since his curate's costume was probably black, a change of beard and headgear and an added black cloak would enable the same actor to play both these minor parts. Marcade's exit is unmarked, but because it is probable that he leaves with Boyet to "prepare," he could doff his accessories to become Nathaniel for the final song. Within roles, no actor in Love's Labours Lost needs a complete costume change. When the King and his lords mask as Russians, attended by "Blackamoors with music" (probably hired musicians rather than company members put into blackface), they have only to don vizards, headdresses, and whatever cloaks or gowns passed for Russian. When Holofernes and his followers perform such of "The Nine Worthies" (Alexander, Pompey, Judas Maccabeus, Hercules "in minority," and Hector) as their hecklers permit, their attire as Worthies is evidently supposed to be crude and sketchy. Costard as Pompey can quickly strip to his shirt to fight Armado. Armado as Hector probably removes nothing, since he says, "I have no shirt. I go woolward for penance" (V.ii.701-2), and is mercilessly mocked for his "want of linen." With no disguises and no changes of status or inward state, the reasons for costume change in Midsummer Night's Dream are confined to the doubling of parts between Athenian and fairy characters, to the decorum of best apparel for the wedding feast in Act V, and, for their play, the appareling of the mechanicals. Most of the doubling among the twenty-two speaking parts is straightforward. The players of the four lovers and Bottom double with no one. Philostrate and Puck (each a master of revels in his world) were likely played by one man, and the elderly Egeus could double the elderly Peter Quince; the five mechanicals (Bottom excluded) match five speaking parts for minor fairies. Costume change within the

149

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

roles of the lovers probably consisted of cloaks; in the woodland, boots may have been added to the Athenian apparel, and for Hippolyta and Theseus something suitable for a hunt at dawn over their Athens costumes. Perhaps when Lysander and Demetrius challenge each other they drop their cloaks, as do duellists in other plays (cf. The Roaring Girl, III. i. 54). Since none of the couples is offstage for long between their exit from the hunt scene in Act IV and their return as brides and grooms to their wedding feast in Act V—about seventy-five lines for all three couples, with staggered exits and entrances—some modification of their Athens dress seems the most possible: flowers or favors worn by all, for the bridegrooms, dress cloaks and hats, and shoes instead of boots, and for the brides loose "hair" wigs instead of headtires or hoods. The costumes specified for "Pyramus and Thisby," those of Wall, Lion, and Moonshine, are so grotesque that those of Prologue, Thisby, and Pyramus were probably quite as absurd. Probably the costumes for the mechanicals' play were assembled from the oldest finery in the wardrobe and worn so that the "mechanical" costumes would show under the mantles and veils and distort their fit. In this situation, time for offstage costume change is unimportant, for if these actors were still squirming into their play-garb as they entered for their performance then they would be even funnier. The date of King John has yet to be satisfactorily determined, but it is usually placed somewhere not too far from Richard II, itself associated with Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night's Dream. Whatever the relative date of the two histories, they share the problem inherent in the genre: many characters and the concomitant extensive doubling. Richard II adds to this problem numerous changes of status, fortune, and activity for its title character and his antagonist Henry Bolingbroke; each needs at least three different costumes, and Richard may need more. This richness of costuming suggests that Richard II may be separated from King John by more time than usually thought, for King John's limited costume requirements are considerably closer to those of the Henry VI plays, Richard III, and Romeo and Juliet than to the opulence granted Richard II and the plays of the later 1590s. In King John the title character needs royal robes for the opening scene, military dress for the central acts, and the coif and night-gown of sickness for the final scenes. This probably meant that the actor had a basic suit over which could go appropriate overgarments: the robe and crown of a King in council for Act I, and a military cloak with a cuirass or gorget for the "Siege of Angers," which occupies all of what modern editions call

150

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

Act II and more than half of their Act III. John is absent for the long scenes between King Philip and Constance (Ill.iv, 183 lines) and Hubert and Arthur (IV.ii.i); he reenters in his royal robes, "once [again] crown'd" (IV.ii. 1), and retains these robes for the scene where he becomes the Pope's vassal, which Munday copied in The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. Editors make John "[give the crown]" as he speaks his entrance line, but the tense of the verb "Thus have I yielded" (V. i. 1, italics supplied) suggests that Pandulph enters with the crown in his hands, and delivers it to John after hisfirstspeech. When this scene ends, John is absent for 180 lines, and when he returns he is complaining of illness: This fever, that hath troubled me so long, Lies heavy on me. O, my heart is sick. (V.iii.3.4) These lines indicate that his last costume, the conventional night-gown and coif, symbolize not only the sickness of the King, but also of the land. Most male characters in King John need a basic costume that indicates rank—rich dress for the Kings, princes, and nobles and citizen garb for the men of Angers—and that can be modified quickly with weapons and armor for battle scenes. The English and French must have been visually distinguished; during the Angers scenes, Austria-Limoges is identified by the lion's skin he "stole" from the murdered Coeur-de-Lion, to which Faulconbridge's recurrent "calves skin" taunt draws prolonged attention. Yet, curiously, Faulconbridge takes from the slain Austria not this contentious skin but his head. Given the earlier fuss about the lion's skin, we might expect him to take and wear it as his prototype does in The Troublesome Reign of King John, as a trophy and as an heirloom from his father. Unlike Somerset's head in Henry VI Part 3, which "speaks" for Richard's prowess, Austria's is told "lie there/ While Philip breathes" (Ill.ii. 3-4) and seems forgotten when he exits. In Act I the Bastard and his brother may have worn plain suits like that of the Country Gentleman on the title page of Philaster.24 But since the Bastard's later scenes represent him as a soldier, his costume might have included the buff jerkin worn under armor. His loyal simplicity demands a plain and unchanging costume, altogether contrasted with the fine dress of the Kings and other nobles, even those who appear only in arms. Of the play's four women, three are widows and so visually associated through their costumes. A rich widow costume would be suitable for

151

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Queen Elinor, and, if styled like that of Lady Faulconbridge, would establish an immediate visual connection between them. The same actor could easily have doubled Lady Faulconbridge and Constance with minor change to the widow outfit to distinguish between the two; their similar costumes would also emphasize the ironic difference between Elinor's friendliness to her bastard grandson Phillip and his mother, and Elinor's hostility to her legitimate grandson Arthur and her son Geoffrey's widow. As a maiden, Blanche needs to look different from Elinor and Constance, and since her only function is to be a marriage pawn, her costume might suggest a bride's. The thematic function of their costumes perhaps overrode the journey convention of cloaks and safeguards for Lady Faulconbridge and for the three women at Limoges. The costume requirements of King John are in most respects sparer than those of Romeo and Juliet, themselves economical enough, and like those of the Henry VI plays and Richard III more closely resemble the symbolic costuming of moralities (including such late hybrids as The Three Ladies of London and A Looking Glass for London and England) than the more realistic dress of Romeo and Juliet, the early and middle comedies, and the Henry IV-Henry V plays. Richard II stands between old symbolism and newer realism, both of stage action and of costume. Often a scene which is true to Holinshed and looks like historical realism also looks like something out of the purest of Mankind moralities. As does King John, Richard II opens with the King in council, seated on his throne, robed and crowned and ready to give judgment, an opening to be used again in the first part of Henry IV. But in Richard II the scene is much more formally arranged than in King John and Henry TV. Bolingbroke and Mowbray stand symmetrically, like the saved and the damned in pictures of the Last Judgment, and the King handles the case differently than John does the Faulconbridge appeal or than Henry IV does the messages about Welsh and Scottish war and Percy insubordination. Despite the formality of staging and costume, and despite the resemblance to Corpus Christi and morality judgment scenes, Richard evades judging; instead he refers the quarrel to a future combat. Between this first scene and the third scene in the lists, the Duchess of Gloucester and Gaunt depict Richard as the unjust judge, killer of his uncle the Duke of Gloucester. The third scene puts Bolingbroke and Mowbray into armor, but probably leaves everyone else as before. As in the first scene the two combatants are placed symmetrically, one on either side of the throne, with Richard

152

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

in regalia between them. Though Mowbray exits quickly after his sentence of banishment (the actor must dress for a new part), Bolingbroke lengthens out his farewells, so he may be meant to disarm onstage and put on the cloak of a traveler. Whether or not he does so here, his next appearance late in Act II would have him and his companions wearing cloaks and boots. The farewell scene gives time to the actors of Aumerle and Richard, and any others formerly in ceremonial dress, to remove their outward dignity and reveal the extravagant finery of a prodigal's "riotous living" (as in Woodstock) in the informal and private fourth scene. Such dress would prepare the audience to agree with Gaunt's laments at the King's "rashfierceblaze of riot" (II.i.33) and his "thousand flatterers" (100), neither of which has so far been visible. Fine, even gaudy clothes would visually reinforce Richard's callous "Pray God we may make haste and come too late" (I.iv.64) when word comes of Gaunt's sickness. It would also foreshadow his instant and illegal confiscation of Gaunt's "plate, coin, revenues, and moveables" (II. i. 161), as well as the discussion of royal waste and confiscation among Northumberland and his supporters at the end of the scene. After Gaunt's death, Richard is absent from the stage for 462 lines, time needed for his change from court to military dress and for the actors of Mowbray and Gaunt to shift for other parts. Although the audience has seen Richard's power slipping away in each of the intervening scenes, and is already aware that he has no army and hardly a supporter but those who enter with him, Richard himself does not know this, so that a splendid costume, perhaps with a crowned helmet or even the crown of Act I, seems needed (like the hero's fine clothes in Everyman) to communicate his false sense of security. Unlike Constance in King John, who is dressed in mourning when she sits on the ground to grieve, the effect when Richard does the same (Ill.ii. 155) should be one of shock because his grieving occurs in royal garments. As York says of Richard in the next scene, "yet looks he like a king" (III.iii.68). In that scene, which closes with his literal and symbolic descent from "above" to submit to Bolingbroke, he first appears in the same central and dominant position as in Act I,flankedby two pairs of supporters, and raised above those who confront him. This time, however, the confronters are not symmetrical opponents whom the King judges, but allies against him. Though Bolingbroke kneels, it is to an eikon basilike. Northumberland's curtailed "Richard. . .hath hid his head" (6) and York's "yet looks he like a king" equally reveal the truth of

153

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

which Richard becomes aware: no matter what the gestures of deference, they are to the image of a King, virtually indistinguishable from his corpse making its passive entrance at the play's end. It is not clear whether Bolingbroke, Northumberland, and Aumerle are to change from their military-looking travel gear to something like parliament robes when they enter in Act IV, or even to change their long travel cloaks and boots for the shoes and gowns of a council scene. The 108 lines of the Queen and the gardeners allows something overfiveminutes for either change, but it may be that, like York and his followers in Henry VI Part 3, Bolingbroke and his companions show they are rebels by coming to a parliament in arms. This scene echoes the first, with a presiding officer and with challenges, but the rain of gloves at so many feet turns the echo to a comic parody, and while the throne stands where it did, Bolingbroke neither sits in it nor stands on its dais. Though as the central presiding character he is the one who permits the multiple challenges, a parody of his own scene of challenge at the beginning of the play, he should look no more splendid or exalted than the peers around him, however they are clad. Richard's costume for the deposition scene is specified neither in a direction nor in any speech. The evidence of other plays suggests that by the mid-i59os it was conventional for deposed Kings to lose royal insignia; Henry VI, Edward II, and Heywood's captive Edward IV all lose their kingly apparel with their crowns. When York announces Richard's willingness to abdicate, he calls him "plume-pluck'd Richard" (IV. i. 108), and both the amount of time that Richard is offstage (269 lines, almost fifteen minutes) and the apparent need to cover a longish absence by spinning out the challenge scene, imply a complete change of his basic costume. After abdication Richard is sent to the Tower, about as far as a Shakespearean King can fall, so he must then look fallen. Earlier he has imagined a religious retirement: I'll give my jewels for a set of beads, My gorgeous palace for a hermitage; My gay apparel for an almsman's gown. (III. iii. 147-49) A garment of humiliation seems appropriate, but when Richard enters all the regalia seem to come with him. Plainly he is not wearing the crown, for he bids someone, "Give me the crown" (IV. ii. 181), so he can force

154

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

Bolingbroke to seize it. Evidently Bolingbroke grasps it as Richard wishes, and yet nothing is said about what is later done with it. Since Bolingbroke orders his coronation "on Wednesday next" (319) as the scene is ending, he is unlikely to have placed it on his head. Although modern editors insert a direction for "officers" to carry "the regalia" (Arden), "the crown &c." (Kittredge), or "the crown and sceptre" (Riverside), nothing in the speeches suggests so ceremonial an entrance for Richard. Bolingbroke merely sends York to fetch him. While neither the quartos nor the Folio do more than direct or command his entrance, Richard's own speeches imply an entrance wearing the royal robes. This is compatible with his image of himself as the betrayed Jesus, returning in a "purple robe" from Herod to Pilate. Perhaps the robe was put on "disorderly," and York carried the other regalia until Richard asked for the crown. After forcing it on his cousin, he might even have placed it on his own head for his next act, and propounded his own tragedy: Now, mark me how I will undo myself. I give this heavy weight from off my head, And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand. .. I have given here my soul's consent T'undeck the pompous body of a king. (203-50)

Other things he gives are intangible ("the pride of kingly sway," "my sacred state" [206, 209]) or could not be shown onstage ("balm... manors, rents, revenues... acts, decrees, and statutes" [207, 212-13]). His garments, however, stand for kingship, and if he casts them off they make invisible and intangible regalia seem as real as the robes. Under these, presumably, Shakespeare meant his deposed King to wear plain doublet and hose, far different from his finery when he mocked John of Gaunt and confiscated his property. Probably Richard was to keep this unregal costume for his two remaining scenes, since a monkish robe would impede the actor when he must fight convincingly with Exton and his men. Bolingbroke may in fact never have a scene in which he must wear the crown. Since he exchanges status with Richard as King, some change in his costume after the deposition scene seems demanded. Yet, because the entire play shows he is a different kind of man and King than his predecessor, his businesslike, even informal manner argues against his wearing regalia. The most likely costume for King Henry seems a rich gown and a

155

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

fine hat, little different from what noblemen might wear in scenes with a working monarch. On his first entrance as King he has few attendants and is anxiously inquiring for his "unthrifty son" before being left with Aumerle for a scene of domestic comedy. The final scene does open with a "flourish" for his entrance with lords to hear reports of multiple executions and to sentence the captured Carlisle to the "reverent doom" of cloistered life that Richard once wished for. This scene looks like routine summing-up, but is suddenly transformed when Exton enters with a climactic "message," the coffin of "Richard of Bordeaux." This amounts to a final costume change for Richard, and by it he may be said to triumph. The two parts of Henry TV handle their historical and comic material so freshly that some new invention for costume management might be expected. But for the "serious" parts of the play, costumes used in Richard II, indeed in King John, Richard III, and the Henry VI plays, would serve the most expensive needs: royal robes and crown for King Henry in the opening scene, a rich suit with a gown and hat for less formal civil acts, and military gear with coat armor for Shrewsbury and the scenes leading to it. The nobles need rich suits with gowns or short cloaks and hats for the civil scenes, and war gear like the King's, with identifying painted coats and shields, for Shrewsbury. Since Hotspur so denigrates the silken courtier who demanded his prisoners after Holmedon, his costume is evidently like the Bastard's: the plainest of soldierly gear, unchanged "honest kersey" or buff. To this for the battle of Shrewsbury would be added some armor, and his Percy coat and shield. Some of the coat armor may have been new, depending upon how accurate the Chamberlain's Men chose to be about the heraldry of extinct noble families. One of the coats with the royal arms for Shrewsbury may have come from Richard II, but since Blunt dies in a coat like the King's, and the "dead" actor still lies onstage when King Henry squares off with Douglas, a second royal coat had to be provided. Prince Hal and Prince John also appear in arms at Shrewsbury, their coats probably differenced from the King's and from each other's. Again, new acquisitions seem likely. Even though the Welsh are onstage for only one scene, Shakespeare takes so much trouble to insist on their alienness that Glendower and his daughter probably wore new costumes. In Edward I, a Welsh character is "in flannel"; in Merry Wives Falstaff calls Sir Hugh Evans "the Welsh flannel" and associates him with "frize." Since these cheap woollens so regularly characterize the Welsh, it seems likely that Glendower and his daughter would have worn them, and so perhaps might Mortimer, although his relationship to Richard II in both

156

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

blood and character could also have meant dressing him in a court suit. Unlike the court and camp, the Boar's Head crew required no new garments; indeed, Bardolph, Peto, the Hostess, and perhaps even Poins could be dressed in old costumes according to their class. Falstaff, of course, needed a special outsize padded costume, although I think David Wiles has misread Henslowe's abbreviated -es as a final -e in "giente" when he says that the buckram "giente hosse" which Kempe ordered for Worcester's Men in 1602 "must surely have been intended for the neoFalstaffian role of Sir John of Wrotham in Oldcastle,"25 a costume that imitated Kempe's Falstaff outfit with the Chamberlain's Men. None of these characters needs a costume change, though Falstaff, Ambidexter-like, adds burlesque military equipment to his basic outfit. One addition is the alleged pistol which "The Prince draws. . . out and finds. . .to be a bottle of

sack" (V.iii.sD 55). The "cases of buckram" which Poins supplies "to immask our noted outward garments" (I.ii. 175) are quick (and inexpensive) disguise costumes. His lines suggest that, except for his buckram guise, Hal is meant to remain in one costume until he and Westmoreland meet Falstaff on the road to Shrewsbury. This seems a better place to show Hal armed as a hero-prince than the earlier scene where he and Poins enter "marching" and "Falstaff meets him, playing upon his truncheon like a fife"

(III.iii.SD 86). With the rest of the Boar's Head crew, Poins disappears after this scene which recalls the tavern highjinks of Act II, for none of them has a place in the heroic world where Hal kills Hotspur. Like other Second Parts, Henry IV Part 2 uses the costumes of Part 1, except for such new character types as Rumor and Pistol. Rumor's costume, "painted full of tongues" (I.LSD) replaces the usual black cloak of Prologues, and Pistol, a particularly shabby miles gloriosus, needs the scarves, galligaskins (wide hose or breeches), and feathers usual in such parts. Skinny Master Shallow is a "lean and slippered pantaloon" (AYL Il.vii. 158), and Sinkclo, who created the role, may have been dressed in clothes too young for his years and too loose for his body. The aged Master Silence is close to the "last scene of all" of Jacques's chronicle; his costume might then be the gown of old age with a coif and nightcap, perhaps those remaining from King]ohn and Richard II. Though the play goes by his name, King Henry hardly appears; he enters for the first time at the beginning of Act III "in his night-gown" and probably the coif of sickness. In the two scenes of Act IV which complete his appearances he must wear the same costume, since he is sick when he enters and is carried out dying at their close. Probably King Henry's cos-

157

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

tume and that of Master Silence were meant to recall each other, might even have been the same. In the first four acts Hal has no costume change, except the briefly-assumed jerkin and apron of a drawer (this play's more realistic equivalent to the buckram of Part i) to gull Falstaff. As he quits the tavern for the last time, Hal exchanges these onstage for his princely "sword and cloak" (II.iv.366). Then in Act V Hal becomes Henry V. He is absent for the first 126 lines of this act, the first eightyfive of which are a prose scene likely to be extended by Shallow's slow delivery. Those scenes which follow might be drawn out by realistic business and the "sensation" greeting Pistol's message so that the actor of Hal might have almost ten minutes to change to a more princely suit and cloak, perhaps in the purple of royal mourning. After the new King's scene with the Lord Chief Justice, he is off for three scenes amounting to 172 lines, one of which includes a prolongable struggle between Doll and the officers. These provide as much as ten minutes for the King and all the nobles to don coronation robes. Together they "pass over the stage" (V.v.5 SD) to the coronation, followed almost immediately by Falstaff and his crew in stained boots and cloaks. Some thirty-five lines later, the King returns crowned and sceptred with the "train," to meet and reject Falstaff. Probably the Lord Chief Justice and Prince John exit with the train, then doff their coronation splendor before reentering for their police job of bearing Falstaff to the Fleet with "all his company" (V.v.92). If they are near the head of the procession they get a couple of minutes to divest themselves of ceremonial garments and return by the same door, perhaps some minutes more if the royal train included backstage personnel as well as all the available actors. In The Merchant of Venice, Portia and Nerissa's male disguises are obvious costume changes which had been conventional for years. Much more interesting is the men's costuming which combines traditional expressive change with the more recent development of realistic change for decorum. Of additional interest is the provision of time made for their clothing changes. During his first private moments with Antonio, Bassanio admits to "showing a more swelling port/Than my faint means would grant continuance" and to "great debts" which he has been "something too prodigal" in incurring (I. i. 124-29). His phrasing may understate his case; garments resembling the "poor habits" of The Disobedient Child seem likely for him. Though Shylock calls Bassanio "the prodigal Christian," he calls Antonio "prodigal" too. Because the word does not fit Antonio,

158

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

neither can we judge his description of Bassanio as accurate. Nothing reliably indicates that Bassanio has been reduced to a "coat torn" or to Wellborn's dirty tatters. Bassanio needs the money borrowed from Antonio, or rather from Shylock on Antonio's credit, so as to appear at Belmont in the fine clothes decorum would prescribe for the suitor of a lady like Portia. (So Marrall in A New Way to Pay Old Debts offers Wellborn £20 to buy a decent suit to court Lady Allworth and Overreach later returns his fine clothes so he will look right as her suitor.) Bassanio thus does not need to explain what the money will pay for when he tells Antonio he needs it: .. . had I but the means To hold a rival place.. . I have a mind presages me such thrift That I should questionless be fortunate. (Li. 173-76) After he, Antonio, and Shylock agree on the loan and the bond, in his next scene he is accompanied by servants to whom he is giving orders about liveries and other purchases: . . . put the liveries to making . . . Give [Launcelot] a livery More guarded than his fellows'... . good Leonardo;. .. These things being bought and orderly bestow'd Return in haste. (II.ii.116-71) Announcing Bassanio's messenger to Portia, her servant implies that Bassanio himself will enter in fine clothes: Madam, there is alighted at your gate A young Venetian, one that comes before To signify th' approaching of his lord, From whom he bringeth sensible regreets, To wit, besides commends and courteous breath, Gifts of rich value. Yet 1 have not seen So likely an ambassador of love.

159

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

A day in April never came so sweet, To show how costly summer was at hand, As this fore-spurrer comes before his lord. (II. ix. 86-95) Only this bountiful language creates Bassanio's company, for in the Belmont scenes the stage directions show he is accompanied only by Gratiano and perhaps Launcelot, whose guarded livery reveals his status as a fool. For Belmont, both Bassanio and Gratiano must be recostumed in finer clothing than they wore in Act I, and, as in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare supplies time for the changes. The scenes showing Jessica's elopement and Portia's two failed suitors give more than ample scope for a complete change to rich and fashionable clothing. Antonio is a "royal merchant," and in 1590s London the adjective would evoke the "rich, not gaudy" attire of a Mercer, Grocer, or Draper eligible to be Lord Mayor, contrasted with the "gallant" apparel of Bassanio and Gratiano, the usurer Shylock's "Jewish gaberdine," and the masking habits of Lorenzo and his party when they fetch Jessica. After his arrest and at his trial, a change to poor or shabby garments seems needed to visually express the reversal of Antonio's fortunes, though the text does not demand it, as it does for Bassanio and his followers. Shylock applies the word "prodigal" to both Bassanio and Antonio, so the switch of the first from poor to rich garments and of the second from rich garments to poor would emphasize the reversed status of these friends and kinsmen. For the final scene at Belmont, a change for Antonio from a "poor prodigal" costume to new garments after his sudden change of fortune is in keeping with a recurrent motif for arrival at Belmont; everyone who comes there for the first time does so in fine new clothes. (Even the "oddly-suited" Englishman Falconbridge of Portia's description seemingly wears new garments, though bought piece by piece on his travels.) Morocco, Aragon, and Bassanio arrive in splendor, and Jessica, who changes from the garb of a Jewess to that of a boy for her elopement, comes to Belmont newly dressed as a Christian wife. Shakespeare carefully provides time both for the costume changes demanded by the dialogue and those implied by costume conventions. The actor of Jessica, allowed no more than two minutes to change costume from girl to boy, must climb steps the while. To have been able to change clothes this quickly, Jessica may have first worn something like Shylock's "Jewish gaberdine," which the actor could quickly remove to uncover the

160

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

boy's suit worn beneath. The actor of Nerissa gets III.v (ninety lines) and the first 115 lines of IV. i, a little over ten minutes, to change from a gentlewoman to a lawyer's clerk. To become Doctor Balthazar, Portia gets fifty extra lines, needed to remove a lady's more elaborate garb. At least one function of Lorenzo and Jessica's idyl in the Belmont gardens is to allow Portia and Nerissa time to change from their disguises back into feminine clothes. Since this idyl lasts only eighty-eight lines, the return to women's apparel may have been managed by the safeguards and cloaks of travelers atop doublet and hose, and hoods or headtires instead of lawyers' caps. The music Lorenzo commands at V.i.65 is to play until Portia cries "Peace!" in line 109, and could continue should there be backstage delays in the short time provided for the actors to change their "outward shows." The ring business in Venice and the entrance of the men thirty-five lines after that of Portia and Nerissa would give the actor of Antonio ninetyfive more lines for a change from poor to rich apparel, though this does not prove a complete change of costume, since a long velvet gown could conceal a "poor" suit, and with a new hat would adequately show his restoration.

Plays belonging to the last third of the 1590s reveal that late in the decade Shakespeare and the few other playwrights for the Chamberlain's Men were much freer than before to ask for costume changes and to prescribe particular kinds of garments and specific articles of apparel. That the company wardrobe was considerably larger than when they moved into Burbage's Theatre in 1594 and that the company was willing to buy new costumes, even to have an occasional costume specially made, as for "Rumor painted full of tongues" or for Hymen, can be seen in the two parts of Henry IV, in Much Ado, and As You Like It, as well as in Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour and still more in Every Man Out. These plays, it should be recalled, belong to the years in which the Admiral's Men increased their spending for new plays and new costumes. Few plays by writers other than Shakespeare survive from the Chamberlain's repertory; most of his can be dated from the months after James Burbage had sunk family capital into Blackfriars and further capital to build the Globe.26 These plays, staged at the Curtain, seem to demand more parsimony in spectacle than across the river at the Rose, although Shakespeare converts what could have been a disadvantage into the

161

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

high art of As You Like It and Henry V. Except for Jonson's two humor comedies, Every Man In (1598) and Every Man Out (1599), the nonShakespeare plays of the Chamberlain's Men are anonymous and survive in poor texts. A Warning for Fair Women (printed 1599), A Larum for London (registered 1600), and Thomas Lord Cromwell (registered 1602) probably all came to the stage much earlier than their printing. A Warning for Fair Women, like Arden of Feversham (printed 1592), dramatizes a crime, the murder of a London citizen by his wife and her lover, and their detection and punishment. Some lost Admiral's plays of 1597-99—Alice Pierce, The Woman's Tragedy, Pierce of Winchester, The Stepmother's Tragedy, Cox of Collumpton, and Thomas Merry—are thought to have concerned similar crimes, and suggest a fashion for plays on adultery and murder. Whether the Chamberlain's Men were meeting the competition or whether their success with A Warning provoked imitation is not clear. The Admiral's did spend considerable money on Pierce of Winchester, largely for costumes. A Warning shows little sign of expense, since its characters are mainly like minor figures of the Henry VI/Richard III tetralogy, Romeo and Juliet, or A Larum for London. This last play shows some affinities with the extant version of Stukeley. Both include a set of characters named Sancto Danila and D'Alva, who function, speak, and act similarly. As printed, A Larum is only 1660 lines long, and requires costume changes only for doubling secondary and minor parts. While some of its scenes appear to have been lost, this does not seem to have affected the number of the play's characters. Five actors are unlikely to have doubled: those who played Sancto Danila, D'Alva, Van Ende, the English Governor, and Vaughan, a Brabanter nicknamed Stump. Stump's wooden leg, like "Kentes woden leage" in the Henslowe inventory (Diary 320), is a special property. His costume is evidently shabby, since he complains of the poverty caused by the ingratitude and avarice of those he defends. Three Dutch nobles, Champagne, Haruey, and Egmont, die or disappear in midplay. Civilians of all ages and both sexes appear in single scenes, as do soldiers. Few of these citizens and soldiers are memorable or even have names, but it is important to be able to distinguish Spanish, Almaign, and Wallon soldiers, so they must have been costumed differently, though not necessarily in authentic dress. Antwerp's citizens are proud, gluttonous, and avaricious; it is their wealth that motivates Sancto Danila, Van Ende, and D'Alva to massacre them and sack their city, actions which they justify as punishment for the citizens' pride. This indicates that the citizens wore rich costumes, the

162

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

women's adorned with jewels like those which three soldiers strip from the governor's wife. Since the play is represented as a warning for London, and is framed by speeches of Time which point a moral to "all Cittyes. . . how they in sinne and pleasure take delight" (1677-78), these costumes probably were those of wealthy Londoners. Thomas Lord Cromwell (reg. August 1602) looks as if a two-part play like Heywood's Edward IV 1 and 2 has been cobbled into one, and in this form it was printed as "lately acted" soon after its registration. Cromwell's progress from a poor scholar to a robbery victim to a royal secretary to a councillor is marked by changed garments, as in plays of all genres for over a century. When robbed in Florence, he and his servant Hodge enter in their shirts. The merchant Friskiball, meeting them, takes them in to reclothe them. The new garments he gives them display Friskiball's charity, not Cromwell's improved status. Possibly Cromwell (though not Hodge) gets a better suit than he had, for his subsequent promotions come so rapidly that the actor would have no time to change the underlying costume for the ever-richer gowns, hats, and emblems of office he is so soon to be gaining. Later his fall is shown by the removal of his latest robes of office. Between his arrest and his reentry "in the Tower" a short scene of citizens creates time to remove these, but the suit visible when he enters without the robes must be rich, so as to show why he has been envied by the nobles and is killed with their connivance. Cromwell's changes of fortune are paralleled by those of the English merchant Banister and the Italian merchant Friskiball. Banister is a victim of malicious persecution who grows poorer and poorer, until with Cromwell's aid he recovers his former state. Friskiball is first a rich man, like Shakespeare's Antonio. After he is impoverished by losses like Antonio's, Cromwell makes the losses good in gratitude for Friskiball's charity. One comic scene depends on an onstage change, when the clown Hodge exchanges garments with the Earl of Bedford. Hodge's clown costume enables Bedford to escape from Italian assassins, but nothing results onstage except Hodge's clown act while incongruously clad in the earl's rich garments; the scene looks like an imitation of Christopher Sly's behavior when dressed in a lord's clothes. At the end of the play Bedford is evidently back in his original costume and Hodge has vanished. The Merry Devil of Edmonton has been dated 1603, but its indebtedness to Faustus and its resemblance to Porter's Two Angry Women of Abingdon and Shakespeare's hierry Wives indicate a date up to five years earlier. It does little with costume change, although the script confirms that the

163

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Chamberlain's Men had two safeguards and two women's travel cloaks, garments also needed in Merchant of Venice and perhaps, earlier, in Midsummer Night's Dream. Whether the anonymous author prescribed these travel costumes knowing they were in the company's wardrobe, or expected any company to own them, cannot be settled since there is no evidence about which play needing them was written first. The common dress code to show travel in so many plays,27 however, suggests they were stock garments. Because Henslowe's records list so many plays acted by the Admiral's Men, it is often assumed that the Chamberlain's Men mounted new plays with the same speed as the men at the Rose and that the few nonShakespeare scripts are the pitiful survivors of a much larger repertory. Unrecorded losses cannot be proved of course, but we do know that the Chamberlain's Men were managed rather differently from other companies; their principal actor and his family owned two of the theatres they played in, and company sharers held major interests in the third. Their scripts indicate that their costume practices also differed somewhat from those of the Admiral's Men. These practices, and the distinctiveness of the plays Shakespeare wrote for them, suggest that Henslowe's records may not furnish good analogies for the number and kind of plays in their repertory, or to their stock of properties and costumes. Whether the Chamberlain's or the Admiral's Men led the way in more sumptuous costuming is not clear, but after 1597, albeit for different reasons, both companies were committed to major expenditures at the same time as their income was reduced. In 1597 some of the Admiral's sharers defected for a time to Pembroke's Men at Francis Langley's Swan Theatre, and, before they returned, their fellows had to pay Langley considerable money, some of it for costumes. The Privy Council forbade all playing from August until October in punishment for Pembroke's Men's scandalous Isle of Dogs, and during this shutdown the Admiral's Men suffered a further loss when Edward Alleyn "left playing." (Henslowe's Diary shows that the Admiral's Men were then in debt not only to him but also to their suppliers, debt not fully cleared until after they had become Prince Henry's Men in 1603.) Meanwhile, in 1598, the Burbages, perhaps anticipating the approaching end of their lease in Shoreditch, fitted up Blackfriars as a playhouse, only to be denied the use of it. Although the sharers put up funds to demolish the Theatre and rebuild it on the bankside as the Globe, in the interim they had to play at the smaller Curtain on what seems (from the evidence of Henry V) to have been a very

164

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

basic kind of stage. The boy company at Paul's may have begun playing commercially as early as the autumn of 1597,28 and although their playhouse was hardly large enough to draw off an appreciable part of the Chamberlain's Men's audience, 29 it stood much closer than the Curtain to the Inns of Court and Whitehall, more convenient for the most leisured and affluent part of their audience. Both the Chamberlain's and the Admiral's Men seem to have reacted to their difficulties by putting on more new plays and setting them forth in finer style. But the Admiral's Men invested heavily in spectacle, while the Chamberlain's Men, probably guided by Shakespeare, seem to have turned their imagination to increased variety in the plays they put on and to stage effects that would cost little: more songs and dances, new kinds of characters who could wear old costumes gone shabby, and plays whose new costumes were not very expensive. Jonson's Every Man in His Humour became part of the Chamberlain's Men's repertory in August or September 1598, during what must have been the most anxious time about investment in playing places. The Blackfriars had been denied them and the trouble about the Theatre was not yet resolved. While it is unlikely that Jonson wrote his play on the model of commedia erudita as an economy measure, the restriction of characters to the middle and lower classes meant costumes ranging from the modest to the shabby, while the unity of time minimized costume change. The only character who changes his entire costume is Musco. His original garment is a servant's blue coat, while his many disguises are constructed from stock apparel, some of it old and none of it costly: the dress of a discharged soldier, that stripped off Doctor Clement's man Peto while he is drunk, and the "varlets suit" (V.ii.2) he is wearing when he flings away his disguise. Nothing is said about what he wears "uncased," but perhaps it is hose and a waistcoat. In the Folio revision of the play the varlet's suit is replaced by a "Serjeants gowne" (IV.xi.2). This change was not motivated by Jonson's literary purpose in revising the whole play, but by stage practicality; a suit was an awkward disguise, especially if it had to be doffed suddenly, but a gown could be dropped in an instant. A last comic costume change brings Peto into Doctor Clement's court wearing armor that "hung in the roome where they stript me, and I borrowed it of on of the drawers now in the euening to come home in" (V.iii. 229-31). Other characters realistically put on cloaks to go out or remove them for action, as when Thorello calls for his cloak when leaving the house on business (III. 1.6), or when Giuliano casts off his to beat Bobadilla, then

165

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

forgets it in his rage so that Stephano can find and appropriate it. When Clement is told that "a soldier" (Bobadilla) has come to speak with him, he calls for "my armour, my sworde, quickly. .. hold my cap there, so; giue me my gorget, my sword" (V.iii. 40-43). The gorget was symbolic of full armor, as in some portraits (Essex's, Sir Henry Lee's; and Sidney's),30 and produces a comic contrast when Peto, thrust into old armor that had hung as a tavern decoration, makes his appearance. Jonson seems to have known one other article in the wardrobe, for he specifies that Giuliano "goes in a cloake most commonly of silke russet, layd about with russet lace" (IV. iv.58-59) and is more likely to have seen this in the theatre than to have invented it. "Russet" is a clown's color, which may have led Jonson to prescribe it for the rustic squire, but silk with lace trim is gentleman's wear, the reason Stephano, the would-be gentleman, decides he wants this cloak. Like Every Man in His Humour, Much Ado may have been written for the 1598-99 season, which would make it another Curtain play. Its costume requirements, however, are by no means so modest. Its main characters are people of rank: two princes, a count, a royal governor, and his niece and daughter, all of whom would need fine clothes. Its smallish cast means that few roles were doubled, only Balthasar, Verges, and messengers and attendants, whose costumes did not need to be fine. No costume changes are used for disguise, though in two scenes several characters wear masks, and there is no need for costumes showing a new moral condition or mental state. For much of the play the costumes could have come from stock, sometimes veteran stock. But Acts II and III are so full of talk about new clothes and fine clothes that Shakespeare must have planned on new costumes for the play's great occasion, Hero's wedding in Act IV. In Act I, Don Pedro's party enter "from wars." This indicates boots and cloaks with such military tokens as gorgets and the scarves worn by both real soldiers and braggarts like Parolles in All's Well. Benedick, if no others, is "bearded like the pard" (AYL Il.vii. 150). For Leonato's impromptu celebration in the first scene of Act II, these returned soldiers need only change their tokens of past "action" for the short cloaks and shoes of indoor wear and the masks of festivity. Since the second and third scenes of Act I (twenty-five and seventy prose lines) hardly give time for any major costume changes, Leonato's household probably was to retain its firstscene costumes. This is turned to good dramatic account, since trading

166

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

military gear for masks indicates peaceful festivity, while the unchanged dress of Leonato's household emphasizes domestic informality. Early in the play the identities of characters need to be fixed in the audience's memory, so when Leonato's household put on masks and Pedro's party enter in masquerade the audience can correlate costumes with the names as characters guess each other's identities. Ursula persis' tently names Antonio, who persistently denies who he is. Because Antonio has not been in the first scene and is only identified as "brother" in the brief second, she is placing him for his later importance as Leonato's coadjutor and surrogate. The quarto and folio speech prefixes call Margaret's partner "Bene," and "Bait," which modern editions may "correct" to "Borachio" because he later claims he has caught her interest. But the fact that in their badinage Margaret does not guess her partner's identity (not Benedick, who is dancing with Beatrice) suggests that he is an unimportant figure and that Borachio has stood silently by with Don John until needed to name the one remaining "visor" as Claudio. Evidently Shakespeare felt it essential to insist on this character's importance, even though he has often been named in the first scene. After Borachio identifies him, John addresses him as "Signior Benedick" (II. i. 149), and Claudio answers to the misnaming. He then gives a short soliloquy which asserts his real identity: Thus answer I in name of Benedick, But hear these ill news with the ear of Claudio. (IL. i.172-73) Benedick's first words on reentry are "Count Claudio?" (178). Claudio is thus still masked, probably to motivate the question. Repeated insistence that this is Claudio and not Benedick must surely be with the intent of keeping their identities as clear as possible, even though later information shows that their costumes are different. Hero's coming wedding to Claudio, a week after their betrothal, joins Pedro's plot to bring Benedick and Beatrice together as occasions for most of the characters to talk about new clothes. Benedick muses in soliloquy upon Claudio's transformation from soldier to lover: I have known when he would have walk'd ten mile afoot to see a good armour, and now will he lie ten nights awake carving the

167

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

fashion of a new doublet.... I will not be sworn but love may transfrom me to an oyster, but... till he have made [an] oyster of me, he shall never make me such a fool. (II. iii. 15-26) Two scenes later Benedick is also a lover, and Pedro teases him about his "strange disguises, as to be a Dutchman today, a Frenchman tomorrow, or in the shape of two countries at once, as to be a German from the waist downward, all slops, and a Spaniard from the hip upward, no doublet" (III.ii.32-37). Braggarts like Armado, Parolles, and Bobadilla wear similar "strange disguises," especially full-cut, slashed, and bombasted "slops," and may vociferously repudiate love and/or conspicuously fail at it. But Pedro and Claudio are teasing Benedick because he now "looks younger than he did by the loss of a beard" which "hath already stuffed tennis-balls," this forcing them to conclude "the sweet youth's in love" (46-49). Pedro concedes that there is no other "appearance of fancy in him" (31-32); indeed, so drastic a change to his face as the loss of his beard suggests that he is not meant to change his costume, for that this is Benedick and not a new character must be clear from the start. Because Pedro speaks of him by name, but not to him, and because his facial appearance has changed dramatically, the audience needs the visual clue of his costume to recognize him. The scene which begins with Benedick's new look ends with the setting of John's trap. In the next scene Borachio drunkenly boasts to Conrade of how he has "earn'd of Don John a thousand ducats" (III. iii. 1078), then digresses to how "the fashion of a doublet, or a hat, or a cloak, is nothing to a man" and "what a deformed thief this fashion is, how giddily 'a turns about all the hot-bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty" (117-33). Since in neither of these scenes does the context require all this talk about clothes, the talk must be intended for a larger purpose, the most likely of which is to prepare for costume changes in the upcoming wedding. Nor are these scenes the only ones to include such preparation. When Hero and Ursula have played their part in gulling Beatrice, they exit to look at "some attires" (III.i. 102). On the wedding day, Hero's dressing gets a whole scene, its dialogue largely devoted to clothes. Margaret insists that "your other rebato were better," but likes "the new tire within excellently" and describes at length "the Duchess of Milan's gown that they praise so" (III. iv.6-16). She then praises Hero's own dress as far finer, whetting the audience's appetite to see it. A few lines later Hero

168

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

displays "the gloves the Count sent me" (60), and the women exit on her line, "Help to dress me" (98). In the scenes after the wedding there is no such talk about clothes. Dogberry does boast of his "two gowns," and Pedro moralizes, "What a pretty thing man is when he goes in his doublet and hose and leaves off his wit!" (V.i. 199-200); Borachio tells how they "saw me court Margaret in Hero's garments" (237-38). After the dirge at Leonato's monument, Pedro tells the mourners to "put on other weeds" (V.iii.30) for Claudio's wedding, and before the men enter Leonato bids the ladies, "come hither masked" (V.iv. 12). These later speeches function mainly as stage directions. It appears, then, that if so many characters talk so much about clothing when the decorum of a wedding is about to require "best apparel," the audience is being prepared to see familiar characters in a costume spectacular of exceptional finery. Shakespeare had staged upper class weddings before Much Ado, though never the actual ceremony. In Midsummer Night's Dream he shows the wedding feast with the characters in "best apparel," and in Merchant of Venice the bridegrooms at least are dressed in new finery when they leave the casket chamber for the church. Juliet's consultation with the nurse about what she should wear for her wedding to Paris shows that the Capulets did plan to follow the "best apparel" convention. What is different about Much Ado is the scope of its wedding's costume changes. At least six characters, Pedro, Leonato, Claudio, Benedick, Hero, and Beatrice, require new clothes, though not the melancholy John, whose costume, even at the wedding, is likely to have been black. Besides the preparation for a grand wedding's costume spectacle, all these characters are provided a lengthy time offstage—between 325 and 400 lines, from fifteen to twenty minutes apiece—before they enter in wedding clothes. There is, in addition, much clever manipulation of staggered exits and entrances and much clever use of cover-ups, so that the stage action remains continuous. When the newly risen Hero and Beatrice enter in night-gowns, they have been absent for 325 lines, and their loose robes can cover the wedding costumes put on during this interval; Leonato's subsequent sixty-line scene with Dogberry, probably extended by Dogberry's ceremonious gestures, gives the women time to remove the night-gowns and put on headdresses, ruffs, and favors, and to pick up other wedding tokens such as gloves and rosemary or flowers. Earlier, Benedick with Leonato, then Pedro and Claudio with John, have left the stage for various purposes, so they get the scenes of the Watch and Hero's dressing, and, for the young

169

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

men, also Leonato's interview with Dogberry, to put on wedding clothes and tokens. This distribution permits the dressing area to remain uncrowded and the tireman not to be overburdened. Antonio, Margaret, and Ursula disappear into mute roles among the "attendants"; as background figures they were unlikely to receive new costumes, but could wear or carry wedding favors, sprigs of rosemary, and gloves. After the disaster at the wedding, whose irony fine clothes enhance much as Juliet's "best robes" do Romeo's death scene and her own, the wedding participants who appear in later scenes were probably to revert to ordinary costume, if only for decorum in the "mourning ostentation" advised by Friar Francis (IV. i. 205). Perhaps Hero's next of kin (Leonato, Antonio, and Beatrice) were to assume tokens of mourning, although these could not be either funeral garb or full black, since a private wedding is quickly to follow. Those characters who most need to change out of wedding finery get ample time offstage, about 200-300 lines or ten to fifteen minutes, enough to remove their more elaborate garments and put on simpler clothes. While these changes are being made, the focus shifts to Dogberry's discovery and revelation of the truth, and a wedding is arranged for Claudio with a fictitious daughter of Antonio. The new wedding might be costumed fairly easily in the costumes of the old—John disappears forever, and Hero remains hidden till the last scene so neither needs an intervening costume change—and most of the chief participants have time enough to change back. Claudio and his fellows do receive only thirty lines offstage between their penance at Hero's "tomb" and their reentry for the wedding, but for the tomb scene they probably dressed in hooded funeral gowns or cloaks, which could easily hide wedding suits and favors and be changed quickly for dress cloaks and hats. Because this wedding is irregular, however, taking place in virtual masquerade, it should probably be costumed like the domestic fete in Act II, especially since, like the first part of that scene, it concludes with a dancing exit. Restricting the number of times the best costumes of the play must be put on and removed makes economic sense, since it minimizes the wear costumes suffer when they are changed in a hurry. The choruses of Henry V have often been interpreted as apologies for the deficiencies in general of the Elizabethan stage. Its performance in the spring or summer of 1599, however, was at the Curtain, a theatre more modest in size and equipment than the demolished Theatre and the rising Globe. Shakespeare compensates for these temporary deficiencies in two ways: by the appeal of the Choruses to the imagination, and by costume.

170

T H E COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

Although no evidence remains that the Chamberlain's Men anticipated Olivier in clothing the English and French in different colors, the text shows that the two nations were in fact dressed differently, the Frenchmen's attire perhaps more "costly. . . expressed in fancy,. . . land] gaudy" (Hamlet I.iii.70'71) than the English. In the opening scene, two English bishops are going to a formal council that will give audience to the French ambassadors. For the decorum of the occasion they must be clad in the canonicals of their office, for the noble councillors would be wearing ceremonial robes and the King his robe and crown, as in the opening scenes of Richard II and Henry IV Part 1. Although the ambassadors' business in England is serious, it concludes jestingly when Exeter opens the Dolphin's "tun of treasure" and discovers "tennis balls, my liege" (Henry V ii. 255, 258). This mocking gift suggests that French ambassadorial finery was more like the finery of silly courtiers—for example, LeBeau in As You Like It, Fastidius Briske in Every Man Out of His Humour, or Osric in Hamlet—than the dignified robes of Exeter and the other English. Fanciful apparel in the French court scene in Act II is also implied by the tone of the debate, especially the Dolphin's glib mockeries, although the French King, historically mad, is given rational and sober language. When Exeter enters as ambassador he is probably wearing the same rich robes as he wore when he opened the tennis balls, his garments as expressive of the decorum of his office as his words. The scenes in the French camp on the night before Agincourt present nobles more interested in the appearance of their horses and armor than in the fight they expect to win so quickly—"By ten/We shall have each a hundred Englishmen" (III.vii. 156-57). Meanwhile they flatter the Dolphin to his face and sneer at him when he goes. Prepared for battle, Orleans notices how "the sun doth gild our armour" (IV.ii. 1). The Constable even expects their "fair show" to win the battle for them, since the English "ill-favouredly become the morning field" (40). The English are no longer richly clad; even the King must be wearing "war-worn" clothes like the coats of his soldiers (IV. Chorus. 26), though for his encounter at night with Pistol and the three common soldiers he probably conceals tokens of his identity beneath the cloak borrowed from Erpingham. Everything in the Agincourt scenes shows that the King seeks to be on an equal footing with his soldiers: his night walk without even the one attendant who accompanies such disguised Kings as those in George a Green and Edward IV Part 1, his soliloquy's disparagement of "idol ceremony," his

171

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

promise to the three soldiers that "it is no English treason to cut French crowns, and tomorrow the King himself will be a clipper" (IV. i.233-35), and even his practical joke on Fluellen and Williams after the battle. In some ways the arrangements for costume change in Henry V are those time-honored in prodigal plays as far back as Magnificence in the days of Cardinal Wolsey. The English begin Henry V in the "rich robes and furr'd gowns" of peace. In Act II and at the beginning of Act III the choruses refer to new armor and to the fleet's "silken streamers" (III.Chorus.6). But most of Act II is about French attempts to prevent Henry's invasion, with its principal scene devoted to the detection of the sworn assassins. This scene resembles the council in Richard III from which Hastings is taken to his death. Everyone is in good clothes, though not the formal robes of Act I. The three traitors might have been dressed more like "silken courtiers" than the loyal nobles. As in the Sidney and Essex portraits where the sitter wears "best apparel" with a gorget, some combination of the military and the courtly may have been intended for the King and those faithful to him. This scene is framed by others showing Falstaff's tatterdemalion followers, first quarreling among themselves, then departing to follow the King "like horse-leeches... the very blood to suck" (II.iii.56-57), in the ragged finery of braggarts and rogues. In Act III, when the King is before Harfleur, he and his nobles have probably added coat armor and weapons to their costumes of Act II, but when Henry summons his men "Once more into the breach" (Ill.i.i) those who next enter are the same raffish crew being driven, not led, "into the breach" by Fluellen. The four captains, representing the best of the army as Pistol and his followers represent its worst, should wear the plain and serviceable military dress of a Faulconbridge or a Hotspur. After the King and his army "enter the town" there follow two scenes at the French court amounting to 125 lines, the first, the French prose scene between Catherine and Alice, needing extra playing time and the second dispatching a herald in the rich tabard of his office. Both scenes require the fashionable finery suggested for pre-Agincourt France. After these scenes the English captains reenter, this time at "the bridge," and it seems likely that the two French scenes have given these four actors time to change at least their military cloaks for others that are older and shabbier. The King may also have needed time for some change in his costume since his last exit. At least some of the intervening material, especially Pistol's appeal for Bardolph, looks as if included to fill the time for cos-

172

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

tume changes: the thrusting in of a clown by head and shoulders, not some necessary question of the play. Act IV insists on the wretched condition of the English, like the prodigal at the end of his "riotous living." But the true prodigals of this act are not the ragged English but the dressed-up French. The act begins as they prepare to fight in glittering array; it ends when the French herald reports that they are all "drowned and soaked i n . . . blood" (vii.78). In the play's long final scene at the French court, the duke of Burgundy's speech about ravaged France indicates that the visual contrast between English and French is opposite to that on the eve of Agincourt. The victorious King Henry and his suite enter in the "fresh garments" of the repentant and forgiven prodigal in conventional salvation drama. The time needed for the English to change back to their rich apparel of Act 1 is covered by the long altercation between Pistol and Fluellen and the chorus which describes Henry's triumphant return to England after Agincourt. Except for the French King, Catherine, and Alice, all the French and Burgundians of Act V are new characters, anonymous and largely silent roles to be doubled by the actors of the Boy, Le Fer, Montjoy, the Dolphin, Grandpre, Orleans, and the Constable, all of whom were probably clad in worn and sober garments. The only speaker on the French side who need not be in the poor array of the fallen prodigal is Burgundy, whose choric role gives him no moral or political position; the part could even have been given to the speaker of the choruses, since both stand apart from the action of the play. Exactly when Merry Wives of Windsor was written is unsettled, but as an appendage to the popular plays in which Falstaff appears it must have used the same costumes for those characters who had already become known in the histories: Falstaff, Bardolph, Nym, Pistol, Mistress Quickly, the page Robin, and Shallow. Most of the new characters might have been dressed from stock: Simple, Rugby, and the Ford servants in blue coats, Ford and Page as citizens, Fenton as a fine gentleman, and Slender perhaps in a conglomeration of rustic and city finery. The wives and Anne Page need citizen dresses like the taffeta gowns made for Porter's Two Angry Women of Abingdon. Caius, Evans, and the Host would wear their occupational dress, the doctor and parson gowns, and the Host in an apron. All the play's costume changes are disguises. After his ducking in the Thames Falstaff may wear a night-gown, and during his second visit to Mrs. Ford he is hustled off to be swathed in a wide gown, "thrummed

173

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

hat," and muffler to look like the Old Woman of Brainford. Ford is unknown to Falstaff and needs no new costume to deceive him, but the audience needs a visual cue to know when Ford is the citizen Ford and when he is the gentleman Brook. As Ford he could wear a citizen's gown and flat cap and as Brook a cloak and hat. The mask of fairies which concludes the play requires vizards and loose masking apparel, and Falstaff needs a horned headdress with his usual fat man's costume. As You Like It makes very modest demands upon the company's budget, for almost all the parts could be costumed from the stock or at low cost. Very few of the characters need courtly finery: Duke Frederick in three scenes, Oliver in two, LeBeau in one, and Rosalind and Celia in the first and fifth acts. Frederick's attendants at the wrestling might be courtiers like LeBeau, or merely liveried servants. Rosalind and Celia disguise themselves in the inexpensive garments of swain and shepherdess for the greater part of the play. Orlando, wearing the poor array of a younger brother in Acts I and II, must already be "furnished like a hunter" (III. ii. 241) to open the second scene of Act III. The change could have involved no more than a green coat and hat, for he is given only the time needed to complete a mass exit in Il.vii, plus the eighteen-line scene between Oliver and Duke Frederick, to change from shabby garb to new. When Oliver brings Orlando's message in Act IV he is in "fresh array" (IV.iii. 143) of the same kind. Most other costume changes simply permit minor characters like Oliver's servant Dennis and Frederick's servants LeBeau and Charles the Wrestler to double other minor parts in Arden. Doubling is also possible between Duke Frederick and the brother he has deposed. Another likely doubled pair are Adam and Corin; the actor is allowed twenty-eight lines to alter the details of a basic "poor old man" costume. The Chamberlain's Men may have had to buy greenwood costumes like those used by the Admiral's Men in Edward 1 and Munday's Huntingdon plays, for no play in their surviving repertory needed so many such costumes as does As You Like It. Hymen's outfit, a species of masking suit, might have been made for the role; Henslowe's records show that such suits were not costly. The company might also have hired such a costume from a haberdasher or even from the Revels Office. Like Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It gives much attention to characters in the wrong clothes for sex or status, and some to characters in clothes wrong for their social situation. (Consider Jacques's gleeful description of "a fool in the forest" and Corin's disquisition on clothes fit for shepherd and courtier.) Rosalind's male disguise is unfit for a woman; rus-

174

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

tic apparel is similarly unfit for her and Celia, the daughters of dukes. Orlando in his first shabby clothes is unfitly clad for a knight's son, while Duke Senior and his followers in their "Robin Hood" array are unfitly clad for nobles and gentlemen. In fact, the only characters properly dressed for sex, station, and place are on the one hand the wicked Duke Frederick and Oliver, and on the other the lower-class Adam, Corin, Silvius, Phoebe, Audrey, and William. In this play the improprieties of dress serve no moral purpose as they would have done in a morality and still do in Taming; instead, the improprieties, though often noticed, only cause laughter and/or help to drive the plot. Jonson's Every Man Out of His Humour could have opened at either the Curtain or the Globe, but its date, its minimal demands on the stage structure, and its parody of plays once performed at the Curtain, which was the oldest theatre in London, suggest that he wrote expecting this playhouse and not the larger Globe. Jonson published it in 1599 "Containing more than hath been Publikely Spoken or Acted" (1599 title

page). Herford and Simpson interpret this to mean that the Grex parts were cut (IX. 396), but even without this three-man chorus, the timing for costume change remains practical. Like Three Ladies of London, Every Man Out begins in the country,

fetching its characters to city and court about halfway through. Throughout Acts II, III, and IV, Fungoso strives to follow the fashion as set by Fastidius Briske, in the fiction of the play by having his tailor copy Briske's clothes, and in the practical theatre by having the actor of Briske successively wear three suits, the first two of which pass to the actor of Fungoso. The precise and extended descriptions of Briske's clothes suggest that Jonson was writing with his eye on existing suits, not imagining them for the company tailor to create. Jonson facilitates the changes without obvious disturbance of his play's progress; Briske enters talking about his "hobbie," a light horse, and of how he has "ridden" out of his way to visit Puntarvolo, who first notices not his person but his "white virgin boot" (H.iii. 104). Both the imagined horse and the actual boot indicate that Briske is wearing a riding suit, a style normally of simple cut in plain material, without many trimmings or accessories. His unusual (and impractical) white boots indicate Briske's foppishness even at this early stage, so perhaps his suit, though plain, was made of an impractical fabric like silk or in an impractical light color. Fungoso, the student son of a miserly father, first enters wearing absurdly unfashionable clothes—Carlo Buffone compares his "pinckt yellow dou-

175

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

blet" (II.iii.15) to a sponge—though Fungoso is not an awkwardly clothed "scholar" of the university, but a student at the expensive and stylish Inns of Court. Briske and Fungoso exit together (II.iii.287); 210 lines later Fungoso reenters "in Briskes sute," allowing him roughly ten minutes to change. Briske reenters "in a new suit," some three minutes after Fungoso. This suit is more elaborate than his riding suit; when Fungoso brings his tailor to view it we learn that it is "blush-colour'd sattin" (III.v.2), and "hangs at the knee" (17). As Act IV begins Fungoso is still "i' the old case" (III.ix. 152), Briske's former riding suit, complaining to Fallace that he cannot afford to be "alwayes i'the fashion" (IV. i. 14). He exits to "say on my sute" (IV. ii. 100), before the second scene of Act IV is quite over, reentering at the start of Scene vii, something over 500 lines later. He now has on "blush'colour'd sattin," with a new hat and shoes, but his ensemble is not yet put together; he has forgotten both ties for his shoes and points to fasten his doublet to his hose. This bit of business seems unnecessary to extend time for a costume change, even if the Grex were cut, and Jonson may have written the scene as he did to emphasize Fungoso's want of talent and money to be a fashion plate. But the suit itself may also have been so expensive that Jonson or the company did not want to risk damaging it by backstage hurry. Briske has been off for only about 300 lines when he enters "freshly suted" for the last scene of Act III, although the time has probably been extended beyond ten to fifteen minutes by the business of cutting down and reviving Sordido. Briske's third suit seems likely to have been even more fantastic than his second, though it may not quite equal the (imaginary) clothes that were "wounded" when he and one Luculento fought: "a gold cable hatband... a murrey French h a t . . . an Italian cut-worke band. . . my emboss'd girdle... a thick lac't sattin doublet.. . embrodered with pearle... siluer spurres. .. two paire of silke stockings" (IV.vi.84113). This "duel of fashion" probably was successful comedy, for Dekker copied it for Emulo's almost identical "duel" in Patient Grissel. When Fungoso enters inquiring for Briske about halfway through the last scene of Act IV, he evidently has his points and shoe-ties in place, for he proudly invites his uncle to notice that Briske "goes in such a Sute as I doe." His uncle merely points to Briske: "Here is the Gentleman Nephew, but not in such a Sute." Crying "Another Sute!," Fungoso "Swounes" (IV. vii. 119-20 marginal SD). But as Jonson makes his moral point about folly "to dogge the fashion" (124), he has not overlooked the time his actors need to get out of one costume and into another; the more

176

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

extravagant Briske's (and Fungoso's) dress becomes, the more time the actors get to change it. Jonson also minimizes other costume change, keeping the other characters essentially in one costume throughout the play. This further sets apart the man of fashion and his ape, since their changed costumes contrast with the stability in dress even of such foolish characters as Puntarvolo and Fallace.

When the Chamberlain's Men moved to occupy the Globe in the fall of 1599, they moved to a stage and auditorium evidently much improved on the demolished Theatre and still more on the interim Curtain. Though Julius Caesar is as epic as Henry V, it contains no apologies for an inadequate stage, nor does this kind of apology recur in such later epic tragedies as King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. Though Shakespeare directs attention to the swift passage of time in Pericles and The Winter's Tale, he does not ask the audience to forgive him his stage in these wideranging romances, and though The Tempest insists on how ephemeral it is as a performance, it never calls its stage ("the great globe itself") inadequate for the demands the play makes on it. Evidently the Globe allowed the Chamberlain's Men to represent to their own satisfaction more things than they could on their former stages. But despite these physical improvements, modifications in how their plays call for and handle costumes occur very gradually for some years, though not, perhaps, according to a plan. The move out of the Theatre must have required an inventory before the gear was shifted to the Curtain and probably again when it was transferred to the Globe. Even if the Chamberlain's Men controlled their stock more efficiently than the Admiral's Men at the Rose, they are likely to have discovered disused costumes and properties, as did Henslowe in his inventory of Admiral's stock the year before, and they might have occupied their new theatre with more known resources than before the move. The Globe was apparently regarded as a more permanent home than the Theatre had been, with company sharers now having a stake in the building as well as in the moveables. But sharer capital was also now tied up in the building, so that these sharers may have felt reluctant to invest much in less durable goods like costumes until income from the building had returned something like the original investment. Such investor conservatism seems likely on the evidence of plays known to have

177

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

been written for the early days of the Globe, such as Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet, which all exhibit economy with apparel more like that in Romeo and Juliet than the greater opulence of Richard 11, Merchant of Venice, Much Ado, and even Every Man Out. Although the Chamberlain's Men were kept from playing at Blackfriars, they might have been able to use its lower level as an archive and storehouse for scripts and costumes during their sojourn at the Curtain and even after their move to the Globe. Blackfriars was more conveniently located than either the Shoreditch or the Bankside house for business at the Revels Office, the Inns of Court, and Whitehall, with all of which the company had much business even before becoming the King's Men.32 While we do not know that the Chamberlain's Men purchased garments opportunistically as did the Admiral's Men, they very likely did so, if only to have replacement costumes at hand in case of damage and of changes in upper-class fashion, since outdated finery was as much ridiculed on the stage as in the resorts of the fashionable. Blackfriars would have given the company extra storage for such new stock, and for obsolete costumes for which a new use was not yet found. With a playhouse expected to be permanent (and a possible second storehouse for apparel) Shakespeare and the other poets they occasionally employed could draw on an increasing supply of costumes, simply because for each new play something new would be bought. And since few costumes were exclusively used in the play they were bought for, anything new in the wardrobe became available for anything new in the repertory. Even though Shakespeare continued his frugal habits of costuming his plays, the meaning of frugality did become more liberal in the new house, almost, perhaps, without his noticing. Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night are almost certainly among those plays the Globe produced before the Chamberlain's Men altered their service and status by becoming the sworn servants of the King in 1603. Though the three plays are markedly different from one another, they are all parsimonious in their use of costly new costumes. This is true even of Julius Caesar, which, like the English history plays, demands considerable costume change for shifts between public and private civil scenes, and scenes of campaign and battle. A reference to Caesar's doublet in Act I implies that its characters wore Elizabethan dress. This seems to be confirmed by the use of other words for contemporary English clothing: the conspirators, according to Lucius, arrive at Brutus's door with "hats. . . pluck'd about their ears/And half their faces buried in their

178

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

cloaks" (II. i. 73-74, italics supplied). All but Cassius enter so muffled, since Brutus has to ask if he knows any of them. Portia chides Brutus for risking his health by "walk[ing] unbraced" (262, italics supplied)—going outside with doublet unbuttoned—and Brutus exclaims at Ligarius's therapeutic "kerchief" before wishing he "were not sick" (313). As if he were an Englishman like Frankford in A Woman Killed with Kindness, whose wife calls for "a night gowne for my husband" when she thinks he is catching cold (Heywood II. 124), Brutus puts on a gown for a "bedward" scene after his quarrel with Cassius, and in its pocket finds a misplaced book. Stage directions for costume are not very common in Shakespeare, but he evidently thought it important that Caesar wear "his night-gown' (II. ii) when he enters on the morning of the assassination, since this Elizabethan garment is so often associated with domestic intimacy. Caesar calls for "my robe" (107) when Decius persuades him to attend the Senate, but does not seem to have changed from the night-gown before the conspirators enter. Caesar greets them by name, inviting them to "go in and taste some wine" (II. ii. 126). This hospitable gesture makes a nightgown seem more appropriate than a robe, since it better fits Caesar's invitation to his "good friends" before they "like friends" (127) attend him to the Senate. A robe was a ceremonial garment, worn with a crown for coronation; Cleopatra calls for both her robe and crown when she prepares to die a Queen. Antony's words in Caesar's funeral oration, "You all do know this mantle. I remember/The first time ever Caesar put it on" (III. ii. 172), show that Caesar's robe was the kind of garment people would remember. Probably it was the same as what he wore in Act I, where he exits for a public ceremony in whose course, Casca says, Antony offers him a crown. Decius entices Caesar to the Senate by reminding him that a crown may be offered. His "robe" must therefore have been rich enough to suggest coronation. But it is unlikely that Caesar was costumed in some kingly robe from an English history play, for these particular scenes also demand that it be reversible, like the robe of Avarice in Respublica or Trains in The Devil is an Ass. (Meercraft calls the latter garment "one of your double cloaks" [III.v. 77, italics supplied] implying that such garments were common disguises.) Rich on one side, Caesar's must be slashed and bloodstained on the other, like the 1560 Actaeon costume that was "not servisable" because it was "all to Cutt in small panes and steyned with blood" (R.O.Efe.31). When the conspirators crowded around the actor of Caesar for the assassination scene, he, or one of the others, could easily

179

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

flip the stained side outward. Evidently the actor of Caesar also had about his person a receptacle for the blood in which the conspirators dip their hands. Obviously the players would have to carry out this grisly act with some care so that the splendid side of the mantle would not be accidentally stained, and from Brutus's invitation to "bathe [their] hands in Caesar's blood/Up to the elbows" (III.i. 106-7), it seems clear that the actors must have been able to bare their arms by pushing or rolling up their sleeves to protect their costumes. Since they are also to flourish their bloody weapons as they exit, it seems likely that after the killing the assassins visually resembled bare-armed butchers, from whom Brutus earlier took such care to dissociate them. Once the actor of Caesar was offstage, it would be easy to arrange the robe like a pall over his body, stained side up, ready for Antony's display of it during his oration. Julius Caesar requires its surviving main characters to shift from the civilian dress of thefirstthree acts to military attire (including at least some armor) in the last two. For these acts much could be carried over from Henry V and other histories. In Julius Caesar these scenes in military dress have for contrast an important scene in whose course Brutus disarms and puts on his gown. Caesar's ghost appears to him while he sits reading and his servants lie asleep. Everything between the quarrel with Cassius and the ghost's entrance suggests domesticity, not war. It does not quite parallel the earlier scene between Caesar and Calphurnia, in which she warns her gowned husband of his imminent peril and he treats the warning lightly, but in both scenes a man is warned of his imminent and violent death while wearing a garment associated with security and peace.33 The two respond differently to the warnings, Caesar with jesting and Brutus with stoic acceptance. Both scenes end with bustle as each puts the warning aside and keeps to the purpose that will kill him. Whether Brutus and his companions are disarmed when fleeing from the victors is unclear. Though it is not essential that a character disarm before killing himself (and no speech or direction suggests that either Cassius or Titinius disarms before his death), the defeated men at the play's end should look defenceless, like Antony when he disarms before falling on his sword in Antony and Cleopatra. Here, as in the scenes in his house and in his tent, Brutus is among those he trusts; in fact, just before his suicide he asserts that "in all my life/I found no man but he was true to me" (V.v.34-35). The play proves this to be a delusion; for him to be disarmed as he speaks is consistent with the earlier scene in his orchard, when, unbraced and in his night-gown, he expresses misguided trust in

180

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

others. In contrast to the defeated survivors of Philippi, the victors need to look victorious. They were probably meant to enter armed, "with scarves and triumphant banners" and bound prisoners. As in the last scene of Tamburlaine Part 2, this triumph becomes a military funeral for Brutus when they leave the stage.

Costuming in Hamlet has received much critical attention because it is bound so closely to the question of Hamlet's mental state. Theories about when, if ever, Hamlet ceases to wear mourning for his father and whether he appears onstage in the disorder described by Ophelia occur in editors' notes and receive practical application in most productions. Almost everyone agrees that Hamlet's black, so much insisted on in the second scene of Act I—"this cloud," "nighted colour," inky cloak. .. customary suits of solemn black,. . . the trappings and the suits of woe" (I.ii.6668)—creates a clash between two proprieties: Hamlet's mourning and the King and Queen's coronation and wedding. But except for this one scene, no one seems to have considered very carefully what the characters wear in public and in private. If the principle of contrast between Hamlet and his surroundings is followed, some interesting results appear, one of which is that The Tragedy of Hamlet uses and changes costume mainly if not exclusively according to decorum. It uses the familiar codes of public symbolism for mourning and rejoicing and of theatre symbolism for journeying and madness, but not to show changes of fortune or moral condition. This use of costume is not surprising, for in many respects Hamlet is a play about decorum, at different times setting forth correct and incorrect behavior for maid, wife, widow, brother, nephew, son, father, husband, king, scholar, and, most of all, avenger. While not all these questions of decorum involve clothing, decorum or indecorum in dress draws attention to other questions of right thinking and right action. The second scene of Hamlet begins with the King's speech justifying a wedding feast so soon after the late King's funeral, and his rebuke to Hamlet for wearing mourning on a joyous occasion soon follows. Much of Hamlet's first soliloquy turns on the impropriety of a widow's marriage so soon after her husband's funeral: But two months dead—nay not so much, not two—

181

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she followed my poor father's body, Within a month,... /She married. (I. ii. 138-56) Horatio says he came to Elsinore "to see your father's funeral," and, although his reply to Hamlet's "I think it was to see my mother's wedding," is the decorous and noncommital "Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon," it seems clear that Horatio, too, feels the indecorum of making "the funeral bak'd meats. . . coldly furnish forth the marriage tables" (176-81). When Hamlet joins Horatio and Marcellus on the platform to await the Ghost, references to the cold suggest that all three wear cloaks. When Hamlet insists on following the Ghost, he could wrap his cloak about his arm as a defence as he draws on his companions, crying "I'll make a ghost of him that lets me" (I.iv.85). Perhaps when he exits to follow the Ghost he may discard this cloak before his reentry (although his sword remains drawn until nearly the end of the scene), which would contrast the prudent attire of the others with that of a man who now speaks "wild and whirling words" (139) and warns his friends that he may "put an antic disposition on" (180) to replace his earlier decorous grief. Clothing as an outward sign of inward disturbance appears soon after (though only verbally) when Ophelia describes to her father Hamlet's appearance at her "closet": . . . his doublet all unbrac'd, No hat upon his head, his stockings foul'd, Ungarter'd and down-gyved to his ankle. (ii.i.78-80) As Harold Jenkins points out in his note to these lines, Hamlet's appearance "proves" that the "antic disposition" he has already "put on" (like a garment) is due to love-melancholy, the immediate interpretation Polonius seizes on (Arden 461-62). Jenkins buries in a parenthesis a doubt about whether Hamlet was meant to appear onstage in these disordered garments, that is, whether the "transformation" described here is displayed in anything but speech. Because the loose and flapping garments of the description would make Hamlet's later physical activity unneces-

182

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

sarily difficult for the actor, not to mention distracting to the audience, it is unlikely. Neither does it fit with the Hamlet who "sadly," that is, soberly, "comes reading" (II. ii. 168), who confers in a businesslike way with the players, who expresses admiration and friendship for the eminently sane Horatio, who, "idle," lies down to watch a play, most of all who can draw a sword and use it with deadly efficiency in the closet scene. Ophelia's description of Hamlet's disordered dress does prepare us, however, for her statement in the "nunnery scene" that Hamlet's "noble mind is here o'erthrown" (III. i. 153); similarly it foreshadows her own disordered dress when she goes mad in earnest. With critical attention centred on Hamlet's costume, it is not surprising that little attention is paid to either the costume or the costume changes of less conspicuousfigures.But some of these lesser fry can indirectly suggest important visual effects which have significance in the play's larger pattern. For instance, the play includes three scenes involving "ambassadors": first, the departure of Cornelius and Voltemand, ambassadors to Norway, then their return, and third, near the play's end, the arrival of nameless "ambassadors of England" (V.ii.356), who enter among the followers of the Norwegian Fortinbras and announce, almost as an anticlimax, the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. For stage purposes the function of these ambassadors differs hardly at all from that of messengers, however exalted. Their importance must then be explained by their appearance. All are "ambassadors extraordinary," men sent on special business from one sovereign to another. During the Renaissance ambassadors like these departed and arrived in great state, attended by crowds of liveried retainers.34 Stage embassies necessarily curtail retainers. Chapman's Jacobean comedy, Monsieur D'Olive, shows its foolish title character preparing for what he thinks an important embassy. He interviews two potential "followers" onstage, while complaining of the many unfit applicants, and describes how satin liveries he has supplied have been seen on "my greasie Host of the Porcupine last Holiday," on a broker's stall, and even on the gallows (III. ii. 163-67). D'Olive's "satin suits" indicate attempts to mimic the splendors of authentic stage ambassadors, as in Shakespeare's Henry V. Indeed, costumes worn by the French ambassadors in that play might have been worn by Cornelius and Voltemand in Hamlet, and perhaps, since this pair vanish after Act II, by the two Englishmen in Act V. Cornelius, Voltemand, and the Englishmen are orthodox ambassadors, so fine clothing would contribute to their mission's look of decorous nor-

183

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

mality. But between the return of Cornelius and Voltemand and the arrival of the Englishmen the play presents a good many less orthodox "embassies. " Horatio and Marcellus come to Hamlet as ambassadors from the Ghost, though they do not recognize the content of their message. Polonius sends Reynaldo to Paris as a kind of ambassador-spy to observe Laertes. The players arrive dressed almost like ambassadors, probably in fine clothes, ushered in by Polonius, a high court official, and later escorted by him to their quarters. Hamlet then turns them into carriers of a hidden message to the King of Denmark, who counters by openly appointing Hamlet his ambassador to England to demand "neglected tribute," and giving him two companions who (unlike the openly briefed Cornelius and Voltemand) bear secret letters ordering "the present death of Hamlet" (IV.iii.68). The embassy theme also appears in other forms; when the King asks for the second time, "Where is Polonius?" (IV.iii.32), Hamlet replies "In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i'th'other place yourself" (IV.iii.33-35): that is, send an ambassador to heaven, but be your own ambassador to hell. Indeed, the Ghost of King Hamlet manifests himself as an ambassador from "the undiscovered country" (III. i. 79), come from the grave with the message that in Denmark a villain is an arrant knave. Thus to give the despatch of ambassadors early importance openly states a theme hinting at other, more covert ambassades. As characters the ambassadors are unimportant, but to clothe them splendidly would both conform to Elizabethan reality and signal the importance of embassy in other parts of the play. The lengthy accounts of noble funerals, penned and illustrated by heralds, and the enormous sums expended upon them, show how important funereal decorum was to Elizabethans.35 In Hamlet there are four funerals, two narrated, two shown. All four are in some sort "maimed rites" (V.i.212) because, in different ways, each of the deaths is "doubtful," either because the cause of it is concealed or because, in the case of Polonius, the identity of the victim is not known to the killer until too late. The first funeral to be described, King Hamlet's, was on the surface normal enough, a public display of grief at an accidental death (by snakebite), although it did not entirely conform to the etiquette of English aristocratic and royal ceremonies.36 The family, not a ceremonial "chief mourner," followed the body, "hearsed in death," and saw it "quietly interr'd" in its sepulchre. What is indecorously abnormal is that this tomb

184

THE COMPANIES OF THE

1590s

"hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws/To cast [the 'dead corse'] up again" (I. iv.47-50), terrifying the soldiers on watch, engaging the skeptic Horatio as intermediary, and drawing the dead man's son to the danger of communicating with one returned from the other world. The second "funeral" is that of Polonius, quite the opposite of King Hamlet's conventionally reverent burial. When Hamlet says he will "lug the guts into the neighbor room" (111. iv.214) the action parodies a funeral, even to the delivery of a "eulogy": This counsellor Is now most still, most secret, and most grave, Who was in life a foolish prating knave. (III. iv. 215-17) There seems no reason for Hamlet to hide the body, but when he "safely stow[s]" (IV. ii. 1) Polonius near "the stairs as you go up into the lobby" (IV.iiil.36-7), the action parodies the entombment of King Hamlet. The King is so insistent on finding the body and bringing it into the chapel that we may believe a conventional funeral is to occur, but later the King admits that the interment has been "hugger mugger," to the outrage of Laertes: No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones, No noble rite, nor formal ostentation. (V.v. 211-12)

Polonius's "hugger mugger" rites, heard of but not seen, prepare for the first funeral actually shown, that of Ophelia, denied burial in the church as would be normal for an Elizabethan nobleman's daughter. As a suspected suicide, she is permitted only "maimed rites," and will lie in the grave formerly belonging to the fool Yorick. This funeral, though curtailed, must feature some of the "formal ostentation" Laertes would like, and what seems most probable is for those in the procession to wear black gowns and cloaks like those issued for following noble Elizabethans to the tomb, though perhaps without the deep hoods that hid the faces of Elizabethan mourners, since Hamlet at once recognizes the King, the Queen, and Laertes. The rites become "maimed" in another way when Hamlet's intervention provokes violence; since the scene does not allow the funeral to end with a proper burial, Ophelia's body is evidently hidden "in

185

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

hugger-mugger," by swinging up the trap while the rival mourners quarrel downstage. The final "funeral" is that which closes the play, where four bodies must be removed with military pomp, not to an offstage tomb but to a high "stage," a word synonymous with the structures on Tower Hill and elsewhere for the "tragedies" of public torture and execution. This impromptu military procession does not use conventional mourning. I suppose that Laertes and the King and Queen were first carried off by courtiers and soldiers. The mute "four captains" who are to "bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage" (V.ii. 396) are evidently distinguished from these; they might even wear the costumes of the "four captains" from Henry V. Renaissance funereal etiquette allowed a King to be mourned by his successor. Since Hamlet is certainly King of Denmark in the minutes between the death of Claudius and his own, this honorific role could properly be assigned to Fortinbras, but theatrical funerals seem not to have mimicked real ones beyond their use of mourning garments. Horatio, already in his scholar's black, seems the fittest person to follow Hamlet as chief mourner, and this means that he was probably the last to leave the stage before the "peal of ordnance [was] shot off." Hamlet perceives that he and Laertes mirror each other: "by the image of my cause I see/The portraiture of his" (V.ii.77-78); "he is the 'brother' Hamlet has injured, in whose cause Hamlet sees his own" (Arden 158). At several places in the play Hamlet or Laertes does something the other has done or will do, actions requiring a special costume. Each leaves Denmark by ship, each of their departures is dramatized, and each wears mourning for his family's dead. While it appears logical that these two "brothers" should visually exhibit their similarity, it need not be with the exactitude of the twins in Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night. It seems likely that Laertes parts from Ophelia and his father already dressed for the sea; Polonius hastens him aboard with "the wind sits in the shoulder of your sail/And you are stayed for" (I.iii.56). Other plays show that those who went to sea wore special clothing, even if they were mere passengers. In The Honest Whore 1 Fustigo returns from a voyage "in some fantastic Sea-suit" (I.H.SD). In Antonio and Mellida Feiiche offers Antonio "a suite I wore at sea" (1176) to replace his disguise as an Amazon. When Antonio reappears in the next scene he is "in his sea gowne running" (1248), costume, gait, and speech parodying different parts of Hamlet. There are further indications of special shipboard costume in Fortune by Land and Sea and in The Fair Maid of the West, though the passengers in

186

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

The Tempest are (most unsuitably) dressed in the finery worn at Claribel's wedding. In his report to Horatio of his interrupted voyage, Hamlet mentions "my sea-gown" (V.ii. 13), worn, as his letter makes clear, the first night aboard. If Laertes departs in such a garment, it seems likely that Hamlet wore one similar (perhaps the same garment) on his way to take ship for England. It seems likely as well that he is still wearing it for the graveyard scene, since the gravedigger does not know him for the prince and since he has to announce himself by name when he interrupts Ophelia's burial. During this scene, if not earlier, Laertes must wear black, the "inky cloak" worn by principal mourners in Elizabethan funerals, possibly the same as Hamlet's earlier in the play, when the two were onstage together in very different garments. Nothing indicates whether or not Hamlet reverts to mourning for his final scene. But a sea-gown was an enveloping garment, like those worn for temporary disguise in so many plays, and it seems unlikely that Shakespeare would impose a full costume change on Burbage when he had only one more scene to play. The duel in this scene is for "rapier and dagger" which means that both actors remove any loose outer garments to fight in doublet and hose. Laertes is absent from the play for more than two acts between his departure for France and his return; the actor of the role undoubtedly doubled something, perhaps the player of the murderous "Lucianus, nephew to the king" (III. ii. 1134), and so would need to change costume anyway. Black suits, if Henslowe's records are anything to go by for the Chamberlain's Men, were staple garments in a company wardrobe, and a second black suit, black confronting black in the duel, seems appropriate since the two are about to become "twins" in blood, poison, and death. Like Hamlet, Twelfth Night is much concerned with questions of decorum, including that of mourning, though unlike Queen Gertrude's indecently brief two months, Olivia's (at least in intent) is grotesquely prolonged to seven years. The play also considers decorum in dress for different social classes and for women and men, and centres upon the decorum of wooing, showing the equal absurdity of Orsino's wooing by messenger, Olivia's by direct approach, and Malvolio's by wresting himself into clothes and postures unnatural to him. It is also parsimonious in its costume requirements. With one exception it could be costumed from existing stock without any new purchases. Viola needs "maid's garments" in her first scene, but her disguise suit must be identical to Sebastian's, since they must appear onstage together at the end to confuse everyone with

187

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

their "natural perspective." At least one of these suits would have to be specially made and therefore necessarily new. Identical suits for special purposes were of course not invented for this play; The Comedy of Errors had required them for the Antipholi, and Henslowe "Lent vnto edward Jube the 10 of Septmb3 [1602] to macke ij sewtes a licke for the playe of mortymore" and paid 18s additional to the £6 originally lent "for the same sewtfes] at the play howse" (Diary 205). Olivia may perhaps have changed out of mourning after beginning to pursue "Cesario," but Manningham's belief that she was a widow suggests that she remained in black until the end, perhaps leaving off the veil she briefly puts on when she receives "Cesario" for the first time. Twelfth Night is almost alone among Shakespeare's plays in that some of its characters seem to reincarnate specific persons from earlier plays. Unlike such recurrent traditional types as the successive variants of the braggart, Sir Toby seems to have been deliberately modeled on Falstaff and Sir Andrew on Shallow or Slender. While the similarities may owe part of their being to the physical peculiarities of the actors Lowin and Sincklo, the explicit resemblance of Toby to Falstaff suggests that the Falstaff costume was being used for "clothes good enough to drink in, and. . . boots, too" (II. iii. 11-12). Perhaps the old Falstaff costume had grown too shabby even for so disreputable a knight (who was, after all, the companion of a prince) and passed to an even more disreputable knight, as did the less worn Shallow or Slender costume to clothe Sincklo as Sir Andrew, the "thin-fac'd knave [and] gull" (V. i.213-14) who still needs to look as if he has some money. Obviously the costume worn by Armin as Touchstone was appropriate for Feste, since these fools are so similar. When Maria puts Feste into "this gown and this beard" (IV.ii.1), the disguise may well have earlier been the clerical garb of Sir Hugh Evans and/or Sir Oliver Martext. Repossessing them after the interview with Malvolio, she comments, "Thou mightest have done this without thy beard and gown. He sees thee not" (62-63). Nevertheless, the disguise has a theatrical purpose, for it keeps visible the fact that Feste is playing a role as the curate. He uses a different voice to play this part; once he doffs the beard and gown he returns in appearance and voice as the Fool. Feste's donning of the disguise recalls the fact that Viola has put on inappropriate garb to conceal her identity, and anticipates the time when her real identity will be shown in the "maid's garments" (v.i.282) of her first scene, which the ending of the play defers so that the actor need not change costume again.

188

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

Orsino seems a likely candidate for costuming like that of Fastidius Briske/Fungoso or perhaps of Puntarvolo in Every Man Out; Feste's proposal that his "tailor make [thy] doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal" (II. iv. 76-77) suggests the appropriateness of a "high fantastical" (I.i.15) costume to match Orsino's love posturings. It also seems likely that his costume was intended to be "too light" for the dignity of his ducal title, and that, even if he was not to wear a series of different costumes as did the "fantastical" Richard II, he might have been put into new finery for his formal visit to Olivia in Act V, during which he continues to exhibit the opaline mentality Feste has ascribed to him. Everyone perceives Malvolio as a solemn personage, whether Olivia with her complimentary "sad and civil" (iii.iv.5) or Maria with her derisory "kind of Puritan" (II.iii.151-52). Evidently his costume is that usual for an Elizabethan steward, plain in cut, with a chain and keys its only ornament, and black, since the house is in mourning. When he puts on yellow stockings, the color, said to be offensive to Olivia, would seem still more glaring against his dark garb. His cross-garters were an outdated fashion of some fifteen years before Twelfth Night, and by this time might have dropped below the station of a steward, for in Two Angry Women of Abingdon, the young gentlemen ridicule Nicholas's cross-garters, implying that by 1600 they were no more than an affectation of rustic servants. Malvolio's dress, like his behavior, resembles that of Stephano in Every Man in his Humour: both are trying to become gentlemen "by the book," and making a mess of it. Troilus and Cressida may have been the last play Shakespeare wrote for the Chamberlain's Men before Queen Elizabeth's death. That it was "a new play, never stal'd with the stage, never clapperclawed with the palms of the vulgar" as the second issue of the 1609 quarto asserts, seems to me to be taken too seriously by modern editors. Perhaps Bonian and Walley were trying to make "The history of Troylus and Cressida" registered to them in 1609 seem a different play from "The booke of Troilus and Cresseda as yt is acted by my lo: Chamberlens Men" registered to Roberts in 1603. (As late as 1623, there was trouble about the copyright of Troilus.) Unlike the 1609 epistle, the 1603 registration "as yt is acted" is part of a legal description. Introducing the name of the company, "my lo: Chamberlens Men," distinguishes this play from another, Dekker and Chettle's "Troyelles & cresseda" for which Henslowe had paid in April and May 1599, and which must have been acted since a "plot" was made for it (Diary 106-7, 329)- Even if the 1603 "as yt is acted" is untrue, the play

189

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

was certainly written to be acted, and its costume requirements show what Shakespeare thought the company could handle without excessive cost. The action of Shakespeare's Troilus suggests some connection with the courtly sport of tilting, which could be seen by the public every year on Elizabeth's accession day, November 17, and, in celebration of the Armada victory after 1588, on November 19 also37. Troilus may therefore have opened (or been meant to open) shortly before or after the celebrations in November 1602, the last before Elizabeth died. Since 1572, if not earlier, courtiers arrayed in splendid armor and carrying emblematic shields had tilted in honor of the Queen on her anniversary: ... [T]hese tilts exercised a potent influence on the imagination of the Elizabethan age, representing as they did a marriage of the arts in the service of Elizabethan statecraft. Through these festivities the ancient allegiances of chivalry were drawn close to the Crown and there occurred something of an imaginative refeudalization of late Tudor society.38 Participants entered the tiltyard in fantastical guises (a Blind Knight, a Clownish Knight, an Unknown Forsaken Knight) with the surcoats worn over their armor resembling masking apparel. They were attended by servitors and spokesmen in corresponding apparel and carried emblematic shields which were presented to the Queen and preserved in a special gallery afterwards. Roy Strong says that Essex hired "actors" as spokesmen, but the term "actor" is deceptive, for the persons meant are "scholars," from Oxford and Cambridge, who were trained speakers, not players from the theatres. When James became King, Accession Day tilting was transferred to March 24; at the 1604 celebration Elizabeth's former champion, old Sir Henry Lee, "was given a place of honour as one of the judges."39 When Lee was Queen's Champion the tilts had possessed some of the spontaneous informality of Elizabeth's summer progresses. After his retirement in 1590, "under Essex [there was] a sharp professionalizing of the Queen's Day shows," and in the seventeenth century the elaborate and costly devisings included "the making of caparisons; the work of a painter in embellishing escutcheons, banners, and coats; the purchase of apparel for pages and servants; the securing of trumpeters; and, more particularly,

190

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s the painting of impresa shields."40 Books of speeches and devices were made available at least as early as 1587, although none now survives. Ballads about the tilts appeared every year; in honor of them George Peele wrote at least two poems, and there are reminiscences of them in Arcadia, The Faerie Queene, and Shakespeare's Pericles Prince of Tyre. In 1602 the herald William Segar published a history.41 Casual references in plays show how familiar were the tilts and the array of the participants; Falstaff asserts that Shallow "never saw [John of Gaunt] but once in the Tilt Yard, and there he burst his head for crowding among the marshal's men" (2 Hen.IV III.ii.316-18). In Volpone Corvino denounces his wife for watching "Scoto of Mantua": . .. were y'enamored on his copper rings? Or his embroidered suit, with the cope-stitch, Made of a hearse cloth? or his old tilt-feather? (II.v. 11-14) Since the tilts were public, though somewhat expensive (Alleyn paid a shilling for a "standing" in 1620),42 many in the audience of the Globe could have seen them. Some imitation of tilting in a play must thus have been thought as appealing to the audience as were the allusions to Garter ceremony in Merry Wives. Troilus and Cressida is specialized in its costume words, which most often are those for armor in general, parts of armor, and accessories worn with armor: harness, mail, gorget, helm, beaver, vambrace, crest, plume, and casque. All of these but "harness," "mail," and "vambrace" protect and ornament the head. The sleeve Troilus gives Cressida as a memento is a favor that would be worn on a helmet. Gloves were also worn on helmets; the Earl of Cumberland, Lee's successor as Queen's Champion, had his portrait painted with her glove in his hat. In the play's second scene Pandarus gloats over damage to Hector's and Troilus's helmets: "There be hacks... Look you how... his helm [is] more hack'd than Hector's" (I. ii. 236-37). Though their design is unspecified, the helmets must have been closed,43 for when Hector and Ajax disarm after their fight, Nestor remarks to Hector, "this thy countenance, still lock'd in steel,/! never saw till now" (IV.v.194-95). For a ceremony like this one, the helmets would have been elaborately plumed like the

191

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

helms worn at tilts, but unlike the potentially dangerous court tilts, stage "tilts" posed little risk to the fighters, so the actors did not need armor for protection. Their helmets had to look formidable but could have been made of gilded leather or even pasteboard. A closed helmet with a gorget and something on the arms would suggest the "complete steel" of trial by combat. Closed helmets also make sense of Pandarus's naming the Trojan warriors to Cressida as they return. Each probably was to carry a shield and perhaps wear a coat marked with a heraldic device, such as Spenser imagined for Paridell in The Faerie Queene. In Act V, closed helmets would also emphasize the "blindness" of the swirling duels, even if those fighters who speak were to wear their "beavers" up, as did the Ghost of King Hamlet. When Diomed grabs Cressida's love-token from Troilus, he promises that he will use it to single out her former Trojan lover: Tomorrow will I wear it on my helm, And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it. (V.ii.93-94) Troilus, watching, tells Ulysses, "That sleeve is mine that he'll bear on his helm" (V.iii. 168), and grimly promises, Were it a casque compos'd by Vulcan's skill My sword should bite i t . . . Diomed Stand fast, and wear a castle on thy head! (169-86) Troilus and Diomed meet at last under the cynical eye of Thersites, who observes, That dissembling abominable varlet Diomed has got that same scurvy doting foolish [young] knave's sleeve of Troy there in his helm. I would fain see them meet, and that same young Troyan ass, that loves the whore there, might send that Greekish whoremasterly villain with the sleeve back to the dissembling luxurious drab, of a sleeveless errand.... Soft, there comes sleeve, and t'other. (V.iv.2-17)

192

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

In fact, nothing is resolved by their fight; Diomed captures Troilus' horse, but he does not kill Troilus nor does Troilus, apparently, do him any harm. "Arm" and "unarm," with some synonyms, are the usual verbs for costume change in Troilus and Cressida, whether onstage or off. Most of the male characters appear both armed for battle and unarmed for council. Though the visual and verbal arming and unarming are realistic, they are also symbolic. Just as regal robes and crowns stand for the kingship of Agamemnon and Priam, and as the gowns of Ulysses and Nestor stand for their politic wisdom, so the armor of Hector, Troilus, Ajax, and others stands for their prowess as fighters. When a character who should be armed is not, as are Achilles and Patroclus for most of the play, as is Paris when Pandarus visits because "my Nell would not have it so" (III.i. 133), and as is Hector when he is murdered, their "wrong" apparel signals the social wrongness Ulysses and Nestor analyse during and after the Greek Council in Act I. In fact, the information given by many of the play's costumes is contradicted by what happens. Agamemnon and Priam are crowned Kings whom no one obeys. Paris, Troilus, and Hector perhaps wear gowns at the Trojan council, but their advice does not support their father's "specialty of rule" but each one's private interests: Paris speaks as a voluptuary, Troilus as a knight, and Hector, to the surprise of generations of students, smartly advises the return of Helen to the Greeks, then reverses his position so as to challenge some Greek to a filter's fight. As Thersites trenchantly puts it, Troilus and Cressida is about a war whose "argument is a whore and a cuckold" (II. iii. 72-73). But until the play's end, when Achilles and his Myrmidons kill the disarmed Hector, this war hardly seems in earnest. The "Prologue arm'd" admits his armor is a mere symbol: I come. . . arm'd, but not in confidence Of author's pen or actor's voice, but suited In like conditions as our argument. (23-25) Troilus opens the play with "Call forth my varlet. I'll unarm again" (I.i.1). This shows that, like the Prologue, he enters wearing armor. Meanwhile his versified love complaints have the flavor of chivalric romance against the chatty and inconsequential prose of Pandarus. After

193

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Pandarus exits, Troilus asserts that "I cannot fight upon [the] argument" (92) of Helen's blood-painted beauty. But Aeneas invites him to "the sport abroad" (113-15), as if the fighting before Troy were a courtly game in the tiltyard, and Troilus accepts for fear he will seem "womanish." In the next scene, Cressida and Pandarus watch these sportsmen return, a procession of armored men crossing the stage one at a time. Processions like this, though not uncommon in plays, suggest the successive "entries" of knights to the tilt, followed by "Common soldiers" like attendants on the principals. Soon after Troilus exits, a boy summons Pandarus to his house, where Troilus "unarms him" (279). In the next scene, the famous Greek council where Ulysses speaks on degree, he describes Patroclus imitating his betters in council and in arms for Achilles's "sport": Now play me [Nestor]. .. Arming to answer in a night alarm. ... with a palsy fumbling on his gorget Shake in and out the rivet; and at this sport Sir Valour dies, cries "O enough, Patroclus, Or give me ribs of steel!" (I. iii. 171-77) In midcouncil, a trumpet announces, "a herald and a prince" (218), Aeneas, who delivers Hector's formal challenge to a different kind of "sport": Hector, in view of Troyans and of Greeks, Shall make it good, or do his best to do it: He hath a lady wiser, fairer, truer, Than ever Greek did couple in his arms, And will tomorrow with his trumpet call, Midway between your tents and walls of Troy To rouse a Grecian that is true in love. If any come, Hector shall honour him; If none, he'll say in Troy when he retires, The Grecian dames are sunburnt, and not worth The splinter of a lance. (273-83)

194

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

In Troy, Hector halts a serious debate about returning Helen because keeping her "hath no mean dependance/Upon our joint and several dignities," partly to be maintained by his "roisting" challenge sent amongst. . . the Greeks (II. iii. 193-210). But this fight he provokes proves anticlimactic. For one thing, between challenge and battle, Helen at last appears. Her silly talk shows that if she is not the "carrion" Diomed calls her, she is hardly "a pearl" and "a theme of honour and renown" (II.ii.82, 200) except to the romantic imaginations of Troilus and Paris. In a later scene, when Troilus tells Diomed that Cressida is "far high-soaring o'er thy praises" (IV.iv. 122), with language like that of Hector about the "lady" of his challenge, Diomed's reply is no courteous defender's but a crude assertion: I'll answer to my lust. . . I'll nothing do on charge. To her own worth She shall be priz'd; but that you say "Be't so," I'll speak it in my spirit and honour, "No." (132-35) In short, neither the words nor the actions of "fair worth and single chivalry" (148) mean much, except as the "idol Ceremony" of tiltyard compliment. The difference between the fine armor of fine words and the "putrefied core" of actual behavior appears in the events that frame the "maiden battle" (IV.v.87) between the two champions. Ajax enters "armed" and the trumpets sound for Hector, but instead of Hector and his seconds, Diomed appears with Cressida, who is kissed all round and summed up by Ulysses as just another slut. Then, to offstage "Flourish" which answers Hector's approach in arms, "All" cry, like an opera chorus, "The Troyans' trumpet" (IV.v.63). Everything in the scene reduces the pretenses of chivalry to a fight about a whore. The play does not make clear how Shakespeare planned the combat between Hector and Ajax, except that as a "half" battle it was hardly meant to be the knife fight of bare-chested antagonists linked by a chain at the 1972 Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Nor was it meant to be a Hamlet-style duel, since it was to be fought in armor, and it had to look as if it was minimizing the risk to the fighters. Elizabethan military sport meant tilting and barriers, tilting outdoors on horseback and barriers indoors on foot. In both, combatants tried to break lances against one another. Both used armor specially made to prevent injury, cap-a-pie for tilters, for barriers

195

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

only to the waist. On the stage, barriers necessarily stood for both sports, since mounted fights were impossible. In Richard 11, Bolingbroke's aborted trial by combat against Mowbray must have been set up as barriers. But the emphasis on helmets in Troilus and Cressida indicates the "forest of feathers" which are so conspicuous in pictures of tilts and barriers. Troilus perhaps wears Cressida's glove on his helmet when he attends Hector to his combat with Ajax. After the fighters depart to their feast, Diomed visits Cressida. While Troilus watches secretly, Diomed takes the sleeve Troilus gave to Cressida as a love token, to wear it in the next battle so that her (unnamed) lover will either challenge it or suffer both as "cuckold" and coward. In Act V combat ceases to be sport for either Diomed or Troilus. After Cressida's betrayal, Troilus is likely to have torn her glove from his helm. In Act V combat is no longer "sport" for him or for Diomed. For Hector, combat remains "sport" to the end. "Pth'vein of chivalry" (V.iii.32) on his death day, he is going to the field as a courtesy: "I do stand engag'd to many Greeks,/Even in the field of valor, to appear" (6869), which is to say he has accepted invitations to fight as if they were invitations to dinner. Yet in the field Hector proves a ruthless killer, with Patroclus just one of his many victims. Even here, the sport metaphor continues, for he says he will hunt "one in rich armour" for his hide. On the battlefield Achilles finds himself unable to avenge Patroclus; indeed, his wish that the Trojans at Hector's fight with Ajax "see us here unarm'd," and that he "see great Hector in his weeds of peace" (III.iii.23638), and "unarm'd the valiant Hector" (IV.v. 152) anticipates both his own weakness and the disarmed Hector's murder by the Myrmidons. Having abandoned even the pretence of chivalry in this killing, he goes further yet with his lie, crying, "Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain!" (V.viii.13-14). In Troilus and Cressida "unarm" is the word signaling a costume change from the garb of war to "weeds of peace." When Pandarus symbolically "undresses" Cressida for Troilus by unveiling her, he also "unarms" her so that she can no longer "ward" herself: Upon my back, to defend my belly, upon my wit, to defend my wiles, upon my secrecy, to defend mine honesty, my mask, to defend my beauty, and you, to defend all these; and at all these wards I lie, at a thousand watches. (1.ii.260-64)

196

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

When she parts from him, Troilus is anxious lest she "catch cold, and curse me" (IV.ii. 15), indicating that Cressida probably wears a nightgown "from bed," as does Anne in A Woman Killed with Kindness. Cressida evidently does not know that Troilus has told Paris where to find him, and when Aeneas knocks, she hides Troilus because "I would not for half Troy have you seen here" (41), suggesting her open vulnerability. When Aeneas, Paris, and Diomed announce their errand, Cressida discovers that she has no "wards" left. In her father's tent she is even less safe than within the barred gates of her uncle's house. Diomed winkles her out by hard-to-get tactics far more sophisticated than her own, and Thersites is probably right that she is already the "commodious drab" Patroclus will pay for word of, for her "mind is now turn'd whore" (V.ii.194, 114). Cressida and Hector, however, are not alone in coming to grief by "unarming," for almost everyone in the play meets with trouble from shedding physical or moral armor and treating important questions of human life as if they were the armed maskery of the tiltyard and its plays at love and chivalry. Since the date of All's Well that Ends Well is uncertain, we cannot positively say for what theatre it was written, although its resemblance to Measure for Measure leads most authorities to put the two plays close together, with All's Well the earlier and so written for the Chamberlain's Men. The "all in black"44 costuming for the four major characters in the first scene implies as well that black is worn by the speaking Rossillion steward and for mute Rossillion attendants, though the clown probably does not. The play's repeated praise of a dead lord may connect it with the death in old age of the company's patron, Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon, in 1596, for whose funeral Shakespeare and his fellows might have "bore the canopy" (Sonnet 125), though this seems too long before the likely date for All's Well In contrast to the play's simple staging, its costume change is extensive, although most of the garments could have come from the stock. The black costumes are plain mourning like Hamlet's, not the special cloaks and gowns used in aristocratic funerals. As in Hamlet, one "necessary question of the play" is the duration of visual mourning for the play's central characters. The Countess could be expected to keep her widow's dress throughout the play, but Lafew may change out of his before his entry with Bertram to the King. Bertram, wearing black at Rossillion, probably retains it for his introduction at Court, where his arrival provokes the King's meditation on the proper time to die. Some difference seems indi-

197

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

cated for the festivity celebrating the King's recovery, but this probably involved a richer black cloak and hat rather than a costume change, since the climax of the celebration is Helena's reward, the gift of Bertram for her husband, and his blacks would both make him stand out among the gaily dressed youths she rejects and emphasize his unwillingness to marry her. His long absence after he and Parolles flee from Court gives him time to change to military dress (with a plumed hat) for the scenes at Florence, dress he seems to retain for the rest of the play, since Lafew calls him "the young noble soldier" (IV. v. 109). The only addition to this outfit would be a velvet facial patch which the clown describes at considerable length two scenes before Bertram enters. Helena wears mourning at Rossillion, possibly adding to it a travel cloak and safeguard for her arrival at court, which would permit her to wear underneath a gown suitable for court celebration or at least to modify her mourning to view the royal wards. Either costume would contribute to the ironic contrast between her getting her heart's desire in marriage to Bertram, and his violent rejection, withdrawn only when the King switches from paternal kindness to regal assertion of his authority. However, contrast between festive dress for her and black for Bertram might better fit the pathos of the scene in which she begs a farewell kiss and he curtly orders her to go home. Between her resolve to leave France and her reentry at Florence she has considerable time to put on the pilgrim's dress which she might wear for the rest of the play, with the company's pregnancy fitment (or a cushion) tucked beneath it for her final triumphant entry. When the King first enters he needs a sick man's gown and coif, probably taken over from the costume of the sick King in Henry IV Part 2 and of Caius Ligarius in the orchard scene of Julius Caesar. From this costume a change to regal finery is essential for the celebration when the King is healed; the actor could easily have worn his festive suit under the gown, and had only to change coif for hat and gown for cloak for his buoyant entrance with Helena on his arm, "able to lead her a coranto" (II.iii.49). It seems likely that on this occasion the King does not wear regalia or sit in state, for Bertram's defiance suggests failure to recognize that this man, whom he has first seen as an almost helpless invalid and then as a relaxed and happy celebrant, is to be obeyed both as his guardian and King. But for the final scene at Rossillion the King is a judge. Informal as the scene is at its beginning, royal robes and crown seem most appropriate for this function. Such a costume would also emphasize the irony of the sudden

198

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

switch from the royal judge to the Epilogue: "The King's a beggar, now the play is done." The costumes worn by the Widow of Florence and Diana must indicate their "well born" origin and "fall'n" estate (like that of Annetta and Lucida in A Knack to Know an Honest Man). Since this "old widow of Florence" and her daughter parallel the widow Countess of Rossillion and her daughter-in-law Helena, as Diana does Helena vis-a-vis Bertram, the two widow costumes probably echo each other, although one must be richer than the other, as when Queen Elinor and Lady Faulconbridge are onstage together in King John. Diana and her mother need cloaks for their travel scenes with Helena, though probably not for the final scene, where "Florentine" dress would make them stand out among the French. The French lords in Florence were probably costumed as were the Captains in Henry V and Hamlet, possibly in the same garments. It is unlikely that Bertram's companions, reportedly in "delicate fine hats" (IV.v. 100), needed to appear for the final scene, but if they did, then they could have worn finery left from many earlier plays. Parolles' costume, first gaudy, later shabby, continues the "costume succession" for braggarts begun with Love's Labours Lost almost a decade before. Not only does All's Well need very few new costumes, but the costumes it needs could be used in almost any other play in the repertory from 1599 to 1605; it is in every respect an economical play.

Analysis of costuming and costume change in plays by the Chamberlain's Men at the Theatre, the Curtain, and the first years at the Globe indicates differences between their habits of playing (and play buying) and those of the Admiral's Men. The most obvious, of course, is their early reliance on plays by one of their number who was both an actor and a sharer in the company, and who after 1598 was a sharer in the playhouse as well. In this important respect they were unlike the Admiral's Men, who purchased their plays from poets who were neither company members nor, usually, actors. Although the Chamberlain's Men did put on plays not written by Shakespeare, notably Jonson's two humor comedies in 159899, there is little sign that they made a habit of buying outside work in quantity—nothing like the enormous list of new plays the Admiral's bought and produced in 1598-1603, even when allowing for many lost scripts. Positive arguments from negative evidence are not very trustwor-

199

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

thy, but the almost total lack of evidence for numerous Chamberlain's plays does point toward a smaller repertory than the Rose was mounting during these years.45 The two companies are thought to have played on about the same number of days each year, but in the period 1594-1603 the Chamberlain's Men are recorded at Court thirty-two times to the twenty-one times of the Admiral's Men.46 Evidently the Master of the Revels felt the Chamberlain's offerings would "take Eliza" better despite what seems like fewer plays to choose from. Much also points to the Chamberlain's Men keeping more plays in the repertory longer than the Admiral's Men did, even if no "James Burbage's Diary" survives to record plays, takings, and expenses. No suites of plays, written and produced in rapid succession using the same costumes, like those known for the Admiral's Men, can be identified. The nearest thing the Chamberlain's came to such suites were Shakespeare's two English history cycles, which of course could use certain costumes interchangeably. These, however, were mainly the unvarying garments of office, like royal robes, whose stage uses did not put much strain on them, or like servants' blue or tawny coats. But the way in which these plays came before the public does not look as if Shakespeare, having written Henry VI Part i, then wrote the next two parts and Richard III to fit the costumes, or, some years later, having written Richard II, then wrote the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V for the same reason; both tetralogies simply dramatize reigns in their chronological order. They are also notable for their thematic development from play to play. Nothing like this can be discerned in the Oriental, Iberian, or London suites of the Admiral's Men, while the plays about the French civil wars and Wolsey, though lost, were not written according to the chronology of the events they dramatize. The Jacobean play about Henry VIII, When You See Me You Know Me, may even have been written to keep using the expensive Wolsey clothes. Even between Part 1 and Part 2 of the Robin Hood plays there is no thematic connection, nor is there any from the Robin Hood plays to Oldcastle and Look About You, though they were costumed from the same wardrobe. Unlike the comedies of the Admiral's Men, whose costume requirements link them to suites of plays of other genres, the comedies of the Chamberlain's Men show great variation in their costume needs. Even when characters from one comedy belong to the same social class as those of another, what they do in the play often means different kinds of clothes. All the comedies require at least one ranking woman. But her so-

200

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

cial and personal situation differs from play to play, both at the start and later. Adriana manages the home of her husband, an Ephesus businessman; Silvia lives at a ducal or imperial court; Kate and Bianca are daughters of a rich citizen; the Princess of France comes on an embassy; Hippolyta is a "warrior love" betrothed to a duke and Titania is a fairy queen; Portia is an heiress who receives high-ranking visitors; Hero and Beatrice are unmarried girls in a wealthy household; Celia and Rosalind are the daughters of a deposed and a usurping duke living at the usurper's court. Even when the social rank of such women suggests similar clothing, nothing hints that the similarities exist because a garment was in the stock. Silvia, Portia, and Celia were probably dressed with equal richness, but the plays are not temporally close enough for reused costumes to have been probable. Hero's costume needs in a comedy resemble Juliet's in a tragedy but are unlike those of any other comic heroine. Adriana, Kate, and Bianca belong to the wealthy middle class, and would have to be dressed differently from the Princess of France, whose costume was hardly usable for the fairy queen Titania. In addition, the needs for costume change are alike in no two comedies. For example, in Two Gentlemen, in Merchant, and in As You Like It, heroines disguise themselves in men's clothing. The device is the same; the garments are not. Julia becomes a page, Portia and Nerissa, a lawyer and a clerk, and Rosalind a swain. The same is true for the male characters. There are, of course, many young gentlemen whose age, status, and behavior suggest fashionable clothes, but the only two who might be dressed in the same costume are Bassanio at Belmont and Claudio at his wedding, plays too distant in time from each other for this to have been at the front of Shakespeare's mind, even supposing that Bassanio's new suit could have been preserved for two or three years to serve as Claudio's. The plays are full of dukes and princes: Escalus in Romeo and Juliet and all those from the histories. Solinus of Ephesus and Theseus of Athens might have worn the same costume when both plays were in the repertory, but they were not imagined in succession. Though in rank they are equal to Escalus of Verona and to Richard of Gloucester, their differing roles militate against some common ducal garment carried through from play to play until it wore out, still more against this garment promoting the creation of stage dukes to wear it. The differences between plays, in short, suggest that the Chamberlain's Men did not plan the repertory to use the costumes worn by major characters of one play for similar characters in others. The plays, of course, use

201

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

costumes economically; second and third costumes are confined to a small number of situations and to only a few actors. And economy was obtained in another inventive way. Claudio might not wear Bassanio's suit when its colors dulled or its trimming frayed, but the suit might reappear further down the social scale in a role designed to use gentlemen's finery gone a little seedy and out of fashion: someone like Poins, or Matheo in Every Man in His Humour. In fact some kinds of garment appear to follow a law of succession. Armado, as a braggart soldier, wears "slops," evidently shabby since he cannot afford a shirt. Benedick also wears slops, a mark of his slightly eccentric soldiership, but nothing in his role suggests that they should be shabby, too. Since Much Ado was a resounding success that stayed in repertory, with use the costume would cease to look gentlemanly and the company would replace it, but not discard it. Bobadilla, an impoverished blow-hard, requires such a costume, somewhat worn. In the same play, Musco needs an even sorrier version of soldier's garments, what might be left of Armado's. About the time these ceased to be wearable, Bobadilla's would become tattered, and he would succeed to the slops of Benedick, for whom new ones would be purchased. Instead of inventing serial plays to use the same sets of costumes, Shakespeare invented serial roles to give individual costumes long service no matter what their condition. This technique probably spread the purchase of new costumes fairly evenly, since once a costume type had been bought its need for replacement would come predictably. There is some information in the plays about particular garments purchased or in stock at the time of writing, though mainly it is limited to specialized garments like the slops of Armado, Benedick, Bobadilla, Musco, and Parolles, or like Shylock's "Jewish gaberdine" which must have been echoed in the dress for Tubal. The company therefore owned at one time at least three pair of slops in different states of wear, and at least two gaberdines. In these cases the company probably bought (new or second-hand) however many specified garments were needed for an initial production. Shakespeare could then have fitted lesser characters to older costumes, which he would have known as a sharer who might initiate or approve their purchase, and, as an actor, might have worn. Jonson, it would seem, looked at the stock when he began writing for the company, since the two pair of slops (one shabbier than the other) which he prescribes for Every Man In seem more likely to have come from what he had seen in the wardrobe than from his imagination. Jonson probably also looked at the fashionable finery for Briske's suits in Every Man Out, but

202

THE COMPANIES OF THE 1590s

the best evidence for his research into the wardrobe is his use of a very durable "costume," some armor that must have been acquired for a history play. Musco in Every Man In needs a law clerk's costume for one of his contrivances, and goes with Clement's clerk Pego to a tavern to make him drunk and steal his suit. Pego's return is not necessary for the play's resolution, but Jonson chooses to bring him back, and the costume he settles on is so unusual that only seeing the old armor in which Pego clanks into court is likely to have inspired the astonishing and funny choice; since Pego comes from a tavern, a coat borrowed from a drawer would have been more realistic, though hardly so amusing. Because Jonson had been writing for the Admiral's Men, who expected to get all the use they could out of existing costumes, he may have thought he had to use Chamberlain's costumes in the same way, and went through the Curtain tiring house to see what was on hand and so avoid asking for new purchases. Shakespeare's work exhibits no such anxiety; perhaps he invented the policy for costume purchases that the plays appear to present. It is possible, however, that he did not. The policy has some resemblance to that of the Revels Office years before; perhaps Shakespeare was told how court performances were formerly dressed by old James Burbage, who must have intimately known how Revels garments were managed from his years of court performance with Leicester's Men.

203

This page intentionally left blank

Theatre for Elites

THE "LITTLE EYASES" Around the turn of the century, the stable conditions in which the Admiral's and the Chamberlain's Men had flourished altered in several ways, with both the introduction of new companies into the London market and the transformation of the Elizabethan mask into the Jacobean masque. The new adult companies were organized, financed, and managed by sharers who were also actors, and whose business decisions to buy costumes and scripts and to employ hired actors were made for professional reasons as well as for profit. One of these new companies, Derby's Men, did not last long; Worcester's thrived to become the third major company under Queen Anne's patronage. Around the turn of the century, these sharer companies were challenged, when juvenile actors, absent since 1591 from the professional stage, were set up by consortia of theatrical entrepreneurs and, for a time, cut into the market that the men had monopolized. Men who were not actors financed and managed the juvenile companies. Some of the men, like John Marston, perhaps Lording Barry and the Earl of Derby, may have entered the theatre business so they could stage their own plays,1 but most of those concerned in playing by boys were actuated by the hope of profit: The Burbages, father and sons, Henslowe, and Alleyn were illustrious examples of commercial successes in managing companies and theatres. Such sudden and easy wealth may easily explain in a measure the present venture [of Giles and Evans at Blackfriars

205

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

in 1600] and the spirit in it so far as Evans the lessee and manager of the theatre is concerned.2 To this direct kind of profit might be added certain indirect ones: That service to the Queen was a motive behind the [public] rehearsals was obvious, although it was equally obvious that money could be made in such a venture.... [A]ny kind of service to the crown might lead to monopolies, lucrative positions in the royal household, or other opportunities for making money.... [T]he establishment by the children's troupes of their own theaters was in part a business venture, which though not directly subsidized by the crown exploited the prestige derived from the companies' association with Christmas revelry at court. Men like Thomas Gyles, Edward Pearce, Thomas Woodford, and Henry Evans, and probably Edward Kirkham and Thomas Kendall, might have expected to benefit indirectly from patronage, but also had a narrow eye to profit from the commercial venture. By locating in smaller theatres and charging high admission prices they were able to exclude the general audience, and make what was perceived as a court type of entertainment available to men with money and social ambitions who were not courtiers. Appealing to these young men were the smart, "daring" plays that followed the fashion for satire and "dangerous" personal and political attacks on the Establishment. Though the child companies were managed differently from the men's, their handling of costumes as revealed through their scripts does not much differ from the men's handling of theirs. Possibly this was because most of the boys' principal writers had previously written for the Admiral's Men, and brought with them their settled habits of costume economy, including an inclination to offer suites of plays that could use the same costumes with few additions. The rapid publication of so many private theatre scripts suggests that no one expected the plays to have a long stage life, and that the management was more interested in maximizing its profits by selling scripts to the press than in keeping them from other companies. Quick turnover of scripts meant that the costumes normally outlasted them. The investor-managers of boy companies might thus have thought of buying plays that could use existing costumes, even without the carried-over habits of former Admiral's poets.

206

THEATRE FOR ELITES

Tudor and early Elizabethan plays for schoolboys and choirboys, by choirmasters like John Redford and schoolmasters like Nicholas Udall, survive in surprising numbers, at least one, Jack Juggler, offered for acting as an "interlude for children to play." Most of them show humanist influence, especially their interest in the role of education in forming moral character, as do Wit and Science and prodigal son plays like Disobedient Child and Nice Wanton. Some, like Gammer Gurton's Needle and Udall's Roister Doister, adhere to the classical unities of time and place, to the comic conventions of middle and lower-class characters, and to such Terentian type-characters as the braggart, the parasite, and the clever servant. Plays that seem written primarily for court performance, such as Edwardes's Damon and Pithias and the 1601 version of Liberality and Prodigality, perhaps first played in the 1560s, require costumes like those of masks. Revels entries suggest that many of the lost boys' plays acted at court were similar. The schoolmasters Sebastian Westcott and William Hunnis evidently continued the Redford-Udall tradition of writing the plays their boys were to perform; probably Mulcaster did the same, although no extant play is known to be his. Perhaps Thomas Gyles, Westcott's successor at Paul's, lacked talent or inclination to be the boys' playwright, and this may be why John Lyly, who had family connections with Paul's School, was engaged to manage the theatre and write for it after Westcott's death. Lyly's Campaspe and Mother Bombie follow the familiar Terentian model, keeping the unity of time very strictly, while his other plays handle time almost as if it did not exist, an effect to which their minimal costume change largely contributes. Endimion, Gallathea, and Midas almost ignore duration even when months or years are said to have passed. In Gallathea the temporal information of the virgin-sacrifice and runaway-Cupid stories (a matter of days) clashes with the pages' much longer apprenticeships. Gallathea enters disguised in a shepherd boy's white coat; Phillida is first dressed as a girl, and later puts on a boy's garments. Cupid reverses her change, from boy to virgin, perhaps by exchanging costumes with Phillida, perhaps by the two actors simply trading roles. Endimion grows old while he sleeps, but characters who stay awake cannot, since no opportunity for a change of wig is provided. There is no costume change in Campaspe, and in Endimion and Midas only changes of headdress for the title characters.

207

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Lyly follows a tradition, for earlier boys' plays likewise restricted costume change to the assumption, removal, or trade of outer garments, most often on stage. Only in Mother Bombie, the most Terentian of Lyly's plays, do actors (playing the witty and the witless couple) exchange garments, allowing the witty pair to marry with parental consent without their fathers realizing to whom they have given it. Probably the minimizing of costume change in plays for boys derived partly from the traditions of costume change in Tudor plays acted by adults, preserved through the conservatism of school dramaturgy. Partly it came from the limited costume stock kept by grammar and choir schools, evident from what Revels supplied to the boys of Eton, the Chapel, and Paul's when they played at court. Probably the main difficulty was in making part-time juvenile actors (who even in their usual clothes might have been slow dressers) quickly change into and out of complicated garments while under the stress of performance. When a boy disguised as a woman sounds anxious about remembering "how but to trusse my hose" (89-90) in Marston's Antonio and Mellida, this may not quite be a joke since tying the points which attached hose to doublet was probably the most awkward part of Elizabethan dressing. In plays for adult actors men who dress on stage often demand or are given a servant's help to fasten them. Since boys only began to wear clothes that needed trussing at about the age of seven, the youngest boy actors may not yet have been able to perform as efficiently. Boy maskers from Merchant Taylors' School went to Windsor accompanied by a woman to help dress them (R.O. Eliz219); no one was paid to assist regular players, who could help one another as boys might not be able to do. Early boys' companies were also somewhat larger than men's so that the effect on wardrobe management was like that of plays requiring much doubling. After 1603, the so-called children's troupes at Paul's, Blackfriars and Whitefriars were growing into troupes of adolescents and young men, who had developed skill in dressing, and their plays begin to handle costume change much as had those of the Admiral's Men. Child actors first appear in the Revels Office records in the 1560 inventory, with the item "Sloppes for children to play in" (R.O. Efe. 21). Both the routine form of the entry and the condition of the garments (they are described as worn out) show that costuming child actors was no novelty to the office that arranged court entertainment. School and choir acting was and remained important at court; boys from Eton, Westminster, Paul's, Merchant Taylor's, and the Chapel Royal all appeared before the

208

THEATRE FOR ELITES

Queen. When such boys played at court in the 1570s, Revels helped to outfit them, some groups more than others. Exactly what masters like Westcott, Mulcaster, and Hunnis kept in the way of permanent wardrobes is unknown, but it seems likely that continuing institutions like the schools and the Chapel built up wardrobes over their years of public and court performance. What Revels supplied, though made of recycled fabric like the 1560 "Sloppes [cut] from undersleves... taken out of the hanginges" (R.O. Eliz. 21), that is, from old curtains, might still have been finer than what the boys' masters kept in store. Revels normally supplemented the boys' costumes with the more fragile kinds of accessories, such as "scarfes and tryumphant ensigns & banners," and always with gloves. At least some of these Revels-supplied items may have gone home with the boys and their masters, helping to furnish "rehearsals" when they prepared for their next court service. Understandably the boys' masters wanted perfect performances before the Queen; thus they found it desirable to practice their plays before audiences, charging admission for the privilege of seeing what the Queen herself was to see. Mulcaster's boys "rehearsed" for a penny admission charge in the Merchant Taylors' hall until the Company, offended by a paying audience that crowded out the school's patrons, banished playing from its premises.4 Westcott and later Richard Farrant fitted up hall theatres for "rehearsal" performances, which as early as 1582-83 attracted commercial investment by Henry Evans. Through the 15808, Evans as manager and John Lyly as playwright ensured the court and commercial success of the Paul's Boys. In 1591 their performances were halted, perhaps because of the company's part in the Martin Marprelate controversy, though it seems doubtful that the boys were the offenders since it was adult players to whom the Master of the Revels and others objected.5 Through the 15905 professional playing by boys was limited to apprentices in the men's companies. The memory of success with boy players did not die out, however; revival of playing at Paul's showed there was still money to be made. The successful revival of public playing at Paul's in 1599 or before evidently stimulated Henry Evans to ally himself with Nathaniel Giles, the Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, and with the haberdasher Thomas Kendall. Together they set up a more ambitious theatre featuring boy actors, took Richard Burbage's vacant Blackfriars playhouse on a very long lease, and opened it for thrice-weekly performances at high prices. Evidently Burbage felt no anxiety that the boys would compete with his own company at the newly opened Globe or he would hardly have rented

209

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

his empty theatre to the Evans syndicate even for an income of £40 a year.7 Perhaps he expected the competition to be little more than that from the tiny Paul's Theatre, which seems to have opened with John Marston's Antonio and Mellida, along with the old Paul's repertory of plays by Lyly8 and such anonymous imitations as The Maid's Metamorphosis and The Wisdom of Doctor DodypolL The Chamberlain's Men, preoccupied with the complications of moving first to the Curtain and then to the Globe, and satisfied with their evident success in plays by Shakespeare and the recently-engaged Jonson, may not have paid much attention to the changes in plays for boys wrought by Marston at Paul's and soon after by Chapman, Jonson, and Middleton at Blackfriars. The "little eyases" passage in Hamlet reflects their surprise and perhaps their dismay at what leasing their theatre for boy players had led to. After the suspension of professional acting by boys in 1591 it seems likely that the wardrobes previously assembled were soon diverted to other uses, especially at Paul's where almost everyone connected with the cathedral seems to have been exploiting church property for private gain.9 When the Paul's theatre reopened in 1599 it is most improbable that much remained of its former wardrobe, and, supposing that any did, dead storage would hardly have been good for it. The new playhouse management almost certainly had to equip their players from scratch. Reavley Gair assumes that it would not have cost much to set up actors at Paul's: One of the most attractive features of the Paul's playhouse to its promoters was that it was available free.. . . Apart from costumes and properties, the only expenses would have been for a certain amount of maintenance and for the wages of some auxiliary helpers. 10 In fact, Gair is far too dismissive of the expense needed for a new company's costumes. One reason for Thomas Woodford's involvement in the Paul's management must have been that he was a haberdasher, a trade long associated with theatrical supplies and the rental of costumes for shows and masking, including, at least sometimes, costumes for members of the Inns of Court in their Christmas revels. Though we have little record of Woodford's business activities outside of the Paul's enterprise, the Paul's plays never demand elaborate wardrobes, so Woodford himself probably never owned anything like the large and varied costume stock of the men's companies.

210

THEATRE FOR ELITES

Woodford may have depended on the Paul's actors for a substantial part of his takings, and his profits would have diminished had he invested heavily in a wardrobe for them. Ownership of costumes could lead to contention, as may be inferred from the Pembroke's Men-Langley dealings that found their way into Henslowe's Diary, and more openly from the later controversy between Lady Elizabeth's Men and the Henslowe-Meade partnership over a contract to supply an initial wardrobe and update it in consultation with the principal sharers. In both instances, the capitalists' wish to economize clashed with the actors' wish to put on a good show, and in both, the contract between investors and players was soon broken. At Paul's the situation was different, since the boys had no say in management and the principal playwright, Marston, was also an investor. Evidently there was little disagreement between him and Woodford about keeping production costs within the narrowest practicable bounds. Exactly what were the Earl of Derby's "great paines and charge" in the Paul's enterprise is unclear, nor is it certain that the "comedies" he was "busy penning. . . for the common players" were produced at Paul's or anywhere else. Marston may have designed renovations for the Paul's theatre, and perhaps contributed funds for that purpose. He also wrote what may have been the company's first play, Antonio and Mellida, after someone had assembled a small start-up wardrobe of miscellaneous apparel. Though working with a limited costume stock Marston cleverly exploited it to satirize public theatre stage conventions. That he had to motivate the wearing of some very odd garments seems the only reason for a number of the play's peculiar costume specifications, revealed in stage directions and dialogue more precise than is common in plays written for other companies. Costumes are usually described to emphasize their information about the rank, profession, or activity of the characters wearing them. In Antonio and Mellida they are precisely described as if for their own sake. The Induction brings on eight boy actors "with parts in their hands: having cloakes cast over their apparell" (2-3), that is, concealing the costumes for the role each is about to play. Their banter connects each cloaked figure with a future role, revealing, for instance, that "the necessitie of the play" (26) requires one boy to double two incompatible parts, the pathetic "distressed Duke of Genoa" and the comic "Alberto, a Venetian gentleman, enamoured on the Ladie Rossaline" (27-30). The boy who is to play Antonio protests that his part demands too much of him. He opens his cloak to show the costume for his first entrance in character, "this fained presence of an Amazon" called Florizell (79), wor-

211

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

rying that "when vse hath taught me action, to hit the right point of a Ladies part, I shall growe ignorant when I must turne young Prince againe, how but to trusse my hose" (87-90). While expressing the difficulty of separating the identity of his playing character from his identity in real life (a danger real to Stubbes and other opponents of the theatre), he is also faced by the more immediate problem of switching from one "face" of his role to another. "Alberto" points out that this is "common fashion" not only on the stage but also in life: "Nay, if you cannot bear two subtle fronts under one hood, Ideot goe by, goe by; off this worlds stage" (8386). Marston seems to be pointing out that playing in a disguise is educational in a way hardly intended by Sidney when he asserted the value of theatre to moral education. The play's subsequent action demonstrates that while Antonio, like others, must disguise himself to achieve his purposes, his actual costume may have more to do with available garments than with some necessary question of the play. Limitations in the wardrobe appear to be indicated by explicit dialogue descriptions of what characters are wearing, based on the costumes available when the lines were written. After the Prologue, and the sound of "a battle within" (183), Antonio enters "disguised like an Amazon" (184) to complain first of his father's death in battle and then of the disguise he has donned "to purchase my adored Mellida" (212). As he speaks, Piero enters in character for the first time, "in Armour" (211), preceded by a Page with a shield and by followers "armed with Petronels.. . [who] Being entered, they make a stand in diuided foyles." This entrance "from war" differs from the informal first entrance of Lyly's victorious Alexander in Campaspe (Paul's, 1582), the only earlier conqueror in a surviving play for boys, though the "scarfes and tryumphant ensigns & banners" (R.O. Efe. 321) supplied to Paul's by the Revels Office for an unnamed 1579 play suggest an entrance much like Piero's. Marston is unlikely to have known the 1579 play, while entries like Piero's are a major feature of the "conqueror" genre that the Admiral's Men played so often. Marston uses their costume conventions, but mocks them along with the playwriting conventions from which they arose. Piero the conqueror says and does nothing, while Mellida and Rossaline (like Shakespeare's Cressida and Pandarus) mock the soldiers from their station "above." Marston does the same thing with costume change for disguise and altered fortune. When Andrugio enters for the first time in Act III he is, like Piero, in armor, probably the same armor Piero wore earlier. His companion Lucio wants him to exchange it for the "sheepeheard gowne in

212

THEATRE FOR ELITES

his hand" (813'14). But unlike princes in Mucedorus, Selimus, and other plays who disguise themselves as shepherds, the defeated Andrugio refuses to adopt a low status to assure his own safety. Even so, when he enters with his companions in exile in a later scene, they are preparing to eat roots and water, the traditional food of primitives and exiles (like Marius in Wounds of Civil War and Shakespeare's Timon), indicating that he has now put on the "sheepeheard gowne." In his initial refusal to demean himself even for his own safety he differs from his son Antonio, who lurks about Piero's court in his Amazon dress, like Sidney's Pyrocles around the court of Basilius. When Antonio must flee, Feliche offers him the "suite I wore at sea" (1176), but Antonio reappears not in a suit but "in Kis sea gowne running" (1248). His soliloquy questions his very identity, which he has not felt uneasy about in the even more alien Amazon disguise. Mellida escapes from court in the page disguise used over and over by the heroines of romantic drama: Neronis in Cfyomon and Clamydes, Greene's Dorothea, Shakespeare's Julia, Jessica, and Rosalind, and many others. But Mellida does not slip away quietly as do these heroines. Instead she enters in "Pages attire, dauncing" (1212) while Piero and all the court are present. Piero even remarks that the "Sprightly" boy resembles Mellida, whose heels, however, "are halfe so light" (1213-15). Despite this observation, he will not believe Flavia's immediate report that Mellida has fled while he looked on. But when he later catches up with Mellida, he has no trouble recognizing his daughter in her male garments. Unlike the character in Chapman's May Day (played at Blackfriars), who says that the convention of disguise by costume change is unconvincing, Marston shows that a costume alien to a character's rank or sex will or will not work according to the bias of the perceiver. Chapman inserts his comment into a character's preparations for the more realistic disguise of a chimney'sweep; Marston shows the convention's absurdity twice, making Piero gullible when Mellida dances past him in a place where he might expect to see her, and astute when he instantly penetrates her disguise in the wilderness. Clearly Marston's mockery of contemporary stage conventions is more important to him than consistent characterization. Even with the miscellaneous lot of garments needed for Antonio and Mellida and Marston's cleverness in turning skimpiness to his own advantage, without Thomas Woodford and his stock of apparel the Paul's managers would soon have had to lay out a fair starter sum for costumes if the theatre was to continue. Exactly how much Woodford owned to begin with and how much he acquired as time went on is not clear; other plays

213

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

for the company suggest that his stock had peculiarities and that the management, or Woodford, was rather slow in assembling a flexible wardrobe. The odd costuming in Antonio's Revenge, Jack Drum's Entertainment, and Blurt Master Constable can hardly all result from authorial eccentricity, unless the authors wanted to do no more than travesty earlier plays. Jack Drum's Entertainment, many of whose scenes look like parody of The Merchant of Venice, seems to be mocking the whole business of costume change on stage. Katherine, believing Pasquil has been murdered, enters "in a petticoate" (Marston 214) for a suicide attempt. Pasquil prevents her, then leaves to fetch her gown to make her decent, but while he is gone the usurer Mamon flings a poison at her face. When Pasquil reenters there is some rather distasteful comedy as he tries to make her put the gown on while she backs away. Later, when Brabant Jr's boy follows instructions to fetch Planet's hat and cloak after shooting him, Brabant dons the garments on stage for an elaborate charade of mistaken identity and attempted suicide, ended by an explosion of audience laughter when the supposedly dead Planet enters in doublet and hose and wants his cloak back. The Paul's plays from 1599 through 1603 show very little in the way of purposeful costume management, except the desire to use what was at hand and, presumably, to buy as few new garments as possible. Though a clever enough playmaker, Marston seems to have had theatrical experience only at the Middle Temple and at Paul's (unless he is the one-play poet Henslowe calls Maxton). In neither environment would he have learned how to develop a varied costume stock and use it economically in the fashion of the Admiral's and the Chamberlain's Men. But in 1603 Chapman began to write for Paul's, followed by Dekker in 1604, and both were habituated to the Admiral's system of plays in suites for which one costume investment could serve with few additions. With the exception of Chapman's Bussy d'Ambois, which might be considered a late spin-off from the Admiral's "Civil Wars of France" suite (1598-99), and of Middleton's The Phoenix, almost everything in the later repertory of Paul's is some kind of city comedy. Though at least six authors provided these plays, they could all be dressed from the same basic wardrobe, with an occasional new garment for a new play or a replacement for a worn or unfashionable one. Most city comedies—Westward Ho.', Northward Ho!, A Trick to Catch the Old One, Your Five Gallants, Michaelmas Term—are centred on conflict between citizens (often usurers) and gallants, specifically, on which men are

214

THEATRE FOR ELITES

to end in possession of money and women. The plays also include scenes between the gallants and their whores. Gallants and citizens are distinguished by costume, but there is deliberate confusion of costume between citizens' wives and whores, since both ape the dress of gentlewomen. In A Mad World, My Masters and A Trick to Catch the Old One a courtesan makes elderly citizens believe that she is virtuous by a show of respectability. Frank Gullman's costume in A Mad World is never directly described, but Harebrain's belief that she is a religious virgin suggests Puritan plainness. In A Trick the Courtesan deceives two London usurers into thinking her a wealthy widow, the best means for which would be a rich mourning. These two plays otherwise use costume very differently. A Mad World turns almost entirely on disguises: three sets used by Follywit to steal from his grandfather, one used by Penitent Brothel to seduce Mistress Harebrain, one in which a devil impersonates Mistress Harebrain. This last would have been easy to manage, since one actor could play both roles by changing Mistress Harebrain's headtire to a devil headdress. Its multitude of disguises is probably what keeps the audience from making moral judgements on the play's intended adultery, its thefts, and the clever trickster's marriage to his grandfather's whore, which was, at least technically, a form of incest. In A Trick to Catch the Old One, the Courtesan's disguise is the only one in the play, and, though Witgood is a more clever trickster than Follywit in A Mad World, the effect of the single disguise is to emphasize not his trickery but the credulity of Lucre and Hoard when a promised wealthy marriage to the supposed widow fires their rivalry in avarice. Confusion between gentlewomen and whores is treated much more seriously in Michaelmas Term, where both Quomodo (with his "spirits" who work Easy into signing his land away) and the pander Hellgill frequently act like conjurers. The pander subverts the Country Wench with promises of fine clothes: Remember a loose-bodied gown, wench,. . . wires and tires, bents and bums, felts and falls, thou shalt deceive the world, that gentlewomen indeed shall not be known from others. . . . Deny a satin gown and you dare now? (I.ii. 12-33) Though the Wench at first says only that she desires "to go like a gentlewoman" (27), talk of silks and fashion soon puts her "in a swoon till I be a

215

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

gentlewoman" (55-56, italics supplied). Indeed, throughout Michaelmas Term the information in the clothes is usually inverted: not that whores shall not be known from gentlewomen, but that gentlewomen shall not be known from whores. The play inverts not only costumes but most comic conventions. Quomodo prefers the landless courtier over the landed gentleman as husband for his daughter, unlike Sir Roger Otiey in Shoemaker's Holiday. Quomodo's wife not only laments Easy's ruin, which does not compromise her virtue, but also sends him money in her husband's lifetime, marries him during her husband's funeral, and goes with him even after Quomodo reappears, so that she is both an adulteress and a bigamist. The Country Wench's Father disguises himself as a servant and is hired to serve her, but he seems not to recognize his daughter in the fashionably tricked-out Courtesan, unlike Orlando Friscobaldo in The Honest Whore 2 or Laelia's Father in Beaumont and Fletcher's Captain. The expected recognition scene does not occur; the Father simply vanishes in Act IV. Mother Gruel fails to recognize her son Andrew, who once "had scarce a shirt" (V.iii. 102), in the courtier Andrew Lethe, who "shines bright/ In rich embroideries" (1.1.64-65), perhaps ornamenting "his white satin suit" (II. iii. 12). To cheat the country gentleman Easy (probably dressed in the plain suit associated with simplicity in the first part of the play and with honesty in the second), Quomodo employs two "spirits," Shortyard and Falselight, who don a series of disguises: Shortyard as an older country gentleman named Blastfield and as a porter, both of them as officers and as "wealthy citizens in satin suits" (III.iv.176 SD), finally, for a brief gloating appearance, Shortyard as the owner of Easy's Essex land. Quomodo disguises himself as the beadle in charge of his own funeral, but the funeral, though it has all the trappings of mourning (Drapers in their livery, charity children, the widow and mourners in black, even "a counterfeit corse" [IV.iv.51 SD]), everything is as "feigned" as the widow's swoon. After this display everything that follows is authentic: Widow Thomasine's marriage to Easy, Shortyard's documents that transfer Easy's land from Sim Quomodo to himself, and back to Easy, Quomodo's surrender of all that he owns for the sum of "poor forty pence" (V. i. 78), and all the penalties the judge imposes. It is not certain why the Paul's company sold off its plays late in 1606 or early in 1607 and ceased performing, but it does not seem to have been extravagance. Given the efficient use of the Admiral's system, and the limitations kept upon variety of genre, the Paul's playhouse could have

216

THEATRE FOR ELITES

continued indefinitely without heavy expenditures. Gair conjectures that scandal over The Puritan led to alienation of its audience when it abandoned such "spicy" plays, and that this closed the theatre. He finds as additional reasons the financial losses resulting from repeated plague restraints, the inability to replace boy actors as the old ones grew up, and, finally, bribery by the Blackfriars and Whitefriars companies in the form of a pension to Edward Pearce so he would shut down his competing theatre. There may also have been pressure from the cathedral clergy to dissociate themselves from a theatrical enterprise that brought scandal to their premises.13

The company of "little eyases" at Blackfriars began with a more effective organization than the company at Paul's; Pearce, Kirkham and Kendall evidently started their enterprise with more resources, which included a larger theatre in a more convenient location. Although its connection with the Chapel Royal was always tenuous, it did operate under nominal royal protection until the use to which the managers put Nathaniel Giles's warrant to "take up" boys for royal service provoked a lawsuit by a kidnapped boy's outraged father. With the new reign the company came under direct royal patronage as the Children of the Queen's Revels, lost its protection because one of its plays insulted the King, but managed to continue under various names in different theatres before finally amalgamating with Lady Elizabeth's Men. (These name changes are unnecessarily confusing; since the company remained at the Blackfriars theatre for most of its existence, the name Blackfriars Boys seems most appropriate.) The first recorded play by the group is The Contention between Liberality and Prodigality, played at Court in February 1601 when they still had connections with the Royal Chapel. This may have been a reworked version of the lost court play Prodigality (1567). Although the main action resembles that of prodigal plays, its characters bear allegorical names, as in moralities and masks. Much of its costuming of characters suggests the mask, as when Vanity, "all in feathers," opens the play. Jonson's Cynthia's Revels opens with presenters like those of masks, and climaxes with a masque by Cynthia's foolish courtiers, the "revels" of the title. Much of the play's middle requires court dress showing the more extreme follies of contemporary fashion. In Poetaster the Banquet of Gods involves dressing up in player's gear, and its comic climax adumbrates Jonson's later

217

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

antimasques. These three plays suggest that Kendall and Kirkham had a stock of costumes of a masking sort on hand at the beginning of the Blackfriars enterprise. But the Ovid Senior-Ovid Junior scenes are, except for the classical names, almost exactly the same as the Inn of Court scene between father and son in Stukeley. Similarly, the Albius-ChloeCrispinus scenes resemble those involving husband, wife, and would-be gallant in citizen comedies. Scenes like these show that ample contemporary dress for different classes and ages was in the wardrobe. As at Paul's, plays in contemporary dress soon began to dominate the repertory at Blackfriars, although masking scenes and thus the need for masking dress continue; even without the lists of costumes for Oxford in 1605, this shows that appropriate costumes were readily available. Thanks to Kendall's extensive stock of costumes, evident from what he sent to Oxford, and perhaps thanks also to later masque costumes stored with Kirkham as Yeoman of the Revels, this company was from its beginning less restricted than the Paul's company in the kinds and quantities of costumes available for new plays. Although city comedy came to dominate the Blackfriars repertory as it did that of Paul's, Kendall was in a position to costume Jonson's comical satires, Chapman's French tragedies, and Beaumont and Fletcher's plays of mixed genre. Perhaps one reason the company could put on experiments like Cynthia's Revels, Poetaster, Philotas, Cupid's Revenge, and The Knight of the Burning Pestle was that it could get their specialty costumes from Kendall; at least it does not seem to have suffered losses it regarded as intolerable from plays of limited success, or even outright failures. At least two dozen of the known plays for all the boy companies (most extant) are "city comedies," and most of the plays that do not fit this category (like Cynthia's Revels, Poetaster, Cupid's Revenge, and Knight of the Burning Pestle) could share their wardrobe with few additions. Even Chapman's Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois and Byron tragedies might use much of this wardrobe, since English high fashion was largely modeled on French.14 All, like Chapman's Admiral's plays An Humorous Day's Mirth and presumably his lost Fountain of New Fashions, make much of the wearing of costly finery by the prodigal heroes, and sometimes their descent to the prodigal's rags. Most city comedies employ costume to distinguish between gallants and their unfashionable relatives and victims and between "good" women (and the bawds who dress as they do) and fine ladies and whores in exag-

218

THEATRE FOR ELITES

gerated fashion. They need liveries for servants and sometimes occupational costume for minor characters. Some, like Cupid's Revenge, also need "antike sewtes." The scripts imply that the poets knew the general character of the wardrobe, and that, as with the Admiral's Men, they were aware of specific costumes and either wrote them into the plays, or revised lines to match the garments available. Marston's Dutch Courtesan seems not to give much costume information, but some of the details embedded in the lines show care for authentic dress. The vintner Mulligrub and his wife are in work clothes, he in a leather jerkin, she in the foresleeves worn for housework and cooking. When she thinks herself invited to dine at a goldsmith's she takes off the sleeves and puts on a fine apron; her husband at once comments on her going-out clothes. The trickster Cocledemoy disguises himself with a barber's apron and a wig and beard for one prank, as a French pedlar selling soap for another, as the goldsmith's man for a third, and for the last as a bellman. Two old knights at a betrothal feast wear nightcaps, and a short actor playing a girl wears chopines and a tall headtire. Freevill, a principal gallant, brings a masque to his betrothal, and at his next entrance is disguised as a pander, probably with the red slops Middleton gives his pander in The Black Book, to which Marston may allude in one speech of Cocledemoy's. The title's courtesan dresses elegantly; Freevill comments on her dainty appearance, she sends a prospective lover away, saying that she is in her bath, and when she comes to a knight's house she is carrying a fan and evidently does not look out of place. Possibly one or more of the very fine loose-bodied gowns sent to Oxford in 1605 had previously been her costumes. Costumes explicitly called for in Eastward Hoi show that its authors were thoroughly familiar with the available wardrobe and did not worry about asking for variety of dress and a good many costume changes. They specify that Gertrude first enter in "a French head attire, & a Citizens gown," accompanied by a tailor "withafaire gowne, Scotch Varthingall, and French fall in his armes" (I.ii. SD). What the tailor carries becomes her costume when she enters to take coach the day after her marriage. Winifred has one fine new gown and one old, and Golding has two suits, one for his part as the Industrious Apprentice and after his promotion, one like Touchstone's. Golding also needs at least one fine gown. The Idle Apprentice Quicksilver and the carpet knight Sir Petronel Flash need three costumes each. Quicksilver first wears an apprentice's suit and flat

219

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

cap, probably the twin of Golding's. After Touchstone dismisses him, he comes on stage midway in his transformation to a gallant, wearing fashionable hose with his apprentice coat and cap, which he then exchanges for a fine doublet, hat, and cloak. When the Virginia enterprise founders in the Thames, he enters "at Wapping" with part of his finery missing, and completes the change to the rags of the prodigal before his reentry in the Counter. Sir Petronel seems likely to dress as a "gallant" until before his marriage, then change to a riding suit with boots for his farewell to Gertrude and the scenes in the tavern and by the Thames, finally putting on tatters like Quicksilver's to "come out of the Counter." For this last scene of "penitence," Security may also change from his usurer's gown to rags. Given what the Oxford records show of Kendall's large stock of costumes in 1605, it is not surprising that he could equip a Blackfriars play this well. Although the playwrights for Blackfriars are not always so meticulous about prescribing costumes as in Eastward Ho!, it is clear that they could ask for a great variety of costuming and expect to get it. Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle needs middle-class costumes very like those of Eastward Ho! for its "London Merchant" plot and subplot and for the grocer's family. When Rafe is foisted into "The London Merchant" he brings with him a need for "reparrel," tiltyardlike armor and helm for as long as he is a knight-errant, and page's gear for his squire and his dwarf. It seems likely that his costume reverts to his prentice coat and hose for his appearances as a London May-lord with "Scarfes about him, and his fethers and his rings and his knacks" (IV. Interlude. 9-10). As a Mile End commander he could add to this a buff jerkin and a military scarf. There is no indication of another costume change for Rafe; he "dies" using the language of the Grocer's trade, "with a forked arrow through his head" (V.276.SD), so his prentice suit without any augmentation seems most probable. Though the Blackfriars Boys put on plays with foreign and classical settings and therefore with use of more exotic masking array than those set in London, the underlying design of much of their repertory is largely that of city- and court comedy. Some plays called for more fancy-dress flourishes than others. Chapman's two Byron plays (1607-8) needed French court attire, but as with Bussy d'Ambois at Paul's earlier, English finery was so much modeled on French fashion that special costuming would not have been necessary. The revised script of The Tragedy of Byron includes an elaborate masque:

220

THEATRE FOR ELITES

.. . Cupid enters with a Table written, hung about his neck; after him two Torch-bearers; after them Mary, D'Entragues, and 4. Ladies more with their Torch-bearers, etc. (II.i.2 SD)

Mary (the Queen) and D'Entragues (the King's mistress) are said to represent Chastity and Liberality, but the only costume information is that they are "nymphs." Probably a set of six loose-bodied gowns like or the same as some sent to Oxford in 1605 furnished the masque, and page outfits served for the torch-bearers. A variety of costumes for Cupid are described in several masque texts; he was evidently made recognizable by his bow and arrows, not by a traditional dress. The ease with which The Malcontent as written for boys could be adapted for the men at the Globe shows the compatibility of production methods between Queen's Revels and King's Men as early as 1604. By 1608 the Blackfriars Boys were failing. The immediate cause was royal anger at a lost play that made fun of the King, but years afterwards Cuthbert Burbage identified the inherent weakness of all the boy companies: "In processe of time the boyes growing vp to bee men. .. the boyes dayly wearing out." Besides the problem of replacing boys who outgrew the company, there was also the failure of their plays to hold the audience. The Knight of the Burning Pestle failed for one reason, The Faithful Shepherdess (if a Blackfriars play) for another—and probably not for the reasons their authors alleged when the plays were published. More to the point is the winding down of city comedy at Blackfriars: The Fawne and Your Five Gaifonts are among the weaker of Marston's and Middleton's plays; The Isle of Gulls, whatever its scandalous content, has little else to recommend it; The Fleer and Ram Alley are clumsy amateur work, inferior to Marston's first efforts, and though Nathan Field and Robert Armin were superior actors, as playwrights they were hardly better than Barry and Sharpham. The company did acquire Jonson's wonderful Silent Woman for its later Whitefriars period, but the play came too late to save it from closure. Men's companies could put on city comedies and plays with music and masking as well as the boys could, and in the Blackfriars the King's Men could provide the same intimate exclusiveness as the boys did. The Widow Kendall and Edward Kirkham did not need the boys to continue a costume business. Robert Keysar's reward for trying to profit from boy actors was to receive the dedication of Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle, a play that had failed.

221

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

THE COURT MASQUE Elizabethan court masking was more "show" than "drama." Those of "great calling" dressed up, entered with musicians and torchbearers and a spokesman, danced exhibition dances, and took out spectators for revels. The dressing up, whose fashion differed from season to season even if the fabrics were recycled, took many forms: goddesses, Turks, Greek heroes, fishwives, and rustics. Similar "shows" might be seen in London, sometimes garbed in the same apparel as at court, as when "the Queenes new black and white mask" was hired out by John Arnold in 1572 for a Cheapside Maying. Even after the virtual cessation of court masking in the 1580s, tiltyard entries preserved much of this masking tradition, though perhaps with less variety, since they tended to repeat pastoral, Arthurian, and classical themes from year to year. The Jacobean masque differed considerably from these Elizabethan forebears. Instead of the masquers simply "coming in" from whatever place was indicated by their costumes (Olympus, Venice, Muscovy, or the fish market) or by some three-dimensional canvas "house," Jacobean masquers were "discovered" on a purpose-built stage with perspective scenery. This stage created a separate, physical world from which the masquers came and to which they returned. The masque's fiction included everything behind its stage's proscenium, and this fiction overlapped with the real court on the part of the floor defined by green baize, where the masquers performed their special dances, then "took out" spectators for "measures and revels." This dancing floor was in some ways analogous to the three-dimensional stage of the public theatre, but the "perspective" scenes of court masques gave them the effect of a painting in its frame where the third dimension is illusory. The perspective set and its transformations, created by a proscenium frame and periaktoi or sliding shutters, was never possible in the unframed three-dimensional space of either the public or the private theatres. But other masque conventions were transposable, including some kinds of machinery and, more importantly, costumes. Masks and shows at the courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII had a narrative core, usually chivalric, which motivated the combat and/or dance centred on mobile ships, castles and other structures. This narrative was put into the mouths of presenters and the actors were silent; the "show" part of the entertainment was divorced from the "tell" part. Because of her sex, Elizabeth could not participate in combat entertainments as her

222

THEATRE FOR ELITES

father had. Masks at her court lost much of the Henrician mask's mimicking of combat and siege, this type of entertainment being transferred to the tiltyard and the equivalent indoor show of barriers. Tiltyard masquerade, however, could hardly develop narrative continuity when each combatant created a separate fiction for his entry. Because Elizabeth loved to watch dancers and to dance herself, masking at her court tended to resemble ballet, with verbal content limited to a presenter's introductory speech; little in the Revels Office records of costume for these masks hints at more narrative content than would explain the impersonation the costumed maskers intended. Dramatic narrative seems to have been introduced into masking in Proteus and the Rock Adamantine, brought to court by the Gentlemen of Gray's Inn during the Christmas of 1594-95. Jonson either imitated or recreated its form in The Masque of Blackness and in later masques expanded the narrative content by adding a grotesque or comic antimasque. In antimasques, witches, satyrs, court servants, and intruders create dramatic conflict, expressed through more-or-less extended dialogue. Once introduced, this conflict is not so much resolved as suppressed, as in Queens, where "not only the Hagges themselues, but their hell, into wch they ranne, quite vanishd; and the whole face of the scene alterd; scarse suffring the memory of any such thing: But, in the place of it appear'd a glorious and magnificent Building" (301-2:356-60). Spokesmen for propriety like Silenus and the Silvan guards in Oberon and Orpheus in Campion's Lords' Masque rebuke and at once end the disruptive behavior of Satyrs and of Mania and her Frantics. In some masques conflict ends when the antimasque characters reach agreement by discussion, between Cupid and Mercury in Lovers Made Men and between the Poet and the Master Cook in Neptune's Triumph. Brief and formalized as these "dramas" of presenters and antimasquers in their fantastic attire may be, they function like theatre's characters in inductions and like its clowns in bridging the distance between the actors and the audience, and so making the audience participants in the action. In the Jacobean court masque, this bridge between performers and audience is not, however, optional. The masque was an offering to one person in that audience, the King, and the conflicts were ultimately referred in some way to his power. What distinguishes masque drama from theatre drama is the speed with which it ends misunderstanding or conflict for the sake of its extended denouement, the entry or disclosure of the splendidly dressed high-born masquers, their dances, and their "revels" with members of the audience.

223

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

As in Davies' Orchestra, masque dance embodied harmony. But its harmony did not depend on the resolution of conflict by the masque characters themselves; rather, it depended on magical influence from the King. From the state, outside the device, where he sat to watch the masque, he exerted a demigod's power over it, for instance when The Masque of Blackness declares that his "light sciential" can, contrary to Scripture, make an Ethiope white. (This power was "proved" three years later when the blanched Daughters of Niger reappeared in The Masque of Beauty.) Because the resolution of masque conflict was asserted to depend on the "divinity" of the King, and that the same "divinity" gave him his power in his actual kingdom, masques could not end with an epilogue to remind the audience that the masque was a theatrical illusion. In contrast to masques, plays, even history plays, often end with an epilogue that affirms that the play is an illusion, that the person who has been known as Puck or Prospero or Feste or the Chorus is really "a poor player" for whom applause is not only a present gratification but a confession of dependence on the audience they must "strive to please. .. every day." Such epilogues acknowledge that the play's characters are "shadows, " that the imaginary Falstaff is as mortal as the historic King Henry, and that the heroic Henry V shown (through Burbage) at his greatest triumph did not long outlive his victories. Once the play is over, the door that once was Thebes is again but an old door to an Elizabethan building. But when a masque ends the masquers return from the "device" side into the "scene" which closes behind them to maintain the visual illusion of another world. On the audience side the King remains visible, exerting in the real world of court and country the mysterious powers he is said (and shown) to hold in the various masque fictions. Though masquers impersonate fairy knights or Irishmen, they do not assume these characters through words but through dress, and they remain themselves in their masquing habits as in their ordinary clothes. Prince Henry dressed as Oberon is still Prince Henry, and Prince Charles as a pupil of Dedalus is still Prince Charles, the King's son and heir. When a bored King James shouted at the dancers in Pleasure Reconcil'd to Virtue, Buckingham leaped out for an athletic display of "molto alte, et minutissme capriole" (H.&.S SX, 593) as himself, not just as one of the nameless masked dancers. The double identities of the masquers, as persons in a fiction and as great ones of the court, forms an important part of the show in The Gypsies Metamorphos'd. King James evidently enjoyed this kind of play-acting more than he did the remote fictions of more formal masques. In Salmacida Spolia the

224

THEATRE FOR ELITES

King and Queen, having danced in the masque, took their state as chief spectators to view its conclusion; in this masque, the dancers seem to have danced as themselves, though in typical masque apparel, and the border between the world behind and the world before the proscenium was almost obliterated. Some Elizabethan entertainments whose narrative content makes them more like plays are built on masking foundations, such as The Lady of May, The Arraignment of Paris, and Summer's Last Will and Testament, all dependent on an occasion which included a chief spectator for whom the entertainment was designed. Love's Labours Lost, Midsummer Night's Dream, and Cynthia's Revels conclude with such celebratory shows in honor of the ruler in each play; after their show the performers return to their identities within the play. Celebratory masking occurs in Woodstock, Romeo and Juliet, Love's Labours Lost, and Cynthia's Revels because it was realistic; the life these plays imitate would have included masking on like occasions. Except in Hieronymo's show of English conquerors in The Spanish Tragedy, the maskers are also characters in the play, and their masking serves one or another of the play's purposes. These masks are brief, involving only a presenter and the persons of the show who enter in masking array and either deliver a brief speech to the chief spectator or perform a dance. This kind of simple masking continued in Jacobean plays by all the companies, being found in The Malcontent, The Revenger's Tragedy, Cymbeline, Timon of Athens, Henry VIII, and Swetnam the Woman-Hater, among others. In The Duchess of Malfi and The Changeling the maskers are madmen and their fantastical appearance and speech is their crazed reality; similar shows of madmen and of Bridewell inmates conclude the two parts of The Honest Whore. Strictly speaking such displays are not masking, but both presenters and audience react to them as if they were. Masking apparel differed from stage apparel in being designed, and designed according to a theme. The Revels records show that six or eight dancers might dress as anything from Greek heroes to cats, and were escorted by torchbearers whose costumes were fitted to the same theme (maskers as "Clowns," torchbearers as "Hinds"), or at least to the same color scheme (red and yellow for both maskers and torchbearers in the mask sent to Scotland in 1589). As with acting by players, masking meant impersonation, but, by the silk, velvet, and gold of their costumes, courtly masks always reminded their audience that the dancers were "of great calling." Unlike players, whose personal identities were normally

225

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

replaced by the roles they played and whose costumes contributed to the illusion that a player was a courtier, a prostitute, a soldier, a physician, a friar, an eastern conqueror, an airy spirit, or even a god, maskers concealed personal individuality just enough to express the "idea" they for the time embodied. Since this "idea" transcended personal individuality, the similar or identical costumes and vizards of a masking theme did not just conceal the wearers' identities, as does Lorenzo's black mask on the 1615 Spanish Tragedy title page and similar disguise masks in other plays. The likeness of dress also created the sense of social harmony that was the main function of official revelry at Christmas, Shrovetide, and progress time, and of those occasional masks which honored ambassadors, celebrated weddings, and the like. For masking and shows in the sixteenth century there is rarely any information about who decided on the theme, and none whatever about who designed the costumes. When Edward VI's Christmas Lord of Misrule, George Ferrers, set up his mock court, perhaps he devised its parodies of normal court activities such as hunting, but he seems more likely to have revived a traditional form of seasonal revelry. For Lord Montacute's wedding in 1572, the gentlemen who presented the mask first ordered Venetian costumes, and only afterwards did Gascoigne invent a device to fit the clothes. But the designers for Jacobean masques are recorded, in part because their scenery required detailed drawings to guide the Office of Works employees in heavy construction, in part because designers like Inigo Jones and his Italian counterparts asserted their importance, in part because there was a demand for the texts of these exclusive entertainments (including descriptions of their costumes and special effects), and in very large part because masque writers, Jonson especially, thought that their inventions were worth a record to outlast their ephemeral performances. Elizabethan masks were as portable as Elizabethan plays; they could be and were performed in many kinds of outdoor and indoor settings, though for special occasions they were put on in the temporary building called a banqueting house, essentially an immense arbor sheltered with canvas from the weather and decorated within with greenery, fabric, and painted and gilded wood. The Jacobean Banqueting House was a more substantial wooden structure, evidently considered permanent enough to become a repository for some government records that were destroyed when it burned. Even in the stone building which replaced this structure, however, the stage for masques was always temporary, erected to a new design

226

THEATRE FOR ELITES

on almost all occasions, and dismantled once the masque was done. The impermanence of even the stage framework meant that each new masque was necessarily designed and built from scratch according to the chosen device. Although both sets and masquers' costumes adhered to conventions that changed little between The Masque of Blackness and Salmacida Spolia, each new masque meant its own color scheme and its own decorative details. Thanks to the conditions of its production, masquing was designers' theatre. No public theatre play could be designed as masques could, as long as the stages were permanent structures whose appearance could be modified only in the limited ways allowed by hangings and portable large properties, and as long as most costuming was done from stock. The designer of a Jacobean masque worked under constraining conditions that seem not to have affected those who had designed and made masking attire for the courts of the Tudors. One constraint was increased concern about rank and the dignity belonging to it. When Henry VIII put on masking apparel, he seems to have delighted in hiding his royalty in garments like those of his companions, and in emerging from quite undignified apparel at the end of his show. (To be sure, Henry's masking took place in Household settings; except at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, his masking was not part of his court's official display, and there his informality seems to have startled the French.) Thomas Giles expressed more concern for the dignity of maskers "of great calling" than seems to have been felt in the Office of Revels. While there was an etiquette of rank in Tudor times that insisted on silks and satins for masking apparel no matter how styled, there was evidently no etiquette that required aristocrats to mask in styles reserved to their status; those of great calling could dress up either as gods or as peasants, as long as their disguises were not "torchbearer like," which seems to mean obviously worn fabrics rather than unaristocratic style. For Jacobean masquers the costumes had also to be made of rich fabrics adorned with jewels, but what a masquer could represent was considerably narrowed—no more dressing as "Cloynes" or fishwives—and the cut of the costumes became standardized. For men always and for women sometimes, a masque costume was modeled on Roman parade armor, like Michelangelo's tomb statues of Lorenzo and Giuliano dei Medici: a closefitting upper part imitating the cuirass and often styled to mimic the nude, "labels" derived from the metal kilt attached to the cuirass, kneelength "bases" duplicating its undertunic (worn by men with long stockings and by women with ankle-length petticoats), and a crested, plumed,

227

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

and jeweled headdress elaborated from its helmet. This style may have begun with classicizing designers, but seems to have persisted because it was thought consonant with the masquers' dignity. Women's masquing apparel apparently was more often modeled on current fashions than was men's. Court entertainment all over Europe was linked to "matters of state." Under Elizabeth the years with most masking were the years of marriage diplomacy, and with the end of proposed marriage treaties for the Queen in 1581, this function of masquerade ceased. After Monsieur took his final departure, court masking also ceased, becoming confined to progress shows, offerings like those of Gray's Inn in 1595, and such private entertainments as the mask at Anne Russell's wedding, where Mary Fitton represented Affection and Queen Elizabeth "arose and danced 'gayement et de belle disposition.'" Under James, masques again became matters of state, clearly visible in the disputes over masque invitations that embroiled the French, Spanish, and sometimes the Venetian and Dutch ambassadors with each other and with English officials, and in the importance attached to the masque debuts of Prince Henry and Prince Charles. That masquers of high rank should display their political and social importance in masque costumes as they did in court dress is thus hardly surprising, for their compliments to His Majesty were entangled in public perceptions of his dignity and their own. For Daniel's Vision of the Twelve Goddesses the costumes came from Queen Elizabeth's lavish wardrobe, though it is not clear whether the garments were worn as they were or restyled in the Renaissance-classical mode of later masques. In Blackness, "the attyre of the Masquers was alike, in all, without difference: the colors, azure, and a siluer. . . for the light-bearers, sea-greene, waued about the skirts with gold and siluer" (H.&S. VII, 171: 72-80). These were the costumes which Dudley Carleton found "too light and Curtizan-like for such great ones" (H.&S.X, 448) as Queen Anne, three countesses, and eight ladies of noble houses.17 In Hymenaei (1606) the lords masquers, representing the four Humours and the four Affections, were "gloriously attired, distinguish: only by their seuerall Ensignes and Colours" (H&S, VII 213:113-14). The lady masquers "came after some statues of lUNO, no less airy, then glorious" (218:253-54). This may indicate some variety of style or color in the women's apparel, but if there was it had no specified meaning in the masque as did the variations in the men's colors and accessories.

228

THEATRE FOR ELITES

Maybe Carleton's perception of impropriety in the Blackness costumes was widespread enough to affect the designs for The Masque of Beauty (1608). Jonson's description seems to emphasize the congruence between the rank of the masquers and their costumes: The colours of the Masquers were varied; the one halfe in Orenge-tawney, and Siluer:the other in Sea-greene, and Siluer. The bodies and short skirts of White, and Gold, to both. The habite, and dressing (for the fashion) was most curious, and so exceeding in riches, as the Throne wheron they sat, seem'd to be a Mine of light, stroke from the iewels, and their garments. (189:248-55) In The Masque of Queens the twelve masquers impersonated mythic and historic women rulers. Jones's surviving designs for their costumes show that they were not dressed identically, but all the designs are variants on the Renaissance style of "classical" dress. The costumes of gods, goddesses, heroes, and virtues in Cartari's Iconologia vary decorative details while keeping this basic plan, and Jonson must have believed them correct for antiquity, since he cites Cartari in the masques he annotated. In his description of the antimasque witches, Jonson comments that they were "all differently attir'd" as if this might be thought unusual: "some, wth ratts on theyr heads; some, on theyr shoulders; others with oyntment potts at theyr girdles; All with spindells, timbrells, rattles, or other veneficall instruments" (283:32-35). The different costumes for the Queens may have seemed as unusual, for Jonson again comments that "These habites had in them the excellency of all deuice, and riches; and were worthely varied by [Jones] Inventions, to the Nations, whereof they were Queenes" (314:699-701). Jones's designs for Oberon show that the Nation of Fays (the torchbearers, singers, and musicians) were not dressed alike. Though more than one design for fairy knights was made, they seem to have worn identical costumes; Prince Henry was singled from the others by being given a red instead of a blue sash, with a further distinction by riding to "the face of the scene" (H.&S. VII, 352:314-15) in a "chariot" surrounded by Silvans. In Queens the masquers had "come forth" from the House of Fame

229

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

in three chariots, the one in which Queen Anne rode being distinguished by six more torchbearers than the other two. Such distinction of a royal masquer seems to have become masque etiquette. When Prince Charles made his masque debut in Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue his costume was no more than marginally richer than those of two "dancing companions" to whom he gave their masquing suits; he had "Rich watchett garters" and "a masking Ruffe and Cufes... of Cuttworke" that were not bought for the others, and his "fayre white plume" had ffiftie dozen of Egrett[es]" instead of "xl dozen" (H.&S. X, 579). Since everyone wore a black velvet vizard, such small details did not enough single the prince from his fellow masquers in the view of several courtiers; "some extraordinary deuise was ioked for (it being the Prince his first Mask)," and most of the masquers were not of appropriately high rank (H.&.S. X, 576). But whether or not a royal masquer was more richly appareled than a knight or a gentleman, his real person and, more important, his real rank, had to be melded not only into the fantasy role but into the masque's device. If a masque was offered "By Gentlemen the Kings Seruants" (Love Restored, Mercury Vindicated, The Irish Masque at Court), the printed text indicates no distinction between individual masquers. The Irish Masque does introduce what seems a masque novelty, a costume change for the masquers. The Irish footmen of the antimasque declare that "tey were leeke to daunsh naked... for te villanous vild Irish sheas haue casht away al ter fine cloysh. . . But tey musht come ant daunch i' teyr mantels now" (H&S VII 401:72-82). As promised, "the Gentlemen dance forth a dance in their Irish mantles" then, after a brief return of the antimasque, "the Masquers let fall their mantels; and discouer their masquing apparell" (403:140;405:183-84); presumably the mantles (a barbarian garment) were coarse and the "masquing apparell" the usual classical adaptation in light colors adorned with glittering "oes." It is this mixture of uniformity and fantasy (described both as "antique" and as "antic") that enters into theatre adaptations of the masque. Henslowe describes the costumes bought for The Rise of Cardinal Wohey as "maskyngesewtes antycke" (Diary 201), apparently thinking of a standard type of costume. When Ben Jonson recreated the Elizabethan mumming in 1616, he brought "old Christmas" to court in old-fashioned clothes, "round Hose, long Stockings, a close Doublet, a high-crowned Hat. . . little Ruffes, Scarffes, and Garters tyed crosse" (H.&S. VII, 437:205, 7-8), and white shoes like those in a Mask of Ladies in 1582. Among his "sons" is "MUMMING. In a Masquing pied suite, with a visor" (439:56); this may

230

THEATRE FOR ELITES

indicate the nature of the "antycke" masking suits the Admiral's Men bought in 1602. Stage masking apparel, however, usually had to be simple, loose, and voluminous because it had to go over a character's regular costume, like the masking suit forcibly put upon Woodstock or the "cassock" in Mucedorus which Anselmo says he had worn "in Lord Julio's masque" (Sc. 1, 51). In Act I of Henry VIII the King and his companions must have worn something like what Anselmo refers to when they enter "habited like shepherds" (I.iii.63 SD). These habits were probably all the same, and worn with vizards to hide the King's identity, although Wolsey quickly recognizes him. Jonson's innovations in the masque may have resulted from his experience as a playwright; his masques incorporate narrative into what had been mainly a visual form. He replaced the single presenter's introductory speech to explain the mask "device" (like Moth in Love's Labours Lost, Cupid in Timon of Athens, and the Lord Chamberlain in Henry VIII) with dialogue that not only explains the device but also sets a problem to be solved or a conflict to be reconciled. In Blackness Oceanus asks Niger what he is doing so far from home and questions him further to break up a long narrative speech; later the Moon (Aethiopia) tells Niger where his daughters' problem (their black skins) can be taken care of. In Beauty the expository dialogue is similar, involving question and answer between lanuarius and Boreas to state the problem and a resolving speech by Vulturnus to prepare for the masquers' entry. In Hymenaei Jonson brings in another theatre device, an introductory dumb-show that shows an antique Roman wedding. This is suddenly disrupted by the male masquers, costumed as Humors and Affections; Hymen's speech indicates an armed attempt to kidnap the dumb-show bride which is quickly checked by the descent of Reason, whose words cause the masquers to sheath their swords and retreat while the dumb-show ceremonies continue. In Queens the antimasque gives speeches to all the witches and to the Dame, and the roles of the two presenters (Heroic Virtue and Fame) are reduced, each making one extended speech to introduce the masquers. In Oberon the antimasque is a comic playlet about the education of Satyrs in proper deportment, first by Silenus, then by the Silvan guards at Oberon's gate. The success of their education appears in their bows when the masquers come forth; curiously, the script says nothing about what becomes of the Satyrs and Silvans when the masquers "danc'd their last dance, into the worke" (H.&S. VII, 356:444). The Irish Masque opens with four Irish footmen appealing to the King against a

231

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

nonspeaking citizen (of London), protesting their loyalty to "King Yamish" and promising a masque by their "mayshters." In Pleasure Reconcil'd there are three connected scenes that mingle the grotesque antimasques with the heroic: Comus is expelled by Hercules, the Pigmies make threats but are scattered when Hercules wakes, and Mercury descends to crown Hercules before their brief dialogue introduces and explains the entry of Daedalus and the masquers. These scenes were played by actors, musicians, and choreographers, who were supplied with costumes designed for their parts. For such antimasquers, presenters, musicians, singers, and for the torchbearers, who unlike the masquers were not "of great calling" and most of whom were hirelings, there was room for originality in what they represented and in how their costumes were styled. What became of these costumes after the masque's performance is not recorded. They were supposed to be taken into safekeeping by the Yeoman of the Revels, in case they should be wanted again. But as we have seen, the Yeoman Edward Kirkham was involved with the Blackfriars and the Paul's boys and in the costume business of Thomas Kendall and his heirs. Thanks to the way each Jacobean masque was separately designed to fit its device, few if any of the costumes were likely to be wanted again, and the recycling of their materials seems not to have been practiced. Whether Kirkham spirited these costumes into Kendall's warehouse or whether he hired or sold them to professional actors is unrecorded, and the absence of Revels inventories taken at the beginning of James's and of Charles's reigns (as there were at the beginning of the reigns of Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth) may indicate that there was not much in store to inventory. Many Jacobean plays contain masques or scenes modeled on masques. This suggests that audiences were thought to expect some taste of "splendors at court," even if confined to a new style of "antique" costume for the singers and dancers who had performed in plays long before the Jacobean masque was created. The court masque's "perspectives" and sudden scenic changes would have been impossible on the open stages of the public theatres, and the fact that the perspective could only be fully appreciated from one seat (the King's state at a masque) would have offended everyone who had paid admission in the more suitable private houses. But like the masque's music and dance, masque costumes would function on any kind of stage. When plays adapt the new kind of court masque to public performance they mainly rely on fantastic costumes, singly and in sets, for their visual effects. Obviously company tailors could

232

THEATRE FOR ELITES

devise costumes similar to those used at court, even copy them if requested, but masques in plays always mean costume change, and the more elaborate the costume, the more troublesome are the changes. And since most of the time the costumes and the changes are multiple, and often the masque costumes are particular to the play they are used in, it is obvious that if there were a way to dress a play's masque without spending heavily for its special costumes, the companies would take it. There are some curious coincidences between masques and plays around 1609-11. As W.J. Lawrence pointed out long ago, Middleton's The Witch, with six singing and dancing witches led by Hecate, comes soon after The Masque of Queens, in which the King's Men had performed the antimasque. His belief that their acquisition of these witch costumes caused them to commission Middleton's play seems a rational explanation for both its own witch scenes (themselves looking like interpolations into a commonplace tragicomedy), and for the later interpolation of its songs, with Hecate and "the other three witches," into Macbeth.18 Lawrence also believed, with less reason, that the satyr costumes of Oberon reappeared on the dancing "saltiers" in The Winter's Tale. The idea might have come from Oberon, but its ten satyr costumes could hardly dress twelve "saltiers," and there seems better ground for the satyr outfits to have gone to the Red Bull, where the improbable satyrs who escort Diana in Heywood's The Golden Age might easily have been interpolated when the Oberon costumes became available. There is some possibility that the Amazonian costumes from The Masque of Queens were in Shakespeare's mind when he put a masque of five Amazons into Timon of Athens. Even if 1609 is the date of this incomplete play, there is little evidence that the costumes created for lord and lady masquers came to the companies of players, since these were the property of their wearers by purchase or gift. Portraits that show the sitter in masque dress commemorate the honor of dancing in a court masque and indicate that the costume was a valued souvenir. Furthermore, if a masquer's costume turned up on a playhouse stage (or worse, in a broker's stall), its disposal might be regarded as an insult both to the royal or noble person who had invited the wearer to participate and to the King in whose honor the masque had been given. This problem of etiquette would not, however, apply to a stage imitation of a masque costume, any more than it probably did to stage use of antimasque apparel. Whether the coincidence of witch and satyr costumes in two masques danced on Candlemas 1609 and on New Year's Night 1611 and in three

233

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

plays staged close to this date means that the actual costumes went to the players cannot be proved in the absence of records from Edward Kirkham as Yeoman of the Revels. The more elaborate masques in plays may have owed their composition to the availability of costumes through Kirkham's involvement in the trade. More important, probably, was the players' participation in court masques, for their memorizing of speeches and dances would have taught them all they needed to know about masque conventions. Whatever material objects also went back to the playhouse, what the actors learned by their parts in masques was more likely to influence what they did on their own stages, and what they encouraged their poets to supply. Also, as their audiences came more and more to consist of courtiers and would-be courtiers and as they played more and more before the court in late Jacobean and Caroline times, they must have seen the advantage of imitating the court's favorite way of entertaining itself, not only at Hampton Court or Whitehall but at Salisbury Court and Blackfriars.

234

Royal Servants

In May 1603 the old order of theatrical patronage changed. The London companies who had been "servants" to important aristocrats were transferred from the service of these noblemen to that of the new King, his wife, and eldest son. Though the change from being the Lord Chamberlain's, the Lord Admiral's, and the Earl of Worcester's Men and the Children of the Chapel to being the King's, Prince Henry's, and Queen Anne's Men and the Children of the Queen's Revels must have seemed an honor to the players (who received scarlet liveries carrying a royal badge), and must also have provided them better protection against the antitheatricality of the London city government than did the service of noblemen, they are unlikely to have expected much change in their dayto-day business, unless they anticipated more engagements to play privately in the households of a larger royal family. They would hardly have expected to make significant changes in the content, form, or production methods of their plays. Still, the history of Jacobean theatre proves that royal patronage did lead to changes in the content and style of what the players put on. Some of these changes affected the number and kind of costumes the companies came to need in the years after they came under royal patronage. Such adaptations of an old form to glorify the new dynasty's predecessors in Samuel Rowley's When You See Me You Know Me and Shakespeare's Macbeth and Henry VIII, and its Protestantism in Heywood's If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody, could handle costumes much as had Elizabethan history plays, although Henry VIII startled some in its audience by how closely its costumes mimicked real Garter robes. Similarly,

235

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

the costuming of plays which vilified enemies, such as Barnes's Devil's Charter, Dekker's Whore of Babylon, and perhaps Middle ton's lost Viper and Her Brood, used the dress of Roman clergy much as had the antipapal masks of the early Elizabethan court. But under James more things seem to have been thought politically dangerous than under Elizabeth, and plays which staged "dangerous matter" such as royal tyranny and favor to unworthy persons tended to be set in remote times and places, by which the "dangerous matter" was masked or rendered innocuous. Tragedies and tragicomedies set long ago and far away, like The Winter's Tale, Philaster, The Maid's Tragedy, and even Match Me in London, might seem unconcerned with forbidden state matters because their stories take place in vague never-never lands. In The Poor Man's Comfort, Robert Daborne may have alluded to Robert Carr's rise to Earl of Somerset after breaking his leg in the tiltyard. But the characters who wonder why "lucius was made a Senator... it may be he brooke his shin had a good surgion, & keepe not his chamber aboue 3 dayes, &. so his valor raised him.. . some unknown vertue or other did it" (926-40) are discreditable gallants who live in the fictitious pastoral kingdom of Thessaly. The scripts of such plays are usually noncommital about costume style, but title page illustrations imply that at least some of them gained contemporary points by contemporary style of dress. Plays set among England's enemies, such as tragedies which lay their crimes on cardinals, friars, Turks, or pagans, could be as realistic in costume as they liked. So could comedies which directed laughter at the traditional prodigals and usurers, at such marginal people as alchemists, bawds, and whores, or at such dissenters from church or state orthodoxy as puritans. The city comedies of Jonson, Dekker, and Middleton, and such tragicomic derivatives as The Miseries of Enforced Marriage and A Fair Quarrel, call for realistic costuming because they are about the kinds of people whose prototypes were found in London's streets and perhaps in the audience. Such characters may have been more visually defined than their counterparts in earlier comedies like Englishmen for My Money, Two Angry Women of Abingdon, and Merry Wives of Windsor, especially in parts dependent on instant visual recognition. The generalized "poor citizen" of Three Lords and Three Ladies of London in later plays is given a trade and status essential to his role. Jonson's Cob the water-bearer, Dekker's Candido the linen-draper, Marston's Mulligrub the vintner, and Heywood's Maid of the Exchange must be of the trades they are if their

236

ROYAL SERVANTS

doings are to make sense, and for clarity alone must be costumed according to trade. Social types had also to be precisely discriminated in such comedies; the puritans who figure to a greater or less extent in If You Know Not Me Part 2, The Puritan, The Alchemist, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, and Bartholomew Fair, for instance, whom a reader identifies by their peculiarities of language, on the stage had also to be recognizable by their sect's peculiarities of dress. So did the different grades of gentlemen, especially the young urban variety called a gallant, whose clothes the stage kept almost as up to date as did his counterpart in the audience, and who was often contrasted with one or more country gentlemen, quite often the gallant's father (Poetaster, Monsieur Thomas) or his brother (Every Man in His Humour, The Elder Brother), "Gallants" are not, however, always "gentlemen." The cony-catchers in Middleton's Your Five Gallants (really members of the lower classes) are all dressed in fashionable finery. Their cheats help pay for the clothes furnished by one of them, the broker Frippery. In Bartholomew Fair the cutpurse Edgeworth uses gallant attire to turn suspicion from himself to people who look more like criminals. Set in London or elsewhere, city comedies abound in situations that permit shows of different kinds of sharpers, whores, madmen, fools, and so on, distinguished from each other by dress, with the show a major part of the entertainment. It is not always clear from scripts whether plays in exotic settings attempted exotic costuming, but the return of court masking in the new, more spectacular Jacobean form supplied an incentive for the companies to show those excluded from the royal Banqueting House something like the printed descriptions of court entertainments. The actual garments worn by aristocratic and royal masquers might not have been available. But the influence of the masque on plays was hardly to be confined to the structural or verbal resemblances long noted in Shakespeare's late work and that of other Jacobean and Caroline playwrights. Company tailors could create or copy a masquer's costume in the style of Inigo Jones as readily as they could a devil's suit. There is also some evidence that costumes worn by actors as antimasquers and presenters at least sometimes went home with the royal servants who wore them. Acquisition of such costumes may have prompted some scenes in new plays or insertions in old ones, just as the possession of oriental or Spanish or greenwood costumes seems to have prompted new plays or scenes in the 1590s.

237

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

PRINCE HENRY'S AND QUEEN A N N E ' S MEN Of the three men's companies, Prince Henry's Men at the Fortune seem to have been least affected by their new status; their tradition of costume management and repertory continued their former practices at the Rose. Scott McMillin has pointed out how the old and probably unperformed Sir Thomas More may have been rewritten for the Fortune as one of "a wave of plays on the reign of Henry VIII" in the last years of Elizabeth and the first years of James;1 of these Samuel Rowley's When You See Me You Know Me is the latest known for the company. Like Sir Thomas More, Rowley's history could use garments first purchased for the two parts of Wolsey, which must have needed costumes for King Henry, for at least one Queen, for the King's privy councillors, and for servants, besides the rich cardinal costume and the fool's coat recorded by Henslowe. The title page of the 1613 quarto shows King Henry posed and clad after the Holbein portrait; since this image was very widespread, he may have been so depicted in the play. The 1613 quarto was probably published in response to Shakespeare's Henry VIII or All Is True and perhaps to its notorious "authenticity" which so disturbed Henry Wotton, so the King's image may also have shown him not as he had appeared at the Fortune in 1604 but as he had at the Globe nine years later. It also seems likely that Doctor Tye, Prince Edward's music master, is given somewhat irrelevant prominence because the company had "a doctors gown" left from Cardinal Wolsey. Rowley's play includes several additional characters who would not necessarily have figured in Wolsey and who would have to be supplied with costumes. Among these are a coronation robe and crown for Queen Catherine Parr. Besides Wolsey's robe and hat, the play needs a second cardinal costume for Campeius, rochets and gowns for Bishops Bonner and Gardiner (one usable again for the French bishop-ambassador), liveries for the King's guard and servants (which might have been the real liveries given the actors as Prince Henry's servants), and scholars' apparel for Prince Edward's tutors. The comic scenes of King Henry disguised in London call for gowns for three watchmen, shabby gentlemen's dress for Counter prisoners, a jailor's garb, and something worn but soldierly for Black Will. In the scenes showing his education Prince Edward might

238

ROYAL SERVANTS

have been dressed somewhat like his whipping boy Edward Browne and young Marquess Dorset, but when he greets the emperor as his father's deputy he would have had to be more splendidly appareled. He may have been clad as in his numerous portraits both as prince and king, but may also have been dressed in early Jacobean fashion to link him with Prince Henry Stuart, the company's own patron. When You See Me You Know Me may have emphasized the upbringing of an earlier prince because Prince Henry had been named for Henry VIII and was expected to succeed as Henry IX. In the opening scene Wolsey rhetorically asks "Wherefore was Alexanders fame so great,/But that he conquered and deposed Kings" (117-19); though he is referring to himself, Alexander the Great (as a young conqueror) was a favored analogue for Prince Henry.2 Unlike Shakespeare's Henry VIII, whose climax is the birth of Elizabeth, Rowley's play keeps her offstage; she and Mary are only authors of letters to their brother about religion, which he reads aloud before choosing Elizabeth's protestant argument. When Queen Jane leaves the stage in labor in the second scene, the King exhorts her: Be but the mother of a Prince of Wales Ad a ninth Henrie to the English Crowne. (266-67) Only when the Queen has died in childbed does the King name his son Edward, because it is "Saint Edwards even" (493). In such a way Rowley gives pride of place to his Prince of Wales, setting up explicit and unhistorical parallels to the company's royal patron. In one scene Prince Edward enters from tennis without his cloak and hat, and learns that his tutors have beaten Edward Browne, who carried the garments, for encouraging the Prince "to follow pleasure, & neglect his booke" (1780). The Prince comically knights Browne for his "service," because "my father ha's knighted many a one, that [unlike Browne] neuer shedde drop of blood for him" (1857-58), a reference not to King Henry's but to King James's carpet knights. Near the end of the play Prince Edward is glorified by being sent to greet the emperor, "bearing the Coller and garter" (2881-82). Perhaps the prominence of young Edward, the scenes with Will Summers and Wolsey's fool Patch, and those in which the King goes disguised, plays jokes on sleepy London watchmen, fights with Black Will, and drinks with his fellow prisoners in the

239

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Counter were contrived to appeal to the ten-year-old prince, should his servants be called to play before him. When the play was printed in 1605, the title page describes it as "the famous Chronicle Historic of king Henry the eight, with the birth and vertuous life of Edward Prince of Wales," adding that "it was playd by the high and mightie Prince of Wales his seruants" and was "By Samvell Rovvly, seruant to the Prince." Since both author and company are named as Prince Henry's servants, the title page would surely have advertised any performance before him had one taken place, while publication within a year of first performance may argue limited public success. The 1613 reprint duplicates the wording of the 1605 title page, although Prince Henry had died in November 1612, and his players had not become Prince Charles's servants but the servants of his brotherin-law, the Palsgrave. The few other plays that survive from the repertory of Prince Henry's Men are all Dekker's: his two-part Honest Whore, his Whore of Babylon (published 1607) which perhaps was not performed to Dekker's specifications, and his collaboration with Middleton, The Roaring Girl (published 1611). The Whore of Babylon may have been written for the first anniversary of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot. Dekker's preface Lectori looks like a complaint that his play's production was shoddy and, perhaps, that it was withdrawn from the stage prematurely: The labours. . . of Writers are as vnhappie as the children of a bewtifull woman, being spoyled by ill nurses, within a month after they come into the world.. . . (tho that heauenly issue of our braine be neuer so faire and so well lymd.) is it made lame by the bad handling. . . : if this of mine be made a cripple by such meanes, yet dispise him not for that deformity which stuck not vpon him at his birth: but fell vpon him by mis-fortune.

(Dekker II 497-98) "Mis-fortune" suggests an annoyed allusion to the theatre where the play was "made a cripple." Fredson Bowers is uncertain whether Dekker refers "only to bad acting and possibly to memorial failure on the part of the actors, or, in addition, to their cutting of the text" (II 493). Prince Henry's Men, only recently out of debt to Henslowe, may have chosen not to furnish rich costumes

240

ROYAL SERVANTS

for many lavish dumb shows in a play with short future prospects, unless they could see a later use for the costumes. Among other spectacles, Dekker requires four anonymous cardinals, wanted mainly for the spread of scarlet their robes would make. When You See Me You Know Me had needed costumes for only two cardinals, Wolsey in the magnificence of the earlier Cardinal Wolsey, and Campeius, who makes a brief appearance as the pope's messenger to King Henry, and who probably was meant to look shabby beside the proud Englishman with his claims to be a prince. Under Prince Henry's unenthusiastic patronage it seems likely that his company cut showy minor characters from a script if keeping them would mean investing in costumes of unlikely future utility. Because he remembered the glories of his pageant for King James's progress through London in 1604, Dekker may have expected Prince Henry's Men to furnish his Gunpowder play in similar fashion, and was piqued when they did not. Since Dekker had been accustomed to the Admiral's Men's costume systern for years, and conformed to it not only in the other plays he wrote for Prince Henry's but for Paul's and Queen Anne's as well, the company may have expected him to practice similar economy no matter what the occasion, and these contrary expectations led to the disagreement recorded in Dekker's epistle. Certainly there is not much sign of free spending in either part of The Honest Whore or The Roaring Girl, although both call for considerable costume change. Both show Dekker inventing new and more efficient handling of changes, especially by causing several to be completed on stage. There are also some indications that backstage changes were being made more rapidly, perhaps because the single tireman recorded by Henslowe now had assistants to help the actors in and out of their costumes. This was probably to be expected, since all the companies increased their personnel and their wardrobes in Jacobean times. More actors, more costumes, and care to meet court standards would have needed more people to look after the wardrobe. All the same, both parts of The Honest Whore could be outfitted almost entirely from the known stock of 1598 or from similar garments purchased since then. Both parts use costumes to discriminate between behavior that keeps decorum from behavior that does not. Part 1 begins with a funeral, everyone in new or at least new-looking black cloaks (1.1.63) which may have come on the market in very great numbers after Queen Elizabeth's grand funeral in 1603. Amid the later gaudiness of Matheo and the other men,

241

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Hippolito continues to wear black for most of the play, although he may change costume (he has time) between the Doctor's exhortation to "doff this blacke. .. Attire your selfe/Fresh as a bridegroom when he meetes his bride... thy Lady Hues" (IV.iv.66-71), and his reentry with Infelice at Bedlam. The second scene contrasts with the first, with Fustigo "in some fantastike Sea-suite" (I.ii.SD), a costume which may have been traditional since a special suit for sea is mentioned in Antonio and Mellida. The city household into which the "fantastike" Fustigo comes is that of a sober merchant, a linen draper named Candido whose placid disposition his wife Viola aims to unsettle by violating every standard of dress and behavior she can. When Candido suddenly needs his alderman's gown and citizen's cap she has hidden them, and he has to make do with a kind of poncho made of a "carpet" (a tablecloth) and a nightcap. This is not an expedient to cover the company's lack of such fine garments (which were available for The Shoemaker's Holiday and probably used in its history plays), since Viola, hoping to vex her husband, then makes the apprentice George put them on. On his return Candido therefore has to reverse visual decorum by dressing in George's prentice coat and cap. By this time there are so many witnesses to Candido's unconventional behavior, of which his clothes are visual evidence, that Viola can get him committed to Bedlam. Strictly speaking the multiple disguises of the Duke and his courtiers and of Hippolito and Infelice at Bedlam are not as "mad" as Candido's acceptance of indecorous dress seems to be. Neither is Bellafront's reformation. The conclusion of the play at the insane asylum with a parade of its mad inmates suggests instead an awareness in Dekker that some actions are "mad" no matter how rationally motivated. The frenetic activity (both on stage and backstage) which the scenes in Candido's shop demand is given extra minutes for the changes by the placement onstage of things like tables and chairs, the fetching and examination of linen, and similar time extenders, whether because Dekker habitually provided necessary time or because the players asked him to contrive ways for them to change costume that would not impede the play's progress. The costume indecorum of Part 1 is repeated with variations in Part 2, when Bellafront's courtier father disguises himself in a blue coat as a servant, and suffers treatment from his son-in-law Matheo not very different from that which Viola meted out to Candido in Part 1. Though Candido retains some of his Eyre-like indifference to convention, his second wife,

242

ROYAL SERVANTS

apparently about to be as disobedient as his first, reverses expectation by not needing to be tamed. Dekker's most interesting management of costume in both plays comes in the dress of Bellafront. She makes her first appearance after her pimp Roger has placed a realistic mini-set on stage: ... a stoole, cushin, looking-glass, and chafing dish. Those being set downe, he pulls out of his pocket, a violl with white collar in it, and two boxes, one with white, another red painting. He places all things in order and a candle by them. (II.i.SD) Bellafront then enters "not full ready, without a gowne, shee sits downe, with her bodkin curies her hair, cullers her lips," puts on her ruff with Roger's help, then demands her gown and asks where her fall is as Roger pokes the ruff's folds. Dressed, she apparently resembles a respectable woman, meaning that she probably wears black or a dark color, as does Frank Gullman in A Mad World My Masters; at least Hippolito perceives that she is a courtesan only from the language Matheo and the others use to her. Later in the play, she enters to the Bawd and Roger "not full ready" in a waistcoat and petticoat. The Bawd bids her "on with your loose gowne, your felt and your feather" (III. ii. 25-26), for a customer in "flame-colourd dublet, red satin hose, Carnation silk stockins" (28-29; cf. the portrait Eisenbichler discusses, and Middleton's Pickt-hatch bawd in red hose), a carnal ensemble probably described to create a mental contrast with Bellafront's sober colors. Though a waistcoat and petticoat were not underwear and a woman might work in her house or even see visitors in them, they were not clothes for the street, where even a prostitute wore a gown; when Matheo pawns his wife's gown in Part 2 he is confining her to the house. When Bellafront is in Bedlam she is probably wearing the plainest kind of gown. At this point, however, the play's chief interest is not in Bellafront but in the disguises of the Duke and his men as "CountrieGentlemen, or riding cittizens" (V.i.10-16) and of Hippolito and Infelice as friars, and in the fantastical parade of madmen. In Part 2, the quick-change work is between Orlando Friscobaldo's respectable gown and hat as an old gentleman and his blue coat as Pacheco. He dons his disguise for the first time on stage, pulling off his servant's

243

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

coat and putting his own gown on him. He exits debating whether to "shaue off this Honour [a long beard] of a old man, or tye it vp shorter" (I.ii.200-1). Since in the final scene "Hee discouers himselfe" (V.ii.SD 179) while in his blue coat, the quickest way to manage this would be to pull off a false beard to reveal another. Bellafront must be costumed in rather shabby garments, for when Matheo strips her gown from her and sends it to pawn, it fetches very little. At the end of the same scene Lodovico offers the equally shabby Matheo "a suite of Sattin/And all things else to fit a Gentleman" (III. ii. 139-40). In Act IV we learn this was not Lodovico's cast suit but one new made, since Matheo has obtained the one he now wears on credit and has pocketed Lodovico's money. While Matheo is "braue" (IV.i.SD) in his new satin, when Orlando enters "like himselfe, with foure men after him" (IV.i.SD 28), Bellafront is still without a gown. Probably the men's costumes suggested on the one hand the prodigal at his highest flight and on the other the judge with his officers, since Orlando proceeds to list Matheo's criminal activities and to assert that for a recent robbery "I shall see thee climbe a Ladder" (112). Matheo is given 125 lines for his costume change and Orlando nearly thirty lines more, but Orlando's change must have meant a gown over or replacing the blue coat, a hat, a change of beard, and a sword or staff. He returns as Pacheco within thirty lines of his exit, which probably means removing garments but adding no more than one, though his time offstage might be extended by the scene's prose, by Bellafront's setting a meal, and by Matheo's beginning to eat. Neither part of The Honest Whore ends with the discoveries and reconciliations usual in comedies; instead they finish with a parade of the inmates of Bedlam for Part 1 and of Bridewell for Part 2. In Bedlam the costumes are emblematic of different kinds of insanity, but in Bridewell they represent different classes of whore and bawd, and so have a more evident connection than the Bedlam characters to the previous action. Each whore displayed is followed by a beadle carrying a blue gown like the ones in which the actual Bridewell's inmates beat hemp, along with tools used for the beating. Dorothea Target is simply "braue." Penelope Whorehound is "like a Cittizens wife" (V.ii.SD 312) and talks like a puritan. Neither Cateryna Bountinall nor the bawd Mrs Horsleach is described, but the bawd who comes masked to Candido's shop is there called "my old Lady" (III.iii.35) and treated with respect. Probably the last two in the parade are therefore contrasted, like Target and Whore-hound. The

244

ROYAL SERVANTS

parade serves to display what Bellafront has escaped for moral rather than prudential reasons, and what would be the alternative which her "fly high" husband and the hypocritical Hippolito would have chosen for her, perhaps even driven her to, if her father had not rescued her. The Roaring Girl came as much as five years after The Honest Whore. Its main interest lies in the visual realism of its costumes (though some also functioned symbolically), and in the efficiency with which the costume changes are made. When Mary Fitz-Allard enters "disguised like a sempster with a case for bands" she is escorted by Neatfoot "with a napkin on his shoulder, and a trencher in his hand as from table" (I.i.SD). Neatfoot's costume is realistic, indicating the household setting, the time of day, and the status and wealth of the Wengrave family. Mary's costume, though it makes her visit plausible, soon is seen to have a moral dimension rather like the leveling green coats of Robin Hood and his men in the Huntingdon plays and of the Marquess in Patient Grissel. "Bands" mean "betrothal documents" as well as linen collars, while a "sempster" joins separate pieces of cloth as marriage joins separate individuals. Mary does not appear often, but has no less than three costumes, the sempster's, a page's suit, and her proper dress as a knight's daughter. The play's other costume changes are not for the upper-class characters of the romance plot or for the gallants (except Laxton) but for the lowlife characters of the street and to a degree for the citizens. Moll Cutpurse first enters "in a fresse Ierkin and a blacke sauegard" (Il.i.SD 55), becoming part of a scene concerned with clothes and clothing affectations, including her tailor's enquiry about the measurements for the "great Dutch slop" (II. ii. 77-8) he is making for her, which need to be different from those of her last breeches. Moll's jerkin and safeguard facilitate her rapid change to man's apparel, perhaps Venetians with a doublet and cloak, since this change would involve merely removing her safeguard and assuming a hat, cloak, and sword, for which she gets over 200 lines before her entrance in the next scene "like a man" (III.i.SD34) to challenge Laxton. When Moll comes to Wengrave's house she is apparently still in the same suit. When she hires Trapdore as her servant, he is dressed like "a poore ebbing Gentleman" (II.i.316), poor enough that Moll asks how many suits he has. When he tells her "one" she takes him off to a broker's to "put a liuery cloake vpon [his] backe." (III. i.199-200) so that his shabbiness does not shame her. In later scenes with her, Trapdore is evidently dressed more respectably, though perhaps not in the or-

245

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

thodox livery of a Neatfoot. When he disguises himself in a last attempt to ruin Moll, he changes from this "livery" to "a poore Souldier with a patch ore one eye," in company with "Teare-cat.. .all tatters" (V.i.SD 56) in the remains of a Dutch costume, perhaps the one Lacy wore as Hans seven or more years earlier. Moll's unconventional dress, however, is like Mary Fitz-Allard's in masking no unconventional behavior; both are chaste, unlike the conventionally dressed citizen's wives, who dally with the gallants and whose protestations of innocence do not ring entirely true, even if the wives do not actually cuckold their husbands. The Earl of Worcester's Men were reorganized from a provincial to a London company at the very end of Elizabeth's reign (1602-3), when between the fall of Essex and her death, their patron was in especial favor with the Queen.3 Their repertory while at the Rose is mostly lost, but as their known poets had written for the Admiral's Men and as their business arrangement with Henslowe was the same, they might have been expected to manage their costumes as did the Admiral's Men. Their extant plays from these years, however, show them rather less careful of economy. They employed a tailor as tireman, had costumes made to order, and their principal poet, Thomas Heywood, prescribed both more fine costumes and more costume change than had the other Admiral's poets. Only three of their Rose plays are extant, one possibly rewritten in the new reign, but their repertory seems to have contained suites of plays using similar costumes as the Admiral's had done; they also acquired some plays from the Admiral's Men, including Sir John Oldcastle, which they revived with additions in the fall of 1602. If it ever reached the stage, the lost Jane Shore might have used some of its costumes. Worcester's three "London" plays (the lost two parts of Black Dog of Newgate and the extant How a Man May Choose a Good Wife From a Bad) could have costumed citizens from the stock of Jane Shore and the lost history play Lady Jane. Perhaps The Royal King and the Loyal Subject, set in Norman England, used some of the costumes from Albere Galles/Nobody and Somebody, set in Ancient Britain. What look like masking garments (of calico, buckram, and changeable taffeta) are recorded for Christmas Comes But Once a Year, probably a seasonal play prepared in 1602. These garments might not have continued usable even if they had been made of more durable materials. A Medicine for a Curst Wife and The Blind Eats Many a Fly sound like titles for comedies, but little about their costuming can be inferred except that it probably was English and middle-class, and

246

ROYAL SERVANTS

therefore not suitable for the presumably French and courtly subject of The Unfortunate General and certainly not for the biblical Absalom. The company bought the script of Tamar Cham from Alleyn at the same time as they were readying Absalom, so they may have planned to use the same costumes for both. The Tragedy of Two (later Three) Brothers needed a witch's gown of "say" and devil's suits of "sowtage." These cheap fabrics were made into costumes by the company tireman for a fee, but since they were more durable than those for Christmas Comes But Once a Year they might have been available for some future play. Thomas Heywood, once an author for the Admiral's Men, had become company poet for Worcester's Men by the time they came to the Rose, and remained their principal writer under Queen Anne's patronage. Many of Heywood's plays are difficult to pinpoint in terms of their date of performance because he rewrote plays, abridged them, combined scenes from disparate plays into new ones, and, for some that were printed, made statements about when they were written and how they came to the press that are not to be taken too literally. Among the old Admiral's plays that Worcester's Men gained rights to when they became Henslowe's tenants at the Rose was his Four Prentices of London, which may have became one of their "best getpennies," since it was still being played in 1607 and perhaps for years afterwards. Like Alleyn, Shaw, Beeston, and other actors, Heywood seems to have acquired and sold costumes and play scripts, and he may have reacquired plays of his own that the original owners no longer needed. Heywood's only extant play written while Worcester's Men were at the Rose is A Woman Killed with Kindness, which came to the stage shortly before Elizabeth died and long remained in the repertory of Queen Anne's Men. Needing no specialized stage structures, it was adaptable to any theatre. Information about its costuming in Henslowe's Diary shows that the company paid more for two of its costumes than for the play itself. Heywood received £6 for the play and £6 13S for a black velvet gown. The company had previously spent 22S for velvet, satin, and linings for such a gown, and had paid IOSto a tailor for making a satin suit. While the 22S worth of cloth may have been for alterations to the gown Heywood furnished, a satin suit in good condition cost at least £5 secondhand, and this one was made new. What the company wanted must not have been in their wardrobe or otherwise available, if they ordered a new suit, which would cost more than one from a broker's stall.

247

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Three characters need at least three costumes apiece and two others need at least two. Since the play stresses its domestic realism in many places, its costumes must have been correct for the age, rank, and activities of its characters, and thus time had to be provided for the several required changes of apparel. This is one function of the alternating scenes between the Frankford and Acton-Mountford plots, and also of scenes for the Frankford servants. Since city comedies jest at country gentlemen's plain attire, in this play about country gentry there was perhaps less contrast than in urban plays between best apparel and ordinary clothes. Accordingly, most costume change for changed activity could be confined to outerwear, footwear, and hats; only the most significant alterations of fortune or moral state involve complete shifts of apparel. Anne Frankford begins the play in her wedding dress, "best apparel" worn with a "hair" headdress since it is stressed that she is a virgin bride. Since Frankford orders her to wear her best clothes into banishment, in the household scenes between her wedding and her exile she evidently has another costume, probably a gentlewoman's plain cloth gown, of more fashionable cut and with finer accessories than the dress of her maidservants. After Wendoll's flight, Anne enters in her "smock, night gown and night attire" (Sc.xiii.77 SD), the last the elaborate nightcap worn by gentlewomen in bed. Perhaps this is specified because, unlike the night-gown that had multiple stage uses or the smock that underlay all women's clothes, "night attire" was rare on stage and might not be bought as Heywood wished if he did not put it in the script. The play furnishes ample time for Anne's change from a bride's to a matron's dress, for after the wedding scene she is offstage for over 200 lines of dialogue plus the time devoted to the servants' dance and the fight between Acton and Mountford. Between her exit in night clothes and her reentry in "best attire" there are almost as many lines of dialogue, but there is no timeconsuming business; Heywood enables the actor who played Anne to change costume at more leisure by getting him out of Anne's matron dress and into a loose robe, so allowing him the full ten minutes to put on the more elaborate best clothes. For Anne's final entry "in her bed" (Sc.xvii.38 SD), realism would suggest the night clothes in which Frankford took her with her lover. The change could be managed in the time allowed by substituting for her "best" headdress her "night attire" and concealing the rest of her costume beneath a bedcover. But this scene of penitence and forgiveness is not altogether realistic. Contrast between

248

ROYAL SERVANTS

Anne's best apparel and her dying state would be analogous to the tombs that portray a great man above in his lifetime's glorious apparel and below as a decaying naked corpse. Indeed, Anne's best apparel and her death bed might have matched quite well, given the virtual certainty that her best apparel was the black velvet gown Heywood sold to the company for this play. No character but Anne could wear such a gown, and Heywood's particular concern to secure it, recorded in Henslowe's Diary, confirms the mix of realism and symbolism that Heywood intended. The mix is most clearly evinced by his treatment of Wendoll. When Wendoll comes to Frankford's house with his message, he enters from horseback, "all spotted/And stained with plashing" (Sc.iv. 22-23). Frankford offers him permanent hospitality as his "companion," including "diet," a servant, and funds. At once a servant is summoned to "help the young gentleman off with his boots" (96-97), and, though nothing is said about Wendoll receiving new clothes, it seems probable that his new prosperity requires some improvement in his appearance between his muddied exit and his reentry, some eighty lines later, for his Macbethlike soliloquies, quickly followed by Anne's seduction. Wendoll's "spotted" arrival in the Frankford household, then, is not merely realism, but asserts his "spotted" nature that brings a further stain into the family. When Frankford wakes the lovers, Wendoll enters "running over the stage in a night gown" with Frankford in pursuit, and "the Maid in her smock stays his hand and clasps hold on him. He pauses a while" (Sc.xiii,67 SD) as Wendoll continues through the opposite door. Soon after, Wendoll's servant Jenkin announces that his "master is run away in his shirt, and never so much as called me to bring his clothes after him" (14849). But when Wendoll emerges from hiding in the woods, he is fully clothed. Heywood makes Jenkin call attention to the problem of how a man who fled in his night clothes can now appear properly dressed: What, my young master that fled in his shirt! how came you by your clothes again? (Sc.xvi. 114-15) Jenkin is the clown, so this naive question is part of his characterization, but Heywood wants the audience to notice the incongruity or he would hardly have drawn attention to it. Since Wendoll is "spotted," yet able to win the innocent Frankford's trust and to seduce Anne as quickly as the

249

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Biblical serpent did Eve, Heywood may be implying something Mephistophilean about him in his swift actions and his uncanny ability to change his coat. Nicholas, the most observant and morally reliable character in the play, says that "the Devil and [Wendoll] are all one in my eye" (Sc.iv.88) almost as soon as he sees him, and calls him "that Satan" (Sc. vi. 180) when he discovers the adultery. Anne names him "the devil" and "this fiend," and runs from him when she meets him on her way to exile. Even the imperceptive Jenkin at last questions Wendoll's nature: Would you had never come to have kept this coil within our doors. We shall ha' you run away like a sprite again. (Sc.xvi. 123-25) "Coil" is used of poltergeist disruptions like those of Robin Goodfellow, and in some contexts "sprite" or "spirit" means "devil." Since Anne has just named Wendoll devil and fiend, this sense of Jenkin's more homely word is likely to have been primary when he uses it. Wendoll's soliloquy after this announces plans for travel on the continent and a search for court favor. The penitent noises he has made to Jenkin, Anne, and even to himself are thus brought into question, so that the last sense we have of him is demonic. As Alan Dessen has noticed, when Frankford's "Maid in her smock stays his hand" Frankford thanks her because "like the Angel's hand" hers has prevented "a bloody sacrifice" (Sc.xii. 138). This supernumerary maid has no assigned place in Frankford's fictional household (unlike the other servants who are developed as 'characters'). Rather, Heywood is... using a moment of threatened but prevented violence,... with no obvious supernatural force, to call attention to the role of Heaven or mercy-reason in a decision at the heart of this play.4 Dessen does not say how the Maid might have looked, but a smock was normally white and somewhat resembled the surplices in which choirboys sang as angels. When all the servants enter "as newly come out of bed," they would also wear white smocks or shirts. Their mild reproaches to Anne, and their witness to Frankford's merciful judgment on her, may have suggested the angelic witnesses who fill pictures of the Last Judg-

250

ROYAL SERVANTS

ment; since at this point Anne more resembles the damned being cast into darkness than the saved, the white garments around her foreshadow her repentance and death in a state of grace. Given stage economy, it is unlikely that the company would spend over £6 for a gown to be used in only two scenes. Though in actuality "no Elizabethan bride would dress in black on her wedding day,"5 the memorial portrait of Sir Henry Unton shows not just the mourners at his funeral but almost everyone connected with him throughout his life dressed in black: his mother holding him as an infant, most of his companions, his wife and guests at a feast, and himself in the central portrait and in the small ones showing the main events of his life. In her memorial portrait Lady Aston appears both dead in childbed and alive dressed in mourning like her husband and son (Cunnington/Lucas Pl. 54). Since both the Unton and the Aston portraits are retrospective, looking at the living from the perspective of a death, it seems plausible that the Unton feast with its maskers of light and darkness does indeed represent so significant an event in Unton's life as his wedding. If the iconology of the Unton painting is as it seems, then the black velvet gown which is the penitent and dying Anne Frankford's "best attire," might also serve for her wedding, since death is a recurrent consequence of this marriage. In the hawking scene that immediately follows the wedding Acton's falconer and huntsman are killed in his quarrel with Mountford. Though Wendoll is at his wedding, Frankford invites him into his family only when he has brought word of these fatalities. The invitation brings on the adultery, and Anne's consequent death. Black costumes at a wedding feast, like black hangings on the stage for a tragedy, foretell the outcome to the audience even while the persons on the stage are most "dispos'd to mirth." The interlaced Mountford-Acton plot gives time for costume changes by Frankford-plot characters, but the Frankford scenes also give time for Charles and Susan Mountford's numerous costume changes as their fortunes fall and rise. At the Frankford wedding, Charles, like Wendoll, is not specially dressed, but resembles the other country gentlemen, with a wedding favor and perhaps gloves. Cranwell and Sir Francis Acton probably retain the same basic costume throughout the play, with different outer garments and accessories according to what they are doing. The servants' dance in the second scene gives these gentlemen time to take off any festive accessories and put on jerkins and falconers' gloves for their hawking scene. When Susan enters after the fatal quarrel, she should be

251

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

dressed as a gentlewoman according to her rank as a knight's sister. Her subsequent costume changes parallel those of her brother, who changes his garments with his changes of fortune. In the scene that shows him leaving prison he is "turned a plain countryman,/Reformed in all things" (v.8-9), in "poor" attire like the prodigal Disobedient Child when he must work for his living. He and Susan "are driven to hard shift," Sir Charles "enforced to follow husbandry" and Susan "to milk" (vii.1-4), so that they must be dressed below their degree. When the usurer Shafton's "friendly" loan brings a second arrest, Charles next appears "in prison, with irons: his feet bare, his garments all ragged and torn" (Sc.x.SD). After Acton pays his debts, Charles asserts that he must repay his enemy's bounty "in one rich gift" (x. 124), his own sister. When he and Susan next enter, after an absence of over 300 lines, they are "gentlemanlike" and "gentlewomanlike," but Susan does not understand that her brother has "tricked me like a bride. . . [with] this gay attire, these ornaments" (xiv.2-3) to deliver her to Acton's bed. Fortunately Acton is "seduced" to good as quickly as his sister was to evil, and offers to "knit in love what was opposed in hate" (xiv. 155) by marriage with Susan. When Charles, Acton, and Susan arrive to witness Anne's death, this wedding has just taken place, without a costume change since they were all appropriately dressed before, but perhaps again with favors and gloves and carrying the rosemary not only of marriage but also of death. Although Acton's condemnation of his sister's dishonor and his brother-inlaw's mercy shows that he has not surrendered the spirit of vengeance with which he persecuted the Mountfords, this is secondary to the main action. In any case, when Acton sees his sister his anger is "turned to pity and compassionate grief" (xvii.64). The group in conventional wedding attire weeping by the deathbed forecasts a better future for this marriage than for that which began the play with feasting and dancing. Furthermore, before Anne dies Frankford "with this kiss... wed[s her] once again" and after her death he calls himself both "new married and new widowed" (117-23). Those in proper wedding array celebrate this second marriage as the black of both Frankfords mourns the death. Haywood's The Wise Woman of Hogsdon is a London play close to the prodigal type that both men's and boys' companies were playing before and after 1603. It was published in 1638 with Heywood's name as "sundry times Acted with great Applause" but without the name of company or theatre. Whether it was written for the Admiral's, Worcester's or Queen Anne's Men would have made little difference in the way it was cos-

252

ROYAL SERVANTS

turned, since prodigal plays used similar kinds of wardrobe no matter who put them on. It requires disguises for several characters that can be donned and doffed rapidly, and a longer-term male disguise for Chartley's deserted bride Second Luce. The Wise Woman, though her "witchcraft" is strictly a confidence game, might have worn the gown made for a witch in Two Brothers.6 The peculiar text of Heywood's If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody seems to illustrate a conflict between pleasing his company's royal patron and pleasing his popular audience. Part 1, The Troubles of Queen Elizabeth, relates Elizabeth's life during Queen Mary's reign, and is almost entirely about threats to her life by her sister, by Bishop Gardiner, and by papist toadies like the constable of the Tower and Bedingfield. Elizabeth herself is a passive victim who does little but weep as she is hurried from her sickbed to the Tower to Bedingfield's house to the court to Hatfield, and who—more like James than the historical Elizabeth—constantly dreads kidnapping and assassination. Unlike the violent Gardiner and the superstitious Bedingfield, she is correctly pious, reading the Bible in English and therefore protected by angels. But works complimenting Elizabeth in her lifetime did not represent her as a martyr to her sister's jealousies or as a victim of Catholic machinations. Nor would a play from her reign be likely to show Philip of Spain as a reasonable and just ruler as Heywood does, but would represent him as greedy and treacherous, as does Stukeley. If You Know Not Me, Part 1 is almost certainly a Jacobean play which uses events from Queen Mary's reign less to glorify the late Queen than to promote the peace with Spain which James desired. In one scene a nameless Spaniard provokes a quarrel with a nameless Englishman, and when the Englishman proves the better swordsman kills him by treachery. At this moment King Philip enters and summarily condemns the incredulous Spaniard to death. Considering how Philip II had been mythologized as the National Enemy and how unpopular was James's rapprochement to Spain, it would seem that Heywood is trying to cater to an anti-Spanish audience yet not offend his pro-Spanish royal patroness. In a single episode a Spaniard acts treacherously, as the groundlings expected, and the king of Spain acts as a just man. Philip's justice here also anticipates his later reading of documents Bishop Gardiner wants him to sign unread, by which he discovers and angrily repudiates the secret warrant for Elizabeth's death hidden among routine papers. Part 1 of If You Know Not Me follows normal costume conventions. Spaniards probably dressed differently from Englishmen. Everyone is

253

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

dressed according to rank and occasion: Queen Mary meets both Philip and Elizabeth in royal state, Princess Elizabeth is clad alternately for travel and for bed. When about to enter the Tower as a prisoner she sits on the ground in the rain and the chivalrous Sussex takes off his cloak to cover her. Messengers to her enter booted and spurred "from horseback"; her physicians, her cook, and her other servants wear the costumes of their professions. The clown who serves her as Lear's Fool does his master may be clad either like Tarlton as a rustic or like Armin as a simpleton. In the final scene she enters, crowned, among nobles and loyal citizens in their ceremonial best apparel. In this play most of the characters play fixed roles, so there is little need for costume change except to mark the fluctuations of the central character's fortune. Her changes of dress as her fortunes change govern the few costume changes of others. The costuming of Part 2 resembles that of other London plays, though with more need for the dress of city ceremonial and less for that of gallants than in the city comedy of the boy actors. Queen Anne's Men already had a repertory that required costumes like those needed for If You Know Not Me, including, perhaps, Edward IV and When You See Me You Know Me, the lost Jane Shore and Lady Jane (alias Sir Thomas Wyatt), and the company's one extant London comedy along with three that are lost. The Queen Elizabeth episodes need court attire, a doctor's gown for Parry, and a good deal of armor and military gear for the scenes at Tilbury, including armor and a white dress for the Queen. If The Four Prentices of London was written when Heywood says it was in the epistle for its 1615 quarto, then he must have written it for the Admiral's Men around 1598-99, though it is not now to be identified among known titles; much in it resembles Heywood's Edward IV, played jointly by Derby's and Worcester's Men circa 1599. It may have been based on older plays, such as the lost Jerusalem or the lost Godfrey of Bullogne registered as Strange's in 1594 and evidently unwanted by any of the successor companies. By 1607, it was the property of Queen Anne's Men, for Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle derides it among other swashbuckling shows to be seen at the Red Bull. What Heywood himself says in his apologetic epistle indicates that he wrote it as a serious romance, and expected it still to appeal to a youthful audience: . . . though written many years since, in my Infancy of Iudgment in this kinde of Poetry, and my first practise ... it comes short of that accuratenesse both in Plot and

254

ROYAL SERVANTS

Stile, that these more Censorious dayes with greater curiosity acquire, I must thus excuse. That as Playes were then some fiften or sixteene yeares ago it was in the Fashion. Nor coulde it have found a more seasonable and fit publication then at this Time... to you, my braue spirited Prentises, upon whom I haue freely bestowed these Foure, I wish you all, that haue their Courage and Forwardnesse. their noble Fates and Fortunes.

(II 161-63) Although its title emphasizes the "prentice" condition of its four main characters, once the brothers have joined Robert of Normandy it verbally plays down their apprentice interval and plays up their noble birth and heroic deeds. The script does emphasize that they bear the arms of their London companies on their shields, and they boast at intervals of their company affiliations. Apart from the probably-unintended comic conflict between their Tamburlainesque armor and weapons and their prosaic flat caps (if the 1615 title page records staging and is not merely an illustrator's notion based on the text), Four Prentices follows the conventions of costume change for disguise and for signs of changed status and fortune, which are frequent and sudden for all four heroes. While they are apprenticed to mercer, goldsmith, haberdasher, and grocer, no doubt in the apprentice's statutary coats, hose, and flat caps, they join (or are impressed into) Robert of Normandy's crusading army. After their separation by shipwreck, Godfrey becomes Earl of Bullein, Guy a knight of France, Charles an Italian bandit, and Eustace an Irish chieftain, each acquiring an appropriate national (or occupational) costume to replace the initial apprentice outfit. In subsequent scenes their costumes of new status make them unrecognizable to one another on the several occasions when they meet, even when they remark how like the new acquaintance is to a dead brother, even though each has adopted the arms of his London guild (which must have helped the audience to keep their identities straight), and even though all seem to have retained their apprentice's flat cap so that the apprentices in the audience could keep identifying with them. After their four shipwrecks, the many vicissitudes of fortune that all undergo may require further alterations of dress, but these are more likely to involve breastplates and bracers and cover-ups like cassocks, mantles, and cloaks, than complete costumes, for they happen so often and so

255

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

quickly that Queen Anne's Men could otherwise scarcely have managed so much shifting of costume for so many brief scenes. The prentices' father, the Old Earl, first enters as a poor man, changing to a pilgrim's weeds for the rest of the play, as he is dragged from London to Jerusalem by way of sundry captivities. The prentices' sister Bella Franca seems likely to have entered in a "poor" costume, then, like her father, to change to a pilgrim's garb, since, after the outlaws chase her, she says she is going to Jerusalem. Though she meets them often, her brothers always fail to recognize her, just as she fails to recognize them in their changed garments. But a different costume does not always prevent characters from recognizing each other. When Bella Franca enters with Tancred in a new costume ("richly attired") Eustace and Charles at once know that she is a lady they formerly rescued and fell in love with, though not that she is their sister. The nameless French Lady who has fallen in love with Guy resorts to the time-honored disguise of a page to follow him. Near the end of this play the supposed boy claims to be disguised when dressed up as a lady and brought on to hoots of laughter. All the disguises are penetrated only at the end of the play, in a recognition scene even more complex than the one which closes Cymbeline. A Woman Kitted with Kindness, If You Know Not Me, and The Four Prentices, all with a long stage history, show that, like the Admiral's Men, Queen Anne's Men owned English costumes for different occupations, activities, and social ranks as well as suites of Spanish and oriental apparel. These could be augmented as needed by miscellaneous garments such as the Irish mantles used in Four Prentices. These costume suites were evidently maintained for years and probably helped in subsequent choice of scripts. The Travels of the Three English Brothers dramatizes the recent adventures of the Shirley brothers in Persia and the Mediterranean. The play emphasizes the Englishness of its three heroes, which must have meant dressing them as contemporary English gentlemen. It also contrasts noble Persians with villainous Turks, who must have been visually distinguishable, as were Englishmen and Spaniards in If You Know Not Me. One brother, Sir Thomas, is shown at sea, which means a need for sailor costumes. Fortune by Land and Sea could use these sailor costumes in its fourth and fifth acts, after three acts requiring dress for all grades of Londoner from gallants and rich merchants to a menial who cleans a henhouse. "Fortune by land" requires costume changes to show the swift alteration (mainly for

256

ROYAL SERVANTS

the worse) in the lives of most of the characters, especially Philip Harding and Susan Forrest. In the last two acts "fortune by sea" restores prosperity to the suffering Philip and Susan and the noble Anne Harding, and punishes the villains, killing the "snudge" Old Harding and the pirates and reducing the insufferable younger Hardings to poverty. The Fair Maid of the West also needs costumes for sailors and ship's officers and for English gentlemen, and might have used the stock's Turkish costumes for its Moors. All these plays, though different in subject, share many formal characteristics, especially central characters whose many vicissitudes demand multiple costume changes. Each contrasts aliens and/or renegades in exotic attire with Englishmen in the dress of their country, who, gentlemen or clowns, are shown to have better hearts and morals than the exotics they go among. Harbage tentatively assigns Daborne's A Christian Turned Turk to the King's Men or the Queen's Revels. But neither company is likely, especially given the costumes this play needed. In 1609-10 the Queen's Revels company was attempting to hold itself together at the Whitefriars playhouse, where it was putting on court tragedy and citizen comedy. Both this repertory and the private theatre milieu argue against their purchase of a drums-and-cannon play like Daborne's. The King's Men seem to have owned no play with Turkish or Moorish characters except Othello, and the floor-length robe and vast turban of the men of Barbary7 seem improbable to costume a Venetian general. The costume requirements of A Christian Turned Turk are essentially those of the plays about Englishmen in Barbary and the Middle East that belonged to Queen Anne's Men; its production requirements fit the style known from other Red Bull plays. Of course it is possible that Daborne's play was not produced or may have failed; its title page does not mention a company, as title pages usually do when a printed play had been a stage success. Heywood's Rape of Lucrece is a different kind of play from those so far considered. In it, Heywood transported domestic tragedy from the England of Woman Killed with Kindness to the Rome of the Tarquins, embedding it into a drums-and-trumpets history of how Tarquin the Proud deposed and killed Servius Tullius at his wife Tullia's urging, and how, driven from Rome, he tried and failed to regain the crown. Such a play needs costume change for several reasons: to show changed status, to show changed circumstance (peace or war, at home or journeying), and to make events seem real by realistic appurtenances, even if some costumes and properties are also symbolic. There seems no question of classi-

257

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

cal dress; like Jonson's Little wit for his puppet version of Hero and Leander, because ancient Rome might be "too learned and poetical for [his] audience," Heywood has "only made it a little easy and modern for the times" (Bartholomew Fair V.iii.102-11). Littlewit substitutes the Thames for the Hellespont, and turns Leander into "a dyer's son, about Puddle Wharf," Hero into "a wench o'the Bankside" (112-13), and Cupid into a drawer in Old Fish Street. Heywood's "easy and modern" is not so simple-minded as Littlewit's, but he wrote with the largely unbookish Red Bull audience in mind. His characters have Latin names and the setting is Rome and places nearby, but in much of the dialogue and all of the songs the references are plainly English. For instance, early in the play Tarquin says that King Servius Tullius "should meet this day in Parliament," a word emphasized twice more before the "Senate and estates" assemble (Heywood V. 167). Tarquin ascends the throne, called "Cathedrall state" (170), just before Servius comes to open "parliament" crowned like an English King. Though "senators" does occur in the dialogue, a more common reference is to "lords," and sometimes to the distinctively English "Peeres" (170). Many of the play's exceptionally numerous songs are well-known English ballads slightly modified for the play's "Roman" context; Valerius, a Roman lord "Transhapt to a meere Ballater" (179), enters singing "When Tarquin first in court," adapted from a ballad about King Arthur. Brutus uses the first line of "O man in desperation" metaphorically (192). A song about "Roman" taverns names such London drinking spots as the White Hart, Mitre, Devil, and World's End, and its last line is "And with Duke Humphrey dine" (198), a reference to St Paul's. Another song centres on the Christian practice of tolling the bell "for some but now departing soule" (230). There is a Dutch toast, "upse freeze" (205), a reference to Dutch beer, and a song said to be in the Dutch language. Among the more generalized "revels," "quaffing," and "ryot" is named "the practice/Of high lavoltoes" (211) an athletic Renaissance dance. A sentinel at Ardea says that "The clocke last told eleven" (205), Sextus on his way to rape Lucrece speaks of a clock, and his man enters asking "What's a Clocke tro?" (224-25). (A clock is also mentioned in Julius Caesar, where there are similar clothing anachronisms.) Though Rape of Lucrece does not contain very many explicit references to costume, these imply that the costumes were Jacobean, without even the classicizing details in Peacham's Tims Andronicus picture.8 Most of the clothing words are names of Renaissance accessories: silk stockings, ladies' masks and cork-soled shoes,

258

ROYAL SERVANTS

rebatoes, billements (spangled headtires) and similar finery. The clown refers to his servingman's coat; more importantly, two successive speeches call attention to a distinctively Jacobean accessory, the deep double ruff and band that the "merry lord" Valerius is wearing. The scenes showing Tarquin's seizure of the throne are technically "civil" as they take place on the way to and in "Parliament," The main one is even headed "Senate" so the costumes would also be "civil," with the lords in rich gowns. This scene climaxes with the murder of Servius while he still wears his crown. Brutus may have worn a fool's dress, like that of Armin as John in the Hospital;9 Tarquin orders him to leave "Parliament" because "this place is not for fooles [and]. . . the straines of Ideotisme. . . Hence with that Mome" (168). Sextus and Aruns later take him to the oracle to amuse them on the journey. This would make his extremely sober soliloquy on regicide the more surprising to the Red Bull audience, where few would have known that Brutus pretended he was an idiot during Tarquin's tyranny. Still, his later responsibility at Ardea, his leadership against Tarquin, and his death in single combat against Sextus rather argue against a Jacobean fool's coat. Possibly he wore some extreme and silly form of "gallant" apparel, as did Thomas Greene as Bubble in Greene's Tu Quoque. Greene might even have played Brutus in The Rape of Lucrece, though a more likely part for him was the clown Pompey. The scenes among the lords after Tarquin seizes the crown are the kind that in London plays would dress them in decorated cloaks over doublet and hose, and "delicate fine hats." Such costumes could easily be adapted for a variety of men's activities. Worn with traveling boots they would be suitable for the scene at the oracle. Worn with shoes and without the cloak, they would fit the "banquet" at Ardea where the young men make their wager on their wives. With boots and cloaks when they enter to Lucrece, the same costumes would show that they were to have come "from riding." When Sextus returns to Lucrece, cloak and boots would again show he has come from a journey. The short scene between the clown, the servingman, and Mirable gives Lucrece time to make herself "unready" and get into the bed, and for Sextus to remove his cloak, doublet, and boots to prepare for the "rape" (etymologically carried out when he carries Lucrece away from her onstage bed). The scene between his servant and the clown gives him time to put his doublet, cloak, and boots back on, though Lucrece is still "unready" when they enter. As in Woman Killed with Kindness, these "unready" scenes give the actor of Lucrece extra time to put on "funerall blacke, and ornaments/Of widdow-hood"

259

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

(235) for the scene with her husband, her father, and the Roman lords that ends with her suicide. The play's concluding battle scenes may have demanded only token armor like the helmets in Troilus and Cressida, though they include such visual tricks as "Tarquin with an arrow in his brest" and "Brutus all bloody" (249). The first involves the arrow-through property discussed by Alan Dessen,10 the second may mean that Brutus' face and hands are bloodied, or that his costume is smeared with blood. When he and Sextus meet in combat, the directions specify "a fierce fight with sword and target" and then "with single swords, and being deadly wounded and painting for breth, making a stroak at each other with their gantlets they fall" (252). Both swordand-target and sword-and-gauntlet combat were techniques for duelling without armor. The directions thus seem to suggest that the company did not use armor for this fight, but at most quilted or leather arming doublets. Blood on old or inexpensive garments would not matter much to the company, and would allow the actors to prick blood bags to simulate "being deadly wounded." Heywood's notorious Ages, five extravanganzas of costume and stage machinery that dramatized a great part of Ovid's Metamorphoses, fall into two groups: The Golden Age, The Silver Age, and The Brazen Age, all in existence by 1611, and the two parts of The Iron Age, written after an interval for performance under different conditions than the first three. All five employ much doubling for their numerous short-term roles, and require some rapid costume changes for important continuing characters. The role of Jupiter is particularly demanding in this respect, since the stories of his amours involve so many disguises. In the part of The Silver Age that shows the birth of Hercules (crossing Ovid's version with the Amphitryo of Plautus), two sets of "sewtes a licke" are needed for his and Ganimed's impersonation of Amphitrio and Socia. Hercules also engages in some switchabout of dress, especially for the scene with Omphale when he wears women's apparel, then changes back to male dress for his sacrifice. For this he dons the "shirt of Nessus" on stage, so it was probably not the undergarment usually meant by "shirt" but something like a soldier's mandillion or a short cassock. Some characters figuring only in one brief episode change costume in its course; other characters of long duration need only one suit of clothes. Homer, chorus in all five plays, wears the same costume throughout, combining whatever made a poet recognizable (as in Orlando Furioso over twenty years before) with an accessory to show blindness.

260

ROYAL SERVANTS

Like The Rape of Lucrece for Roman history, the Ages make myth "a little easy and modern" with commonplace theatre traditions. Much of The Golden Age differs little in action from Tamburlaine and Edward IV. Although it calls its kings and conquerors gods, most of what they do can be matched in other kinds of action drama, and so can their rhetoric. Familiar theatre traditions made the "learned and poetical," mostly names of places and persons, fit into patterns the audience knew, such as processions, dumb-shows, and fighting. The familiar conventions were ornamented by devices that Heywood may have learned from court masques: for instance, new ways to "costume" the old "creaking throne" and improved ways to lower and raise it. Queen Anne's Men seem also to have acquired some masque machinery, perhaps hired or borrowed from the Office of Works or the Revels Office, rather than purchased.11 In The Silver Age the death of Semele needs a device to set a stage bed afire and make it "fly up" with the actor of Semele apparently still inside, so that the bed property had to be properly balanced and perhaps counterweighted to assist in a swift ascent without endangering one of the company's boys. Immediately after this spectacular "flight," Jupiter gradually ascends in a cloud while speaking (Heywood III 155). Right after this come "fire-workes all ouer the house" (159) when Hercules invades Hell; the company's personnel must have spent a great deal of time rigging the stage for such effects before every performance. The Brazen Age also needs special effects with fire, as well as a mechanism to make Hercules sink, and another to make "a hand in a cloud" descend, lift a star "from the place where Hercules was burnt," and place it "in the firmament" (254). Though Jupiter is simply "aboue" to throw a thunderbolt, one of the effects needs a sprung trap and the other a cloud machine that can vanish above the stage heavens. Earlier in the same play, suspension gear in a discovery space is needed for Medea to hang "aboue in the Aire in the strange habile of a Coniuresse" (217). Records show how masque machines were paid for, but not what became of them afterward. In the court of James, means for someone to profit were all too likely, and a very likely profit was in sale or hire to players who wanted machines to imitate court spectacle. But for the two parts of The Iron Age the actors seem not to have had any such machinery, perhaps because these plays needed the personnel of two companies; Heywood's reference to "three seueral Theaters" (111.264) may mean that the two companies arranged for successive performances on their home stages, which would be awkward if machines had to be moved.

261

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

While some masque machines could have been set up with ease in a public theatre, it would be far easier for a company to create masquing effects with costumes. These costumes might have been those worn by the same players who were hired as presenters and antimasquers at Court. Both the Queen and Prince Henry might have engaged their own players for these speaking and comic parts. Unfortunately, the company or companies to which the "players" in Prince Henry's Barriers and Oberon belonged is not named in the list of payments (H. & S., X 521), although Oberon needs a great many, probably from more companies than one. If some of Queen Anne's players performed in her masques, they might have received apparel "in reward" as had Elizabethan players at court. They may also have offered to hire or buy these costumes from the Yeoman of the Revels after the masque was over, when there was no foreseeable court use for them. The Ages probably made better theatre than they do plays to read. A full analysis of their complicated costume requirements and the way their costume changes were managed hardly seems worth the effort, especially as so much would be repetitive. But the number of separate costumes and costumes in sets which they require does show how extensive the wardrobe of Queen Anne's Men was about 1609-10. The company must have been prospering, since it could afford the elaborate stage effects of The Silver Age and The Brazen Age, not only using machines more sophisticated than the "creaking throne" but elaborate displays of fireworks. This meant paying for a fresh supply of squibs and bombards (rockets on a wire) for each performance, and also time and care to set them up so as not to endanger the actors or the playhouse. This care was evidently meticulous, for, unlike the Globe, the Red Bull never burned despite its repertory's special effects with fire. Probably the cost of fire displays in the Ages limited the number of performances the company could afford. The Golden Age was published "As it hath beene sundry times acted" (Heywood III 4). The title pages of The Silver Age and The Brazen Age advertise no performances. It seems incredible that such spectacles of flight and flame as the texts describe would not have attracted large audiences for as many performances as the company chose to give—unless, of course, Heywood's ideas for such spectacles fizzled in practice so that the plays became laughing stocks to both intellectuals and disappointed workingmen. Some of the costumes introduced in The Golden Age could be reused for the same roles in the next two Ages, such as Juno and Iris, and more

262

ROYAL SERVANTS

might be used for roles of a similar kind. The costume of the Nurse early in The Golden Age would have suited Juno disguised as Beroe in The Silver Age. Diana's costume in The Golden Age could have dressed Venus as huntress in The Brazen Age, and a nymph of Diana's called Atlanta in the stage directions of The Golden Age probably wore the same costume when she became an important character in The Brazen Age. Mythical kings with small parts in one play are unlikely to have been remembered when different mythical kings wore the same costumes later. The trains of warriors from sundry nations and the minor heroes in earlier installments could also hand on their costumes to successors in the sequels. Exactly how many costumes worn by warriors of different nations in one combat were later worn under the name of other nations is impossible to determine, although they probably came in sets of three or four, as did the costumes for "sogers" or "gensaryes" in the Henslowe inventory. When Hercules invades Hell in The Silver Age, he fights with Cerberus, but though this three-headed monster was a very familiar icon, and the Admiral's Men had owned "Serberosse iij heades" in 1598 (Diary 320), it is not clear whether he was represented as a dog or had more heads than one. Given the euhemerist interpretation of myth that predominates in these plays, perhaps Heywood chose human shape for his monsters, even when they were beastlike or multiform in his source. Animal and halfanimal costumes are not rare; the horse ridden onto the stage in Woodstock and walked up and down for a comic scene seems more probable as a costume for two men than a real horse, and a more likely interpretation of Henslowe's "great horse with his leages" than "the horse of the Greeks in Troy" (Diary 320, note 17). The Silver Age needs six centaurs who must fight energetically; they could hardly be acted as a two-man composite of man and horse. Heywood's euhemerism suggests that they might have been dressed as were other warriors. It is not clear whether there were to be four devils or more in Pluto's Hell. A team of devils draws Pluto's chariot when he kidnaps Proserpina, but Tamburlaine indicates that it was hard to manage entrances for stage chariots with four draught kings, and four draught devils seem no less awkward. When Hercules invades Hell in The Silver Age, however, "the Diuels appear at every corner of the stage," so there must have been at least four, like the four sentries at the corners of the stage in Antony and Cleopatra. When Hercules chases the Fates and the Judges of Hell over the stage he must also chase off these devils, for his brief soliloquy before

263

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

the entrance of Pluto seems more likely on a clear stage. As Pluto then enters with the Fates and Judges whom Hercules has just sent running, his "guard of Diuels, all with burning weapons," might be expected to be the same four, though additional devils on stage for such a scene would thrill the audience more. There do seem to be more than four devils in Dekker's If This Be Not a Good Play, The Devil is in It, which probably used the same devil costumes as the Ages, but since some of this play's assembly of devils wear human disguise for most of the play, Dekker may have left them in their disguises when they join their fellows. The characters in the two parts of The Iron Age are all human, and though the plays have very large casts, their costuming is far less specialized and spectacular than the costumes of the three earlier Ages. There seems also to have been a fair interval between the performance of the first three and that of their sequels. At least, in the preface to The Brazen Age, Heywood does not promise sequels, as he does in his other two prefaces. Evidently something interrupted the flow of mythical subject matter, that something likely having been the sheer cost of producing the first series. Even with reuse and remodeling of costumes from one play to the next, the five Ages required close to one hundred separate costumes, besides the stage machinery and the special effects with fire and explosions. These effects are absent from The Iron Ages, even though the raw material Heywood worked with could easily have justified some of them. Possibly the company was alarmed at the prospect of a theatre fire after the Globe burned in 1613, as well as at the cost of a crowd of warrior costumes and armor. Dekker's If This Be Not a Good Play, The Devil is in It may have been commissioned to give more use to the Ages' devil suits and some of their other costumes. At bottom it is a prodigal play whose hero is a king, not an ordinary spendthrift. Alphonso of Naples begins his reign with good intentions, but is soon tempted to abandon his weekly schedule of royal good works—seeing that justice is done, charity bestowed, diplomacy and defence equally looked after, learning patronized—to devote himself to pleasure. Though courtiers reveal that he has many tempters, the young King's degeneration is directly attributed to three emissaries from Hell: one working at court, one in the chief monastery, one in the city. Between the spectacular scenes of devils in Hell and on earth and the many costume changes demanded by the devils' disguises and those used by human characters, the play requires a large wardrobe. Dekker included a good many stage directions that specify costume along with action, and

264

ROYAL SERVANTS

there are others incorporated in what characters say, some of them very specific. Pluto's instructions to his demon emissaries begin as he orders Ruffman to "take a Courtiers shape... choose thine own disguise" (1.i.78-79). When Ruffman comes to Alphonso's court, he claims to be "an Heluetian" descended from "a Shalcan Tartar" (171-76) and a world traveler; this might mean a Swiss costume, or something from the Persian, Turkish, or Barbary holdings, or, like young Falconbridge in Merchant of Venice, pieces from the costumes of many nations. Pluto tells Shackle-soul (later the novice Rush) to put on "A Friers graue habit," and Grumball (later called Lurchall) to "walke... in trebble-ruffes like a Merchant" (81-82). Dekker was in debtors' prison when the Ages were being produced, but he could have learned about specialized outfits in the Queen Anne's wardrobe from the printed texts or from his old acquaintance Heywood. Costumes that cannot be traced to a particular play or suite of plays, like those for friars, gallants, and citizens, are the kind that all companies accumulated. Even so, the company might have had to buy more friar's robes, for when the convent enters for its communal meal five are named among others, the total number being left to company discretion. The King regularly appears with four companions, as did Richard II in Woodstock, so the play needs four very elaborate suits for them and a fifth for Alphonso even more extravagant. In Bartervile's counting house speech headings show that there are three "young fellowes like Merchants men," one of them the devil Grumball under his disguise-name of Lurchall. Bartervile's customers are given names that suggest their appearance. At the convent, to tempt the virtuous Sub-prior, Shackle-soul brings on "an Italian Zany, fiue or six Curtizans, euery one holding a Iewell" (IV.iv.SD), who "fall into a short dance" (7 SD) like an antimasque, and go on to sing of sexual pleasure. "Shackle-soule, or some spirit in a frightfull shape" (38 SD) comes to frighten the Sub-prior when the courtesans fail. Permissive directions like these show that Dekker was not as intimately familiar with the Red Bull wardrobe as he had been with that at the Rose and the Fortune, but assumed that the company had means to produce the effects he wanted. In other situations he must have known that particular costumes were at hand. Bartervile begins in the "trebble-ruffe" and merchant's garb that Pluto mentions; when the city is besieged he disguises himself "like a Turke" (IV.i.SD) and later both he and the King hope to find safety "like a Frier." One reason for Dekker to put extra friars

265

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

into the convent dinner could have been a later need for friar's robes as disguises. The play's final scene is an infernal version of the parades of "unworthies" in The Honest Whore, organized by devils in full infernal array to exhibit a Prodigal, a Puritan, the regicide Ravillac, and Guy Fawkes of the Gunpowder Treason. A less expensive play to produce than Dekker's was J. Cooke's Greene's Tu Quoque, titled The City Gallant before it gained its use-name from the speech tag of Bubble, who was played by the popular clown Thomas Greene. This play fits no ordinary classification, for it incorporates almost everything that audiences had applauded in the previous fifteen years. Its closest affinities are with urban prodigal plays, though it is less sophisticated than Eastward Ho! or The Roaring Girl. Its central action concerns the reversal of fortune and of social position between Bubble and Staines. Staines, like Middleton's Witgood and Easy, was cheated of his patrimony by a dead usurer whose heir is his nephew, Staines's servant Bubble. Bubble hires his former master as his servant and coach in living the life of a gallant. To transfer Bubble's inheritance to himself, Staines resorts to every cheat known from cony-catching literature. After squandering much money on outdated finery and being cheated of more, Bubble finds that he is not only penniless but also in debt, and is glad to change places with Staines again. Parallel to Staines's climb back to the status and wealth of a gentleman is the descent to rags of the newly-rich mercer Spendall (the City Gallant) as he apes the gentry's extravagance. Greene's Tu Quoque is a very long play with a large cast and many costume changes within roles, especially those of Staines as he switches from his blue servant's coat to the disguises by which he spirits away money from Bubble, Spendall, and the rest, then switches back to the blue coat to escape detection. At one point, when he is courting the witty Joyce in a satin suit, she perceives he is Bubble's servant. He once mentions a false beard, probably worn with the cloaks and hats used for most of his quick disguises. Bubble's costume, a visual joke equivalent to Malvolio's crossgartering, is illustrated on the title page. It consists of a slashed doublet and hose in a style long outdated in 1611.12 His absurd notion of proper gallant's clothing is suggested in his first order to his new servant, . . . runne persently to the Mercers, buy me seuen ells of horse flesh colour'd taffata, nine yards of yellow sattin, and eight yerds of orenge tawney veluet; then runne to the Tailers, the Haberdashers, the Sempsters,

266

ROYAL SERVANTS

the Cutlers, the Perfumers, and to all trades whatsoe'r that belong to the making vp of a Gentleman.

(Sig. D3) The equally prodigal Spendall is a mercer who displays his expertise in fine fabrics in the opening scene, so his gallant attire must contrast with Bubble's—gaudy, perhaps, but in the latest fashion like that of the play's other gallants. Even with its many different costumes, this successful play must have convinced the company that they did not have to waste their substance in the riotous living of Ages and devils. Dekker's later Red Bull play, Match Me in London, may have been a source for Middleton's Women Beware Women. It centres on Cordolente's stolen bride Tormiella and her resistence to seduction by the King of Spain. She undergoes four alterations of status, from high-born maiden to merchant's wife to court lady to royal bride. These require three costume changes in the course of the play. Dekker does not give this play its logical tragic ending; instead, Tormiella's former betrothed Gazetto, who has lurked about in several disguises, resolves everything like a deus ex. machina by revealing that the Queen still lives so that the King cannot marry Tormiella. The printed play mentions both performances at the Red Bull and a later revival at the Phoenix, but a move from a public to a private theatre is unlikely to have caused radical changes in the costumes required. Webster's The White Devil failed at the Red Bull, but the question is less why it failed there than why Queen Anne's Men chose to put it on.13 It needs many costumes, some rich, some shabby, of which a surprising number were in the known stock. Among these are a prodigal's shabby garments for Lodovico, probably a "chamois" jerkin and scarf for the soldier Marcello, friar's robes for the disguises of Carlo, Gasparo, and Lodovico, Isabella's night-gown, Cornelia's widow's habit, the robes of Doctor Julio and the Conjurer, gentlemen's suits with cloaks and hats, one of them sober, even seedy, for Flamineo as Brachiano's prodigal secretary and pander, moorish dress for Zanche and for Florence's disguise, and servants' liveries. The armor worn by Brachiano and five other combatants at barriers may not have been company property but hired. A garment of uncertain interpretation is Brachiano's ghost costume, "his leather cassock, and breeches, boots, [and] a cowl" (V.iv.124 SD), which Dollimore and Sinfield call "customary dress for a ghost" but which sound more like the buff worn under armor. Since Brachiano was poisoned

267

Costumes and Scripts in die Elizabethan Theatres

through his armor, buff is the logical costume for his death. How the body was removed the text does not say, though shutting the bed curtains, as in Othello, seems probable. The actor would have time for a costume change before his reentry as a ghost, but for so brief an appearance to put on the elaborate rig Webster describes seems unnecessary, as ghosts might walk (like Banquo) in the clothes they died in. What is curious is the number and kind of costumes that Queen Anne's Men would have had to acquire to produce The White Devil as written, among them at least two sets of ducal clothing for Brachiano and one for Florence, an equally rich dress for the boy Giovanni, and suitable mourn' ing for him after his mother's death. The principal women, Isabella and Vittoria, contrasted verbally so often, must also have contrasted visually. Isabella tells Brachiano that she has come to Rome for "devotion," an ambiguous word applicable both to religion and to love for her husband. Brachiano attacks her for being no longer attractive, to which she answers that she is "not yet much wither'd" (II. 1.167), later speaking of "these ruins of my former beauty" (237). Their quarrel shows that she feels herself to be widowed even before he "divorces" her, so she may wear black in a style behind the fashion for 1612, though without a widow's distinctive accessories. Vittoria's apparel forms part of the "proof" that she is a whore: "Her husband is lord of a poor fortune/Yet she wears cloth of tissue" (II. i.5455). At her arraignment, Monticelso alleges that "She comes not like a widow.... Is this a mourning habit?" (III.ii. 120-21). She sums up the evidence for her whoredom as "beauty and gay clothes, a merry heart,/And a good stomach to a feast" (206-7). Up to her arraignment, then, her costume must have been rich and bright-colored. In the House of Convertites, she is certainly reclothed, probably in a blue Bridewell gown. When her wedding procession crosses the stage at the start of Act V, she must be dressed like a duchess, resembling "the Duchess of Milan's gown" which Shakespeare imagined: "cloth a' gold and cuts, and lac'd with silver, set with pearls, down sleeves, side sleeves, and skirts, round underborne with a bluish tinsel" (Ado III. iv. 15-22). This would remain her costume for watching the combat at barriers, so she must still be wearing it when Brachiano dies. She is then off the stage for 255 lines, time enough to change or simplify her costume for the scene that ends with her death. For this she carries the book symbolizing devotion (Ophelia's in the Nunnery Scene of Hamlet) or virtue (Lucrece supervising her maids). But events in this play often make what a character wears on entry to give

268

ROYAL SERVANTS

plain information ironically unsuitable before the scene ends. That Vittoria is a whore is never proved, so that her convertite's dress provides ambiguous information about a moral change. In her final scene, whatever she wore would be inaccurate, whether the splendor of a duchess or a widow's habit. Although Vittoria's fine clothes could probably be reused in other plays, even for Helen in The Iron Age, The White Devil demands some garments that Queen Anne's Men would either have had to acquire new or to find elsewhere. One important costume is that of Cardinal Monticelso, probably transferred to Arragon on Monticelso's election as Pope and entry "in state," which would seem to mean pontificals, even though stage directions and speech ascriptions do not record his changed status as in other plays. For The Troubles of Queen Elizabeth the company had a cardinal costume, but no earlier play known as theirs included a pope. Possibly Queen Anne's Men hired or bought the pontificals the King's Men had used in The Devil's Charter and had not needed since, as well as their superfluous cardinal's robes. Still more unusual (and costly) finery probably dressed "the lieger Ambassadors" who cross the stage to Vittoria's arraignment, first the Savoy and French ambassadors separately and then the English and Spanish together, evidently in costumes that would show they were of different nations, whether accurate or not. During the election of the pope, "six Ambassadors" (IV.iii.SD) are present, "wondrous brave [in the] several habits" of "knights/Of several orders" (5-6): That lord i'th'black cloak with the silver cross Is Knight of Rhodes; the next Knight of Saint Michael; That of the Golden Fleece; the Frenchman there Knight of the Holy Ghost; my lord of Savoy Knight of th'Annunciation; the Englishman Is Knight of th'honoured Garter. (8-14) While some of these orders would have been obscure enough in England that Queen Anne's Men would not need to care for accuracy, the Garter insignia were too well known to be confected from tiring-house oddments. These ambassadors reappear for the barriers at Vittoria's wedding to Brachiano. After the deaths of Vittoria and Flamineo they escort the young Duke Giovanni, and the Englishman orders the conspirators to be shot. "Knighthood" is such a prominent theme in the last act of The

269

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

White Devil that the ambassadors are likely again to be wearing the "several habits" of their Orders. All the Queen Anne's plays show that the company's performance style relied on an extensive wardrobe, though some economy was practiced by choosing suites of plays as had the Admiral's Men, or plays that could use existing costumes though of differing content. Because the number of costumes in so many plays was so great, their practice was probably less economical than the Admiral's Men's had been, and their plays' many quick changes must have led to rapid wear in frequently used garments. Queen Anne's Men must also have had to spend quite heavily for maintenance and replacement, especially since plays with devils (and some others) used fire and explosions, which must sometimes have caused serious damage. The expense of repair or replacement, as well as that for the fire effects and their rigging, is enough to explain the relatively short stage life of the first three Ages and the restricted fires in If It Be Not Good, where the flames which erupt as the wicked friars "sinck downe" are "above," well away from the actors and their costumes. Devil suits of "frightfull shape," snakes, knives, "a ladle full of molten gold," much grotesque leaping and dancing, and one torch, created a Hell with much less potential for damage than "fire-workes all ouer the house." Although no Heywood play survives from the decade after the Ages, this cannot be interpreted as a halt in his writing since by his own account many of his plays never reached print and probably were lost while he was still producing new ones. The absence of any new play ascribable to Queen Anne's Men between the Iron Ages and Two Merry Milkmaids may, however, suggest that they had cut back on new plays and were relying, as was the Fortune company, on scripts tried-and-true with their proletarian audience. Though both these companies continued as royal servants, Prince Henry's as the Palsgrave's Men from 1613 on, and though Queen Anne's Men each received four yards of black cloth for her funeral, these companies were rarely summoned to Court. Probably the plays the two companies were performing for their normal public had diverged too far from royal tastes, at least as interpreted by the Master of the Revels, Sir George Buc. Though courtiers and Inns of Court men might go to the Red Bull, to be seen there was hardly in fashion. When Jonson makes Fitzdottrel plan to attend the theatre, he insists that he must see The Devil Is an Ass, and the fact that this is the play in which he is a character is the main point of the jest. But Jonson makes his social climber insist on showing himself and his hired finery at the socially correct theatre,

270

ROYAL SERVANTS

Blackfriars; even Fitzdottrel's devil obsession does not make Jonson send him to the Fortune or the Red Bull, devil-haunted though they were. THE KING'S MEN Having mourned the death of Queen Elizabeth for two months, the Lord Chamberlain's Men resumed playing as the King's servants in May 1603. Shortly after, the plague halted performances for nearly a year, and closed the theatres almost annually for the next decade. Though King James partly compensated his servants in plague times, and though they gained a new source of income from performing in the new court masque, the effect was one of financial strain. Prior to their acquisition of a second theatre with the surrender of the Blackfriars lease in 1608, the King's Men seem to have gradually modified the handling of their business affairs. For one thing, Shakespeare was writing fewer plays than in the previous decade,14 and more plays appear to have been bought from outsiders than before (or more King's Men's scripts were being printed after 1603 than in the 1590s). Besides The Malcontent, "stolen" from the Blackfriars boys with its author's probable connivance, between 1603 and 1613 scripts were purchased one at a time from Jonson, Tourneur, Barnes, Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton, Webster, and some others. Unlike Shakespeare, these "outside" authors did not participate in the company's day-to-day business. Unlike the Admiral's poets, they were not under any sort of continuing contract with the King's Men, and so could hardly be as familiar with the company stock of costumes and properties as Munday and Dekker became with the Admiral's stock. Possibly the King's Men chose scripts for purchase that could use existing costumes and properties or had the new scripts revised to fit what was on hand. At any rate, Shakespeare's plays of 1603-1606 indicate that the King's Men were being cautious about production expenses; while there is much formal and linguistic innovation in his early Jacobean plays, there is at first little change in costume needs from his plays as one of the Chamberlain's Men. Probably some of the scripts first heard of after 1603 were old Chamberlain's plays held over or thriftily revived under new patronage, and some, like Mucedorus (revived 1608), were very much older. The London Prodigal belongs to a ubiquitous and long-lived genre and was probably kept in repertory because it resembled the popular "city comedies" of the boy actors with whom the Kings Men were competing. Its costume needs

271

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

are those of almost any play set in contemporary London: dress identifying city merchants and their wives, country gentlemen and women, servants (including Luce's unusual disguise as a Dutch housemaid), a captain, and the prodigal of the title, who begins dressed in traditional finery and ends dressed in traditional rags. The script even saves on wardrobe by confining impressions of fashionable array to verbal descriptions that give evidence of vain expense without expense on actual clothes. Another old play, The Fair Maid of Bristow, depends on multiple disguises. Comparison with what Dekker made of similar materials in The Honest Whore and still more with what Shakespeare did with similar devices in King Lear shows its antiquated simplicity. Vallenger steals Challener's betrothed, Anabel, but at their wedding feast he falls in love with Sentloe's courtesan, Florence, and makes Anabel hand over to Florence her wedding gown and rebato. Thereafter Anabel mostly appears in her waistcoat and petticoat, like the impoverished Bellafront in The Honest Whore Part 2. Harbert, Sentloe's friend, disguises himself as the plainspeaking Blunt, and becomes his servant. The actor must switch rapidly between the two roles, probably by putting a gentleman's cloak over the servant's blue coat and changing his beard. The betrayed Challener also disguises himself, and in the garb for a foreign physician functions as the play's deus ex machina. All these costumes, even Challener's disguise, could have been used in at least one other play in the repertory, and most of them in several. Plays such as this could continue in repertory with almost no new expense; when a costume showed wear, it could move down the social scale and be replaced with a similar costume. Opulence, when needed, could be achieved without heavy investment in fine garments, and if a play was popular, it could be continued almost indefinitely in repertory, alongside Shakespeare's most popular plays from the company's days at the Theatre and the Curtain. Never having taken to the Admiral's rapid turnover in repertory, the King's Men probably never went so far with costume economy as had the Admiral's Men with their strings of new plays in old costumes. In their first two years in the King's service they performed only five plays certain to have been written after their change of patron. One, the lost tragedy Gowry, dramatized a Scottish nobleman's attempt to murder King James only a few years before, and for authenticity might even have been costumed in the discards of his recently-arrived Scottish entourage. Each of the four extant plays has a different setting: Sejanus in imperial Rome,

272

ROYAL SERVANTS

Measure for Measure in a "Vienna" modeled on contemporary London, Othello in Venice and the Venetian dependency of Cyprus, King Lear in ancient Britain. Difference of setting would not necessarily mean difference in costume style, but the requirements of each play's action demand different types of costuming. Sejanus and Measure for Measure are both urban plays, but the first is set in the court of the Emperor Tiberius and the households of great nobles, the second in institutions of public justice (courtrooms and a prison) and in the streets nearby. Shakespeare's method of economizing—limiting costume change rather than carrying important costumes from play to play—is very conspicuous in Sejanus (as far as Jonson's revisions permit analysis of its needs) and also in Measure for Measure and Othello. Between glamorous Venetians and a Moorish hero, Othello's requirements are exotic, but the play could use standard costumes for its soldiers and military officers. King Lear carries its hero on a pilgrimage which exhibits almost the whole of the human condition, from Machiavellian rationality to madness. Accordingly it needs everything from royal robes to "Poor Tom's" blanket and from Goneril and Regan's "extravagant decolletage" to Edgar and Edmund's contrasted armor.15 Costume change in Lear is extensive and conspicuous, a sign that the company wardrobe had increased, but its requirements show that Shakespeare still economized by inventing uses for old costumes until they were worn to rags. The King's Men's first new play after becoming royal servants seems to have been Jonson's Sejanus His Fall, which failed spectacularly with the Globe audience and which Jonson soon after extensively revised for print. Jonson's "book, in all numbers, is not the same with that which was acted on the public stage, wherein a second pen had a good share: in place of which I have rather chosen, to put weaker (and no doubt less pleasing) of mine own, than to defraud so happy a genius of his right, by my loathed usurpation" (H&S IV, 351). What is peculiar about Sejanus (as about Catiline later) is how devoid it is of links with the physical stage. Unlike Jonson's comedies, it hardly mentions a garment or a property; the dialogue rarely gives a clue to action, at most noting when someone "passeth by" or referring to some act like kneeling or striking a blow which is said to have occurred. The only references to specific costume in Sejanus are Agrippina's simile, "Transparent as this lawn I wear" (11.452), and Macro's partly figurative taunt to Sejanus, "come down, Typhoeus.. . . tear off thy robe"(V.673-75). This lack of stage information may repre-

273

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

sent some idea of tragic decorum, for even in the comedies Jonson most heavily revised, the lines are laden with details about the costumes, properties, and actions of the speakers. As it stands, Sejanus hardly seems like a play for practical theatre; though nothing in it is beyond Elizabethan theatre conventions, it has been converted into something closer to the closet dramas of Mary Countess of Pembroke and Samuel Daniel. Agrippina's simile, pointing to "this lawn," does suggest something actually worn by an actor. Jonson may have imagined Agrippina in a classicizing garment such as those worn by the ladies who danced in The Masque of Blackness or Hymenaei, without reference to how she looked on the stage of the Globe. Yet "lawn" might as easily have referred to the bib, ruff, and veil of an English widow as to the thin and floating "classical" array of Blackness that so shocked Dudley Carleton. It is unlikely that the King's Men, after a year without regular income and with, for them, quite satisfactory "classical" apparel in stock from Julius Caesar and perhaps Troilus and Cressida, would invest largely in pedantic authenticity for Sejanus. Though they could hardly have predicted that the audience would be hostile or that the Privy Council would summon them to answer for the play, either event alone would have given good cause to drop it from their repertory, the more easily done if they had not spent much on producing it. Josephine Waters Bennet suggests that Measure for Measure draws on King James's Basilicon Doron and that Shakespeare wrote it in honor of the new King. Perhaps it was intended for a coronation offering from his newly appointed players, until the 1603 plague cancelled all celebrations. The play's costume requirements are hardly greater than for Sejanus. The only character who certainly puts on a new costume is Duke Vincentio, who spends most of the play in a friar's gown and hood. His quick changes in the final scene show that he wore this disguise over a suit fit for a duke. Other characters put on and remove gowns, cloaks, hats, and veils, but nothing indicates that anyone else changes a basic costume. In Measure for Measure fixed costume is not mere economy. Unchanging dress symbolizes the rigid fixations of most of the characters, whether Angelo's absolute enforcement of the law's letter, Isabella's absolute certainty that her morality applies to everyone, Barnardine's absolute refusal to obey anybody, or Pompey's absolute confidence that his job in a bawdy house will continue despite the law. The costumes thus function like verbal images, visual correlatives to the play's many walls and locked doors,

274

ROYAL SERVANTS

whether those represented by the walls of the tiring house and the permanent stage doors or those only named in dialogue: the wall of the city, the wall of St. Clare's cloister, the outer wall and inner partitions of the prison, the wall about Angelo's vineyard, the inner wall about his garden, and the wall of the "summer house" within it, and the locked gates and doors that prevent escape from these places. Everything that happens in the play occurs inside walls, including those of the courtroom in which Elbow charges Froth with assaulting his wife and those of the bawdy house where the assault took place. (The painting on the cover of the 1985 New Arden edition shows an open landscape, receding through a gateless archway to distant hills; such a scene contradicts everything in the play.) The only scene outside such walls is that where the Duke and Isabella speak to Mariana, and even her grange has its defensive moat. Many of the play's costume requirements are prescribed by the text. Pompey Bum wears "large hose," perhaps red velvet like the bawd Prigbeard's in Middleton's Black Book. Lucio and his gentlemen companions seem likely to wear the finery of prodigals. So, perhaps, does Claudio, but in the prison scenes he is without his cloak and may be shackled and even barefoot like the imprisoned Mountfort in Woman Killed with Kindness. When undisguised the Duke should wear clothes appropriate to his station; his disguise as a friar would require removing his hat and cloak and covering his suit with the same hooded habit as the other friars wear. Francisca evidently wears a nun's habit, with veil. Since it seems likely that the boy who played this one-scene part doubled Mariana, the two may have worn the same basic costume, with differing accessories to identify the first as the cloistered nun, the second as the forsaken maiden. When in the last scene Mariana enters veiled, her appearance would have implied the nun's life she has lived since Angelo's desertion five years before. Fulminations against bawds who dress like honest wives suggest that their dress made it hard to distinguish them from respectable matrons; when the old Bawd in The Honest Whore visits Candido's shop, the young men assume that if they call her "madam" she will be accepted as a respectable old lady, which implies decorous attire. Perhaps Mistress Overdone was costumed in the same way. The Provost and the hangman Abhorson probably wore clothes like those of London's prison keepers and executioner, with keys for the first and an axe for the second. The big costume question for Measure for Measure is, of course, what kind of garb to assign to Isabella.16 Her costuming depends on the interpre-

275

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

tation of her character, whether as a sincere believer in her rigid sexual morality or as a hypocrite. But the evidence of the play is against both a nun's habit and a costume change. The few nuns who appear in earlier plays are not morally impeccable. In The Troublesome Reign of King John "faire Alice the nun" is pulled from the abbot's treasure chest. In The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, the nuns are monks' and priests' paramours and the Abbess poisons the virtuous Matilda who has taken sanctuary with her. In The Alchemist Jonson mentions a bawdy picture called the Friar and the Nun, perhaps the "Friar whipping the Nun's arse" described as a shop sign in the second part of If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody. While it is true that Shakespeare's friars—Laurence, John, Francis, and Thomas—are wise and virtuous men, he says little about nuns and nunneries except in Hamlet's taunt to Ophelia, "Get thee to a nunn'ry" (III.i. 120) and in Measure for Measure. When Lucio's greets Isabella with "Hail, virgin, if you be" though at once qualified by "as those cheek-roses/Proclaim you are no less!" (I.iv. 16-17, italics added), the words call to mind the use of "nunnery" for "brothel." During Isabella's plea to Angelo, Lucio's words of advice carry sexual double meanings. Had the King's Men dressed the super-chaste Isabella in a nun's costume, they might well have evoked contradictory ideas for many in the audience, leading them to interpret her later tirade to Claudio as not only cruel but also insincere. Many speeches show that Shakespeare did not mean for Isabella to be dressed as a nun. When Claudio sends Lucio for her, he says that "This day my sister should the cloister enter/And there receive her approbation" (I.ii. 177-78, italics added). When she enters with Francisca two scenes later, evidently being given orientation in the convent, her opening words are "And have you nuns no farther privileges?" (I.iv. 1), and she speaks of "the sisterhood" and "the votarists of Saint Clare" (5), not of "our sisterhood." When Lucio calls, Francisca tells her, as if for the first time, of the prohibition to speak with men except under limitations which do not apply to Isabella because she is "yet unsworn" (9). Finally, Isabella is free to leave the convent at her brother's summons, "No longer staying but to give the Mother/Notice of my affair" (86-87); she reports her business to the superior, but does not have to ask her permission to leave the convent. Although Shakespeare's members of religious orders may not follow authentic rules, the rules he creates for Francisca are there for only one reason: to show that though Isabella would like to see them stricter, she is not bound by them. Clearly this has to be evident from her

276

ROYAL SERVANTS

costume, since it is not explained otherwise. Since nothing Isabella does later in the play requires any alteration of this dress, it is almost certain that she, like most of the other characters, remains in one fashion throughout. Angelo appears in three guises: as a sober precisian, as a deputy-duke functioning as a judge, and, last and briefly, as a prisoner. When the Duke summons him in the first scene, he enters almost as if he expects to be judged; much of his behavior in this scene, what Lucio irreverently says about him, and what the Duke reports about him to Friar Thomas, suggests an upper-class Malvolio. Over his own protests he is handed ducal power, perhaps symbolized by receiving the ducal robe, while the Duke himself exits for a private departure from Vienna in the cloak and boots of a traveler. Escalus, Angelo's coadjutor, is clearly a judge, and was probably costumed in a robe like those of the English judiciary. When Isabella asks for an audience, Angelo's servant tells her that "He's hearing of a cause" (Il.ii. 1), probably that of Elbow, Froth, and Pompey. Angelo must therefore enter to her dressed as a judge, hearing her appeal and deferring judgment as if he were still on the bench. In his next scene it seems likely he has taken off these robes to appear as a private man, soliloquizing, in words recalling the guilty Claudius of Denmark, about prayer and temptation. Perhaps Angelo puts on his robe between the servant's announcement of Isabella's coming and her entrance, for the later part of this scene is reminiscent of that in Susana where the judges, robed, charge the title character with the unchastity of which they themselves are guilty. To dress Angelo as a judge while engaged in sexual extortion would augment the scene's shocking effect and increase audience sympathy with Isabella, perhaps enough sympathy to mitigate the harsh judgment of her own that concludes her tirade against corrupt judges: Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die: More than our brother is our chastity. (II. iv. 184-85) These words sound as if Angelo might have left her his rigor, his office, and his robe, although her appearance is unchanged. The last scene of Measure for Measure resembles the finale of some spectacular operas. The Duke returns in pomp, heralded by trumpeters, met by Angelo and Escalus in their robes of office and by "the generous

277

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

and gravest citizens" (IV. vi. 13) probably in livery gowns like those worn by similar Londoners on ceremonial occasions. These official greeters are followed by Friar Peter and Isabella, by Lucio, and by the veiled Mariana, all publicly accusing Angelo of abuse in office. Like Angelo when confronted by Pompey and his like, the Duke quickly abandons the hearing to Angelo as "judge in his own cause," but unlike Angelo the Duke has another guise to return in, reentering as Friar Lodowick at the same time as the Provost comes to explain the irregularity of Claudio's execution. In the midst of the proceedings "Lodowick" is "uncased" by the combined force of the Provost and Lucio. When Angelo is then haled from the judgement seat he must also be "uncased," the robe of his office taken from him like that of Thomas Cromwell at his fall and, years before, like those of the unjust judges in Vertuous and Godlye Susana and of Sisamnes in Cambises King of Persia. Unlike Fair Maid of Bristow, The London Prodigal, and Measure for Measure, whose costumes could be those of contemporary Englishmen, Othello and Volpone emphasize a Venetian setting, and would need authentic costumes because Venetian dress was so well known in England. As in Measure for Measure, the costumes are both realistic and symbolic, for they show the occupation or office of those who wear them while also serving as indicators of moral quality and its change. For instance, the costumes of Iago, Cassio, and even Roderigo are those of soldiers, realistic indicators of their occupation. Yet the three are soldiers of different kinds. Iago insists on his practical experience in arms. This implies the dress of the military professional, probably a soiled buff jerkin and a gorget to symbolize the armor worn over it. Iago harps on Cassio's merely "theoric" knowledge of war, so Cassio might have worn clothes with a scholarly rather than soldierly flavor, yet his "coat... better than thou know'st" (V.i..25) is clearly a brigandine (a doublet with steel strips between its outside and lining) worn by gentlemen who wanted both a good appearance and protection. Roderigo is an unlikely soldier, but Iago's counsel, "follow thou the wars, defeat thy favour with an usurp'd beard" (I. iii. 340-41), suggests that he wears some sort of military dress, at least in Cyprus. None of the three needs any major costume change, only long outdoor cloaks on watch, and perhaps short ones for indoor scenes. At the same time that these soldier costumes are realistic, they are also expressive. Cassio might show his despair when Othello dismisses him by removing such outward signs of soldiership as his sword. The foolish Roderigo is a weak variety of braggart soldier, so he might wear a costume like that of the "jackanapes

278

ROYAL SERVANTS

with scarfs" Parolles. Both the immovable "honesty" others see in Iago and his actual immovable selfishness could be implied by an unchanged costume even as he shifts from one persona to another to deceive everyone. Like the costumes of his subordinates, Othello's are realistic but also expressive, and he needs to change them several times. His changes show both that he is a man of action and that he is vulnerable. In Act I in Venice and in Act II when he arrives in Cyprus, Othello the general might have dressed in a soldier's mandillion and broad scarf, as is Robert Sidney in his portrait painted during his service in the Netherlands. In fact, Iago's active moves to destroy him begin only when Othello has undressed for his marriage bed. One reason for Othello to quell the riot in his night-gown may be to show him "disarmed" in more senses than one, even as he acts decisively and effectively to restore peace in the streets. Costumes for minor characters and functionaries may function as do those of these central figures. In the first act, the Duke of Venice and two or more senators are taking counsel about the Cyprus emergency when Brabantio brings his case before them. In this official scene they need the formal dress of Venetian grandees. None of these characters reappears later, but in Act IV Lodovico, Montano, and Gratiano come to Cyprus with orders for Othello's recall, and the transfer of Othello's command to Cassio. Later, they judge Othello and Iago. It seems likely that they would wear the same robes of office associated earlier with the authority of the state. Such garments would visually reinforce their power to restore order after the violence done on Cassio, Desdemona, and Emilia. The costumes for the women in Othello may have posed a quandary for the King's Men, for the best-known dress of Venetian women was that of the city's famous courtesans. Such a costume would suit the whore Bianca, but would contradict everything said about Desdemona's behavior, which is that of a well-bred English girl of good family. "Authenticity" of dress might give more color than the play's language to both Iago's insinuations about her and Othello's willingness to believe them. But aside from the exact style of her apparel, Desdemona's changes are important for what they symbolize, even though in Elizabethan terms they are realistic. She needs at least two costumes, a fine dress when she comes into the Senate to justify herself and Othello and when she comes from the feast for Lodovico and begins undressing for bed, and a plainer dress for the domestic scenes in Cyprus. She also needs two covering garments, a cloak for her arrival in Cyprus and a night-gown when she enters after

279

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

the riot on her wedding night. In these costumes, realism predominates, with a symbolic undertone. But when Emilia helps to "unpin" her festal finery as they talk of matrimonial love and duty and Desdemona sings "Willow," she is undressing not for a renewed marriage bed laid with her wedding sheets, but for a death that Othello believes a just execution. For real executions, the victims were partly stripped to die, and the hangman got their clothes, though stage convenience usually limited such realism. Death also might be thought an undressing, and as Everyman shows, the exchange of finery for a sheet might demonstrate death in a state of grace. Thus Desdemona's death in her "pale" smock may also communicate her certainty of salvation, quite different from Roderigo's murder and Othello's suicide in their public array. A recurrent scene in Othello rouses an unsuspecting person from bed to hear an unwelcome message: Brabantio at the beginning, Othello in the middle, Desdemona at the end. Brabantio comes to the window in his shirt, and Iago keeps telling him to put on his night-gown between the coarse indirections that reveal Desdemona's elopement. When Iago engineers Cassio's downfall in Cyprus, he makes sure that the fight is noisy and that the alarum bell rings, fetching Othello in his night-gown from his marriage bed, followed by Desdemona in similar attire. In the last scene, Othello awakens Desdemona to kill her. Even as he completes the deed, others beat on the door to announce the assault on Cassio and Roderigo's death. Nothing in the lines indicates Othello's costume, whether the night-gown usual in bedchamber scenes or the cloak in which he was muffled a scene earlier to watch while Iago and Roderigo attacked Cassio. As he seems to be wearing a sword when Montano arrests him, a night-gown might seem less appropriate than either the cloak or no outer garment. On the other hand, Emilia does not notice that Othello's appearance is unusual when she comes in with word of the messengers. This seems to argue for the night-gown usually worn by a man roused from sleep, like Wendoll in A Woman Killed with Kindness, or the shirt, like Hieronymo on The Spanish Tragedy title page. Between his exit early in the first scene of Act V and his reentry at the beginning of the second, the actor of Othello would have more than time enough for so simple a change as a gown for a cloak; in the earlier scene Iago strips to his shirt in the short time he is offstage (well under twenty lines) before he returns armed and carrying a light. Iago's costume, in fact, may indicate Othello's in the next scene, since at this point in the play, and even later when Iago is fetched to Othello's chamber, the two would be visual mir-

280

ROYAL SERVANTS

rors of each other as they have been for so much of the play. Comparison with the "natural perspective" of the identically clad Viola and Sebastian at the end of Twelfth Night would not be out of place, however different the tragic situation at the close of Othello. Jonson's Volpone did not have to be a Venetian play, since its subject could as well have located it in any rich city: Paris, Naples, Antwerp, Seville, or even London. Maybe Jonson set his play in Venice because he knew that the King's Men were supplied with Venetian costumes and might therefore welcome another play set there. Volpone came to the stage at about the time when the successful Othello would have needed some refurbishing, so the cost could have been borne by the proceeds of two plays, and the economy would have been still greater if The Merchant of Venice was also being played at the time. Without Merchant of Venice's "quality of mercy" or Othello's terrible pathos, Volpone could still share their wardrobe: Shylock's gaberdine for Corbaccio, Portia's law robes for Voltore, Desdemona's plainer dress for Celia at home and perhaps in the courtroom, her "best apparel" for Celia when forced to enter Volpone's bedchamber. Bonario might wear Cassio's scholar-soldier costume as a sign of his moral cleanness. The Avocatori could wear either the Venetian grandees' robes from Othello, which would serve also as the dress of the lawyers and judges in Merchant.18 Even though Volpone limits costume change to a very few characters (Volpone, Celia, and Mosca) it still needs more costumes than does Othello because its cast is larger, though many of these costumes could be shabby or ragged. Some Volpone costumes must have been especially made, such as the fantastical garb of Nano, Androgyno, and Castrone for which there seems no analogue in the known repertory. Volpone's disguise as the mountebank Scoto of Mantua is also fantastical, but Jonson's description shows it was to be assembled from odds and ends, including a draggled plume in the hat. Sir Pol might have been dressed in the same apparel as Roderigo in Othello, but he also needs an unusual kind of overgarment, the tortoise shell in which he tries to hide from the supposed Venetian police. This could have been a real curiosity whose existence prompted Jonson's use of it, as with the armor he prescribes for Peto in the last scene of Every Man In. Sir Pol's wife is called "Fine Madam Would-Be" in the dramatis personae of all early editions (H. & S. V, 22). Within seconds of her first entrance she is jabbering about fashion, which she treats as a science with principles to be disputed:

281

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

This band Shewes not my neck inough... in good faith, I am drest Most favourably, to day, it is no matter Tis well inough.... is this curie In his right place?... I pray you, view This tire, forsooth, are all things apt, or no? . .. pray you both approach and mend it, Now (by that light) I muse, yo' are not asham'd! I, that haue preach'd these things, so oft, vnto you, Read you the principles, argu'd all the grounds, Disputed euery fitnesse, euery grace, Call'd you to counsell of so frequent dressings— (III. iv. 2-26) Although her "humor" is general talkativeness, her tirade about clothes indicates that, like her husband, she should be dressed in an extreme of fashion. The date of Volpone (1606) is a little too early for the usurpation of men's garments (especially hats and doublets) by fashionable women,19 but Jonson might have suggested garments like those of a Venetian courtesan for early performances; it seems likely that this character would have been clad in the "hic mulier" fashion as soon as this style came in. Mosca the parasite could be dressed like the parasite Parolles, but since his role has more of the obsequious servant than the braggart soldier about it, and must be adaptable both to his disguise as Scoto's assistant and to his brief time in clarissimo's robes, it probably was, or resembled, a servant's humble and exiguous livery. A worn Malvolio costume might also have served. Volpone himself lies in bed for much of the play, probably in a shirt and nightcap like those of Hieronymo roused from sleep or like those of the dying Sir Henry Unton in his memorial portrait. Stage propriety dictated breeches for a character "in his shirt," for Volpone probably the narrower sort of Venetians, in which the actor could lie down and move about more easily than in other kinds of hose.21 Volpone may also need a night-gown for his times out of his bed between visitors. A shirt-andVenetians costume would also facilitate quick reappareling for his Scoto and commendatore disguises. His deathbed garb has an additional function that is close to symbolic if not actually so, for when he leaps up to assault Celia in his chamber, and at the end of the play in the court to announce his identity, the shocked bystanders react almost as if he has risen

282

ROYAL SERVANTS

from the dead. Indeed, the second time he so "rises" it is to a kind of Last Judgment which sends him to perpetual prison, one Renaissance image for Hell. The Tragedy of King Lear could hardly be called an economical play, for it has a large cast, many characters whose high rank demands rich clothes, and numerous costume changes. Characteristically, Shakespeare balances its need for opulence in some garments with need for tatters in others. The King's Men may have had to buy rather more new costumes than usual for its performance but few of these, if any, would have been relegated to storage thereafter. A costume suitable for an Earl of Kent or one of Lear's knights could be worn in any other play with characters of similar rank, and little difference could exist between the costume of Goneril's steward Oswald and of Olivia's steward Malvolio. The costume prescriptions for Lear show as well Shakespeare's tendency in his later plays to adapt old-fashioned theatre practices to new uses, for in many respects the costumes and costume changes recall those of A Knack to Know an Honest Man and plays like it. Perhaps this is because, in reworking the old play King Leir, Shakespeare was reminded of other plays from his first days as a playwright. Shakespeare prescribes costume change in King Lear with the ease of long practice, probably not having consciously thought of such practicalities as furnishing time for Edgar or Lear to get out of an earlier costume and put on a later. As in A Woman Killed with Kindness, the double plot's alternating scenes facilitate the changes, so that no actor is rushed to make them. As in Much Ado, change from the ceremonial costumes of the long opening scene to those worn in the middle of the play is carefully arranged so that absences are not obvious and the tireman does not have to help more than two actors at a time to change. Kent exits first, to change from the costume of an earl to that of a servingman, which he seems to wear for the rest of the play. This would permit the bare chin orthodox for servants, which is implied in his otherwise puzzling selfdescription as having "raz'd my likeness" (I.iv.4), a change of appearance so great that Shakespeare has him identify himself as "banish'd Kent" (4). This is unlike disguises which require the actor to switch between identities as quickly as must Harbert/Blunt in The Fair Maid of Bristow and Orlando/Pacheco in The Honest Whore Part 2. Lear, who has been robed and crowned, next exits with "noble Burgundy"; both must at once completely change costume, Burgundy probably to become Oswald, and Lear to change his ceremonial garb for the hunting suit in which he spends the

283

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

next two acts. Cordelia exits with France. The boy actor has no obvious role to double, unless among anonymous attendants; the actor of France seems the most likely one to play Edgar, whose late entry in the second scene following France's early exit from the first allows time for a complete change in appearance without hurry. Goneril and Regan are the last to leave the stage; they need make only minor changes in apparel for their next entrances. The first scene does not mark an early exit for either Edmund or Gloucester, but since neither needs a costume change for the second scene, they could remain on stage as mute attendants until the general exit of the court with Lear. For the third scene, Goneril is no longer on ceremonial display at court but concerned with managing her household so as to assert her power over Lear and his hundred knights. To emphasize her purpose, it seems likely that she remains dressed as in the first scene, as Lear's senior heir, perhaps with the addition of keys or a decorative apron to signal her changed activity. When Lear enters in the fourth scene, he enters from the hunt, for which a plain suit in the traditional green is indicated, very much in contrast to Goneril's finery and visually asserting Lear's bewildered innocence (augmented by the Fool's presence) against her deviousness, as does Caius/Kent's plain servingman's suit (unbadged) against Oswald's finer garb and chain of office. The brief colloquy of Goneril and Albany that ends this scene gives Lear and his two visible attendants time to put on the travel cloaks and boots that they continue to wear throughout Act II. In Act II there seems to be no call for further costume change by anyone. Edmund's staged fight with Edgar in the first scene of the act involves bloodying his arm and possibly his shirt, whether with real blood or with the brown vinegar specifically called for in Cambises. This might require a change of shirt (or perhaps only of sleeve) to protect his other garments from stain, but he needs no change for other reasons. This scene also brings Regan back for the first time since she left the stage in Act I, wearing the cloak and safeguard that signals a woman's entrance "from a journey" and accompanied by Cornwall (so far a speechless cipher), cloaked and booted as was Lear in the previous scene. Edgar's lone passage over the stage while Kent sleeps in the stocks connects the two as victims of injustice who, both disguised, will become allies in Act III as Lear's companions, and his soliloquy prepares the audience to recognize him when Kent drags him from the "hovel" clad, or unclad, as Poor Tom.

284

ROYAL SERVANTS

Ann Slater's brilliant analysis of costuming and costume change in King Lear shows how "rich dress, undress, and disguise... are the visual manifestation of the play's central theme, the rift between essential truth and outward show." When Regan and Cornwall return to the stage after Lear's arrival, their delay has given them both time to remove their travel garb and reveal their court finery from the opening scene, now perhaps augmented by emblems of royal power. When Goneril enters toward the end of the scene, symbolism suppresses realism, for Lear's "nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st" (II. iv.269) shows that she enters not in cloak and safeguard "from a journey," but in "gorgeous and patently inadequate dress"22 like Regan's. The sisters' finery (and Cornwall's) sets them up as Vices against the plain garb of virtue worn by Lear, Caius/Kent and the mute Gentleman, and against the innocent motley of the Fool. The still-vacillating Gloucester probably was to retain the "rich, not gaudy" gown of an aging nobleman from the opening scene, mediating between the plain attire of Lear and his following and the "gorgeous" apparel of his daughters, and indicating how the aged Lear should be clad. Act III undresses almost everyone. Lear enters "unbonneted," his bare head unfit not only because it is raining but because old men always wore head coverings; Elizabeth's aged counsellors seem to have worn their coifs even in her presence. Although no one says so, he is evidently also uncloaked. And if Elizabethans thought that to be "bareheaded" did not befit an old man, for a King to be anywhere in public without something on his head and over his doublet and hose amounted almost to nakedness. The brief third scene between Edmund and Gloucester perhaps should contrast them by their clothes, Edmund wearing the short cloak and slippers of indoors, Gloucester wrapped in an outdoor cloak to venture into the storm and relieve "the King my old Master" (III.iii. 18). The fourth scene brings Lear and his two faithful servants to the hovel, where Lear utters his address to generalized "poor naked wretches" (III.iv.28) just before he confronts such a wretch in person. Kent jerks Edgar into view, unclad save for the blanket demanded by stage propriety. His mad speeches contrast his present bareness with his former (imaginary) fine fashion as a lady's servant and stud, and, though he does not specify particular finery, what he says creates the image of a "gallant" dressed and barbered above his station. This "naked wretch's" look and language prompt Lear not to relieve him but to imitate him, though whether he does more than order his servants to "unbutton here" (III.iv. 109) is problematic. In any case,

285

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Lear is losing something more important than clothes in this scene; he is losing his mind. The next scene, between Cornwall and Edmund, demands complete contrast in apparel. Edmund should be dressed as when he parted from his father, Cornwall probably in a furred night-gown, costumes communicating not only a scene indoors but also a warmth and luxury contrasting these characters with the underclad group who have just left the stage. When these reenter they are soon supplied with stools and cushions, where they enact a mad parody of the play's opening scene with its unjust judgments. The contrast between the poverty of everyone's attire and the audience's memory of their earlier splendor is a chief function of the scene's costuming. When at the end Kent and the Fool carry the sleeping Lear off the stage, their action recalls many scenes of bearing off the dead. In the terrible scene of Gloucester's blinding, he is perhaps fetched on partly stripped, but the scene proceeds to more metaphysical undressing as Gloucester is deprived of his sight, and Cornwall's servant and Cornwall himself of their lives. Act IV is the act of changed garments and changed allegiances. Gloucester, his eyes bandaged, bids the Old Man "clothe the naked" as he speaks of his son Edgar and his remorse for his own injustice. In the next scene, Goneril and Edmund enter in the travel garb they wore when they left the stage two scenes before. Though Cornwall has created Edmund Earl of Gloucester, his cloak and boots may suggest not a rise in the world but a fall. Goneril's unfaithfulness to Albany is made explicit just before Albany reproves her undaughterly conduct, and his allegiance is tipped away from his wife when the messenger reports Cornwall's death "going to put out/The other eye of Gloucester (IV.ii.79). The scene that follows returns Cordelia to the stage, almost certainly in plain garments quite unlike her sisters' glamour even though she is Queen of France. This scene, like that between Albany and Goneril, ends with a messenger's arrival, and in the next scene Regan tries to get Goneril's message to Edmund from Oswald and gives him her authority to kill Gloucester should he meet him. It is not clear whether Regan wears a widow's dress in Acts IV and V, though both Goneril's anxiety about her "being widow, and my Gloucester [Edmund] with her" (85) and Edmund's cynical debate about whether "to take the widow" (V.i.60) suggest this costume change. Edgar, clothed in the Old Man's "best 'parel" (IV. i.49), enters with Gloucester as Regan and Oswald exit. Before the scene ends Lear joins

286

ROYAL SERVANTS

them, wearing a madman's parody of royal array (possibly with Edgar's former blanket as a mantle). After Lear runs away, Edgar "undresses" Oswald by killing him and then by taking from his body his traitorous message. Although the main purpose of the scene after Lear's exit is to further the plot, it also furnishes time for the actor of Lear to put on the "fresh garments" which bewilder him by their unfamiliarity on his next entrance. Probably Shakespeare intended the night-gown and the coif or nightcap that signaled old age and feeble health; Lear evidently was to retain this costume for the rest of the play, where their unfitness for battlefield or prison, or for carrying heavy burdens, communicates Lear's own unfitness for "this tough world" (¥.01.315). It seems possible that in the final scenes of the play there is other unfitness, perhaps Cordelia wearing armor for the battle she will lose. There may be further unfitness if the "half-blooded fellow" Edmund (80) appears in armor finer not only than Edgar's23 but also than Albany's. When Edgar arrives to fight his treacherous brother, his face is hidden both because though noble his "name is lost" (131) and because Edmund must not know him; "the effect of a masked, faceless figure"24 makes the agent of Edmund's just fall almost as impersonal as a stroke of lightning. Edmund acknowledges such an impersonal justice in his try for a deathbed repentance, futile though it proves: "Some good I mean to do/Despite of mine own nature" (244-45, italics added). At the end of the play, no one is in proper clothing for the occasion. The few survivors hear of Gloucester's offstage death "smiling" and of Edmund's offstage death "but a trifle here" (200, 296) as they stand over the corpses of Lear and all his children. For such a scene the proper clothes would be the black of funeral, but those left can only "speak what we feel, not what we ought to say" (325). Neither can they wear what they "ought," the mourning which even the violent Tamburlaine and his sons put on for the dead Zenocrate. "The royal play of Macbeth" marks a turn not only in the plays of Shakespeare himself but of the King's Men in their management of costumes and properties, a change which antedates the move to Blackfriars in 1608 usually thought to have caused a change in their style of production and of plays. As might be expected in a play written so soon after Lear, Macbeth uses costume very similarly, although fewer characters get more than one costume in this much shorter play. Most of the changes are for Macbeth and his wife. Macbeth's almost always must be made quickly, so most are necessarily of outer garments: cloaks, a night-gown, a

287

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

royal robe, and armor. Lady Macbeth's changes parallel her husband's until her sleepwalking scene, when her costume probably resembled Anne Frankford's when taken in adultery. The clothing imagery of Macbeth has long been analysed; its metaphorical "giant's robe" was even translated into a whole wardrobe of ill-fitting costumes at the 1979 Alabama Shakespeare Festival.25 But Shakespeare's costume intentions do not have to depend on this one figure of speech, for some are clear from the stage directions, others explicit or implied in the dialogue, and a few can be inferred from established costume conventions. So, though nothing is said about Macbeth and Banquo's costumes when they meet the Witches, the fact that they are returning from war is likely to mean gorgets and helmets as well as swords. Banquo's "How far is't call'd to Forres?" (I.ii.39) emphasizes that they have made a weary journey, so they also wear the cloaks and boots of travelers. Similar garb is indicated for Rosse and Angus when they bring Duncan's message. When Macbeth and Banquo enter to the King, they obviously are still in this travel dress. Since Macbeth's exit from the royal presence is to be "harbinger" for the King at his own house, and since the messenger to Lady Macbeth reports both his imminent arrival and the speed of his journey,26 he is clearly still booted and cloaked when he joins his wife. While the scene in which Lady Macbeth reads her husband's letter and soliloquizes at length was not written simply to give Macbeth time to change his underlying costume, it does allow him ample time to exchange military buff and metal for silk or satin and to wrap himself again in his travel cloak. One reason for Banquo and Duncan's leisurely conversation about the castle martlets and for Macbeth's absence when his wife welcomes the King is to supply the time for Macbeth to remove his cloak and boots and put on a ruff, a gold chain, a fine hat, and indoor shoes. Although the audience sees no more than the fringe of the supper celebrating Duncan's visit (the procession of "A SEWER and divers SERVANTS with dishes and service over the stage" [I.vii.so], perhaps with offstage music), when Macbeth enters for his "If it were done when 'tis done" soliloquy, the contrast between a festive costume and the murder he is plotting emphasizes his anguished awareness that he is wronging "double trust." In the first three acts most of Lady Macbeth's important scenes take place in contexts traditionally festive, whether the supper in Act II, her return from the coronation, or the "good meeting" to celebrate it in Act III. Her basic costume was thus probably rich. The martlet conversation

288

ROYAL SERVANTS

which covers her delayed entrance gives her time to put on a finer ruff and headtire and perhaps add to her jewels before greeting the King and his train. Lady Macbeth's festive garb when she persuades her reluctant husband to go ahead with Duncan's murder underlines her moral obtuseness, as she sees nothing incongruous in committing murder in the best apparel worn to celebrate the royal visit. Act II requires much bustling about with costume. Banquo enters with Fleance as his torchbearer, beginning to disarm on his way to bed while racked with vague misgivings. When Macbeth enters with his own torchbearer, Banquo is surprised to see him still up. He gives Macbeth the King's diamond for his "most kind hostess" (II.i. 16), along with the important information (for the murderer) that the King is "a-bed." Banquo's brief conversation with Fleance and his short soliloquy have also given Macbeth time to shed his feast accessories and doublet and put on a cloak, so as to look as if he is making last rounds of his castle, as Holinshed says Donwald did while his servants murdered King Duff.27 Exactly how realistic Shakespeare intended him to look after killing Duncan is not clear, for the emphasis in the scene is on Macbeth's state of mind. Between his exit after his soliloquy and his reentrance after the murder, Burbage would have had to give himself "hangman's hands," (II. i.25) and would not have wanted to damage a valuable costume with the blood, so it seems likely that Macbeth was to toss his cloak to his lady and exit to the murder in his shirt. He might have worn felt slippers to go with his soliloquy's "stealthy pace" (II.i.54), practical also to prevent distracting reverberation from the stage floor in a scene so full of suspense. When the knocking begins just after Macbeth's return from the murder, Lady Macbeth speaks of retiring "to our chamber" where "A little water clears us," and tells Macbeth to "Get on your night-gown, lest occasion call us" (II.ii.63-67). Though the interlude of the porter has more important functions, it gives the Macbeths time to wash their hands and for Macbeth to put on a night-gown and probably a nightcap. More importantly, it allows Lady Macbeth to remove the more conspicuous parts of her elaborate festal dress, such as a headtire, rebato, and jewelry, and perhaps also her gown, and to put on night attire and a night-gown. Macduff and Lennox enter fully dressed, the first probably in clothes for a council, since the King has summoned him to an early audience. When the clamor at the King's death begins, the other nobles evidently rush on without even night-

289

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

gowns, for Banquo speaks of hiding "our naked frailties... that suffer in exposure" and Macbeth of "briefly put[ting] on manly readiness" before they "meet i'th'hall" (II.iii.126-34).28 The scenes leading to the murder of Banquo use similar contrasts of decorum between what characters wear and what they do. Macbeth and his wife enter robed and crowned. Since coronation, like a royal visit, is a festive occasion, their train should be wearing fine cloaks and hats. Most of this train, however, consists of anonymous lords and attendants. The only ones who are named, and therefore identifiable from earlier appearances, are Rosse and Lennox. Lennox does have offstage time to glorify his appearance, but Rosse is in the immediately preceding scene with the Old Man and Macduff so he does not. Regardless of when he appears, Rosse is a messenger for whom a riding suit and boots would be appropriate, and, since he is Duncan's faithful servant and Macduff's friend, such a plain costume would segregate him from Macbeth's more complaisant followers. Banquo enters ahead of the coronation procession, and if, like Rosse, he is wearing a riding suit and boots, Macbeth's "Ride you this afternoon?" (III.i.29) will not come as the surprising non-sequitur it seems to a reader. So plain a costume would also visually segregate him from Macbeth's "borrowed robes" (I. iii. 109), just as his soliloquy, voicing his suspicion of foul play, distances him from Macbeth's deed and the crown it has given him. After the followers exit, Macbeth in his coronation dress remains for a soliloquy. When he says "To be thus is nothing/But to be safely thus" (111.1.47-48) he seems to be referring to this kingly array. The two murderers he summons are probably dressed like broken prodigals, as is implied by Macbeth's words, "held. . . under fortune" and "beggared" (7690), a more extreme contrast than between Richard III and Tyrrel for a similar negotiation. Macbeth's exit at the end of this scene seems intended for him to remove his robe and crown for the ensuing scene with his wife; in this scene he and she probably are in the costumes they wore just before the murder, giving a further visual signal that their robes and crowns are "borrowed," since the wearers appear in them so briefly. While Banquo is being murdered, the Macbeths can resume these robes and crowns for the "great feast" and "solemn supper" to which all enter in procession. The sudden sight of the first murderer at the door almost on the heels of this procession again juxtaposes a King's robes with a killer's tatters. His unheralded arrival and the "blood upon [his] face" (III.iv. 13) anticipate the equally sudden bloodstained coming of Banquo's Ghost.

290

ROYAL SERVANTS

Macbeth may be dressed as a King, but he is at the command of an outlaw and of an apparition, both of which, it seems, only he can see. Scottish scenes after this show Lady Macbeth in apparel as disordered as her senses, and Macbeth constantly distracted from the matter at hand, whether listening to the doctor, putting on his armor, or fighting. This disarray contrasts with the ordered marching of the Scottish thanes and the English powers. Although the entrance of the army under its screen of boughs visually demonstrates the equivocation of the prophecy about Birnam Wood, it also gives the host a look of unanimity, and when all in a body cast down their "leavy screens" (V.vi. I) the gesture demonstrates their disciplined obedience to Malcolm. In contrast, Macbeth's preparations for battle show the absence of his followers' hearts. He derides the servant who tells him the size of Malcolm's army, insists on putting on his armor though Seyton calmly reminds him it is unneeded, tells the armorer to pull it off, and exits demanding that it be fetched after him. During his time offstage the actor must have put on this armor, for the final scenes show Macbeth as a berserker fighter who asserts that he is killing all his enemies. Macbeth's single combats—he has not even a token army—show his last battle as one man against everyone. Malcolm is probably armed for these scenes, but in contrast to Macbeth he does not fight, and like Duncan before him he is always attended by several lords and other followers. At the play's end, with a property head displayed on Macduff's sword, Malcolm invites his company of armed earls to the peaceful joys of his coronation at Scone. Whether or not Macbeth was specially written for performance before King James and Christian of Denmark in the summer of 1606, its Scottish subject, its elaboration of the supernatural from its source into extended witch scenes, its iterations about Banquo's royal descendants, and its speech on the heritable Royal Touch conform closely to the King's known interests. A performance at court is presumptive, and the characteristic court entertainment was the masque. In fact, Macbeth is the first King's play in which features of the Jacobean masque can be discerned, and although its physical masque machinery is confined to the "quaint device" of apparitions from a cauldron, what stands out is the play's use of groups dressed alike for dance or procession. The three witches may be distinguishable to each other, but they seem to look alike to Macbeth and Banquo. Their uniform gestures—"each at once her choppy finger laying/ Upon her skinny lips" (I.iii.44-45)—and their successive speeches in this encounter, each echoing or augmenting the one before, imply costumes

29I

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

as alike as their startling beards. "Round about the cauldron" (IV. 1.4) they dance a kind of antimasque. The reviser who interpolated Hecate and three extra witches to dance for the "great king," perhaps in imitation of the witches in The Masque of Queens, did not perceive that Shakespeare had written a miniature court masque completed by the "show of eight kings" who appear at the same point as the entry of "lords masquers" would to climax a masque at court. This show looks like the traditional dumb-show, such as the prophetic dreams of King John in The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. But unlike John's dumb-show dream, in which the future is symbolically pantomimed, and unlike the spoken accusations of Richard Ill's victims on the eve of Bosworth, the Kings do nothing but enter and terrify Macbeth with their regalia and still more with their common likeness to Banquo: Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo, down! Thy crown does sear mine eyeballs. And thy hair, Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first. A third is like the former.... A fourth? Start eyes Another yet? A seventh? I'll see no more. And yet the eight appears, who bears a glass That shows me many more. ... the blood-bolter'd Banquo smiles upon me And points to them for his. (IV.iii 112-14) Unlike the ghosts in Richard III, who simply exit after making their prophecies to Richmond, the eight Kings assemble before Macbeth, making their likeness to each other clear to the audience. Banquo's silence when he "points at them for his" is unusual for a masque presenter. Still, the "graue personage... yclad in costly garments fit for tragique stage" who introduces Spenser's "maske of Cupid" says nothing but only gestures "Some argument of matter" (F.Q.III.xii.3-4), so perhaps Elizabethan masks sometimes had dumb-show presenters. Banquo's place at the end of the procession of Kings is hardly that of any kind of presenter, but a masque by witches could be expected to reverse the usual order (like the witches in Queens who dance back to back and widdershins), while its effect on both Macbeth and the audience depends on surprise.

292

ROYAL SERVANTS

By no means do all the new plays of the King's Men after Macbeth incorporate formal masques, yet in their plays after 1606 there is still a notable increase in the number of groups costumed alike and acting in concert. In almost all these plays, more costumes are needed for single characters, whether for multiple changes by a few or fewer changes for a larger number. Plays with masques include Cymbeline, Pericles, Timon of Athens, The Maid's Tragedy, The Tempest, Henry VIII, More Deceivers Besides Women, and The Duchess of Malfi. Plays with multiple costume changes include many of those already named, plus Antorry and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, The Alchemist, Philaster, Bonduca, and The Devil is an Ass. This body of plays indicates that the King's Men's wardrobe was enlarged very rapidly between 1606 and.I6I6. Although in most of these plays costumed groups and multiple costume changes function within the old conventions, much of the enriched costuming is for visual effect, sometimes only to be described as sensational' ism in plays by such authors as Barnes and Fletcher. Shakespeare as com' pany playwright is more careful than such newcomers to include roles dressed in old costumes to balance expenditure on new ones, and Jonson limits his demands for new and costly finery, perhaps because he was also writing for shoestring operations like the boys at Whitefriars and Lady Elizabeth's Men, perhaps in reaction to the gaudy extravagance of the masques he was composing for the Court. The King's Men also seem to have been balancing high investment in costumes for some plays with the purchase of additional plays that could also use the more expensive costumes, as the Admiral's Men had done a decade earlier. A play that clearly needed and got considerable new investment was Barnaby Barnes's The Devil's Charter, played at court in February 1607. Since much of it concerns the subjection or murder of princes by Pope Al' exander VI, it perhaps was premiered on the public stage to commemorate the first anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. Many of its characters could be dressed from the 1606 stock, including a king, a boy prince and his brother, two dukes, the nobleman Viselli, and the play's three women. While "richly attired" (2174) as if in "Persian clothes of gold or Tinsilry" (2175), Lucrece Borgia applies the cosmetics which poison her. The gown she wore may have been new; "Persian" normally meant clothes of outstanding richness. Her "night-gowne" and her maid's dress might have come from Otheiio. Katherine of Furly's martial activities probably combined a woman's skirts with armor, like Queen Elizabeth's

293

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Tilbury costume in If You Know Not Me Part 2, and, since she is defending her besieged city, a soiled safeguard would be as realistic as a buff jerkin would for lago. For the play's common soldiers, the company's stock of "sogers cotes" would be more than adequate. Those of higher rank, such as the "Castillian of Saint Angelo, under his Holines" (947) and other "gentlemen" might be dressed as was Lacy early in The Shoemaker's Holiday. Baglioni resembles the "suburb captains" of Middleton and Jonson, and the assassin Frescobaldy is a "ruffaine." Both could have been costumed in a braggart's "scarfs" and vast slashed breeches, Frescobaldy's older and shabbier than Baglioni's. Pope Alexander has the most extensive and varied wardrobe, probably much of it bought new. His "pontificals" include "the rich Cap [cape], the Tunicle, and the triple Crowne [with]. . . the Crosse-keyes" (62-63). Illustrations to Foxe's Boole of Martyrs show popes wearing an ankle-length cassock under a shorter closed tunicle (an embroidered cape with a fur edging), and a triple crown. A devil wears the pontificals in the opening dumb-show, during which they are transferred to Cardinal Roderigo Borgia to show how he became pope. To murder the Manfredi brothers Alexander wears "his cassock and nightcap" (2725-26) without the papal overgarments. For conjuring, this cassock would serve, but a "magic garment" like that of Faustus and Prospero, or, better, the "pontificals," would be more sensational. For his death scene Alexander enters "unbraced," probably meaning that his cassock is unbuttoned, and "discovereth the divill sitting in his pointificals," visually his successor as pope as in the opening dumb-show that reveals a devil in his predecessor. The dumb-show cardinals probably played St. Peter ad Vincula and Ascanius, attendant on King Charles of France in Act II, where the pope enters "upon the walls in his pointifcals betwixt Caesar Borgia and Caraffa, Cardinalls." Caesar Borgia is the Pope's son, and in the first three acts he is "Cardinall of Valence" (369). But after "Frescobaldy a ruffaine" (1395) has murdered Caesar's brother, Caesar bids the pope "Receive again these robes, take here this hat" and "Disrobeth himself and appeareth in armour" (2020-24). In Act IV Caesar leads an army, and at the feast in Act V he sits with the "swordmen to defend the Church" (3153), not with the three cardinals on the pope's other side. Caesar probably succeeded to Roderigo Borgia's cardinal costume, richer than those of the other cardinals; a distinctive cardinal costume seen first on Borgia, then on a devil, and then on Caesar would visually designate Caesar not only as the pope's but the devil's heir.29

294

ROYAL SERVANTS

"The devils apparel" seems to have been standardized, for title page illustrations to Doctor Faustus (1616) and The World Tost at Tennis (1620), which belonged to different companies, show similar figures with horned headdresses, tails, and blackened faces, although the second sports sexual attributes not present (or not visible) in the first. In the Devil's Charter dumb-show one devil appears "like a Sargeant with a mace under his girdle" (44) "another divill in robes pontificall (47), and "a divill him ensuing in blacke robes like a pronotary" (51). In Act IV, Alexander conjures two devils, the first "tike a King, with a red face crowned imperiall riding upon a Lyon, or dragon" (1912-13). (As this is a "permissive" stage direction, the beast may have been up to the company or omitted.) The second devil "ascends... all in armour" (1938). Astaroth, Belchar, and Varca (three as in the opening dumb show) "dance an antick" (3281). For Alexander's death, one devil wears "his pontificals" (3340) as in the opening show, then "enter a Divill like a Poast" (3540), to blow "his home in his eare and thereupon more divills enter" (3565-66). Though the first two devils are "like" something else, the "post" devil is probably in the full devil suit, and since "divills" in the plural then enter to "thrust him downe" (3576), at least three devil costumes and four devil headdresses must have been available. The King's Men do not seem to have needed devil costumes in 1606-07, indeed not until The Devil Is an Ass almost a decade later; perhaps they hired such suits from a haberdasher, as Revels had hired devil suits from Thomas Clatterbocke almost forty years before. So sensible a practice as keeping expensive stage finery, "in case," seems as likely to have been standard for the King's Men as for other companies and for the Revels Office. When The Devil's Charter went out of repertory the King's Men must have stored such costly finery as its cardinals' robes. The possession of these costumes might even have encouraged the writing of a play on Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey, and Catherine of Aragon some six years later. Henry VIII impressed, even offended, contemporaries with its spectacular costuming. Along with its extensive wardrobe for great nobles, it needs robes for Cardinals Wolsey and Campeius, Wolsey's probably much the finer. The Borgia cardinal's robes and another set, if properly brushed and aired, would well fit these parts. In 1614 the Duchess of Malfi's brother the Cardinal exchanges his robes for armor in a scene Webster may have copied from Barnes. Since Webster's play came to the repertory so soon after Henry VIII, it seems likely that Wolsey's costume would have been used. In Middleton's More Deceivers Besides Women (1615), the ascetic churchman obsessed with the

295

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Duchess of Milan's chastity may owe his neurosis to Webster's Frederick of Aragon, but what raised him to a cardinal may have been the cardinal's robes in the Blackfriars wardrobe, not "some necessary question of the play." The first half of Pericles, including its tiltyard procession and its dancing knights, is by an unknown hand whose idea of a play is closer to Thomas Heywood's or John Day's than to Shakespeare's. Pericles changes his costume with every change of his fortune, so that before Shakespeare takes over the play he has appeared in five different guises: as the suitorprince at the court of Antiochus, as the exile dressed for sea taking ship from Tyre, as the shipwrecked sailor, as "the Mean Knight" in rusty arms, and once more as the prince, this time in the dumb-show of his taking leave of King Simonides. The requirements of the tilt scene are entirely visual, since its combats are offstage. As the other [five] champions are not seen to fight in their armour. . . there would be no need to have it made of metal, and it would probably be of gilded leather or some kind of stiffened fabric.... At the banquet, the five competitors dance 'Even in your armours, as you are addressed', but Pericles takes no part in this performance.30 Evidently Pericles, whose rusty armor "would have to sound metallic when first dragged onto the stage"31 wore genuine steel that would interfere with the "soldiers' dance." When he later dances with Thaisa, the dance was probably slow and short. Shakespeare's revisions and/or additions to the play involve more meaningful costume change than these signs of good and ill fortune. Pericles probably wore a sea-gown for his prayer during Thaisa's childbirth, and, in his dumb-show visit to Marina's alleged tomb, the hooded cloak of mourning. When Marina comes to him on his ship he is ill-clad and unkempt; Helicanus says he "was a goodly person" (V.i-36, italics supplied), so evidently he is no longer so. Once he has learned Marina lives, he calls for "fresh garments" and "my robes" (214, 222), in a mirror image of Lear's awakening to find Cordelia; then he sleeps, and sees the epiphany of Diana of Ephesus that reunites him with his wife in the final scene.32

296

ROYAL SERVANTS

Elaborate masque devices and masques in King's Men plays after 1606 show that the company owned or had access to sets of appropriate costumes. The Winter's Tale includes two passages that have masque affinities, one the dance of twelve satyrs in Act IV, which may have imitated the satyrs of Oberon or of Heywood's Golden Age. The other is Hermione's "resurrection" through the device of the moving statue. Although the dancing "statuas" in Beaumont's Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn seem to have been a novelty (at least the King wanted it repeated), "miracles" like that which Paulina creates are commonplace in Reformation propaganda exposing images of "miraculous" saints. Like The Winter's Tale, Timon of Athens incorporates dancing in fancy dress; Cupid makes the shortest of speeches to present five ladies attired like Amazons, who dance a masque dance to their own lutes, then "take out" Timon's guests for revels. In The Tempest, a "quaint device" similar to masque machinery makes the banquet vanish, its mechanism activated when "Ariel, like a harpy, claps his wings upon the table" (III.iii.52 so). The betrothal masque in this play is close to what went on at court and some private celebrations, with its presenter-divinities and its dance of Naiads and Reapers. Juno's descent is managed like Jupiter's in Cymbeline, the throne this time "costumed" as a chariot drawn by peacocks. Perhaps when Prospero suddenly calls off the masque, the throne may have flown up suddenly, like Semele's bed in The Brazen Age. This would have been easier to manage than in Heywood's play; Juno has left the chariot so an actor's weight and safety need not have concerned the windlass operator. The "glistering apparel" hung up to distract the conspirators, and the "Spirits in shape of dogs and hounds" which hunt them off the stage (IV.i. 193 so, 254 so), seem almost an antimasque that unconventionally follows Prospero's main masque, with its goddesses in "glistering apparel" and its decorous dance of spirits in shapes of spring and harvest. The dominant classical themes of masque may also have influenced new plays in both content and production style. Almost all of Shakespeare's plays after Macbeth owe something to Plutarch, whether he is drawing on the Lives for his story, as in Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and Timon of Athens, or incorporating ideas and personal names into stories from other sources, as in Pericles and The Winter's Tale. Similar classicizing appears in the settings of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays and in Middleton's The Witch. It is true that a nominally classical setting may not mean masquelike classicizing costumes. If title page illustrations re-

297

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

cord what the artists saw on the stage, as seems likely from the examples of Greene's Tu Quoque, The Spanish Tragedy, Doctor Faustus, and A Fair Quarrel, drawn during the same years, Philaster and The Maid's Tragedy were also costumed in Jacobean dress. 34 Antony and Cleopatra may have been dressed in garments closer to the masque's approximations of classical garments than were Julius Caesar or Troilus and Cressida, although Cleopatra's "tires and mantles" and "lace" suggest that her costume was probably like women's masque costumes, current fashion ornamented with Renaissance-classical detail. More important than the style of the costumes, however, is Shakespeare's care to make his Romans and Egyptians look different from one another. While this was hardly new to Shakespeare, who had done the same with French and English characters in his history plays, or to the playwrights who were currently distinguishing English and oriental characters in Red Bull plays, the distinction between the two nations has far more bearing than mere clarity on what happens to Antony and some of his followers and to Cleopatra and her women. The contrast is set up in the first scene, where Demetrius and Philo appear as Romans watching the procession of Egyptians, and Antony's vacillation between Rome and Egypt in the second, where he receives the messenger he had denied in the first; such vacillation persists as long as Antony lives. Shakespeare's Egyptians evidently were to wear "soft clothing" and they seem never to appear in armor, unlike the Tamburlaines and Tamar Chams of older "Eastern" plays. The color of their garments might also have been light and the men's feminized beyond even current Jacobean fashion. The play's Romans, both the followers of Caesar and those of Antony, do appear in situations requiring armor, and their civilian apparel is likely to have been more "sad" in color and plain in cut and finish than the clothes of the stage's Egypt. Such visual contrast would mark the polarity between the Rome of Caesar and the Egypt of Cleopatra, between which Antony and Enobarbus vacillate to their ruin. But the final scene proves that the apparently singleminded Romans are not the invincible power they seem, for Cleopatra and her two gentlewomen, in their Egyptian dress, defeat them in their own "marble-constant" terms. A principal quality of this play's "Romanitas" is, favorably, constancy, less favorably, rigidity. As in Measure for Measure, the most rigid characters are unlikely to change costume except for adding or removing robes of office. Caesar may remain in a single costume throughout the play,

298

ROYAL SERVANTS

that of a public man. Such a costume, suitable for public scenes, would clash with what is going on in scenes like Antony's betrothal to Octavia (H.iii) and the "Alexandrian feast" on Pompey's galley. Agrippa and Maecenas, a Roman Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, were probably meant to wear simpler versions of Caesar's costume, though they are seldom to the fore and mostly fade into Caesar's train. Ventidius and his army, though they belong to Antony, are engaged in the Roman activity of conquest, and may have worn the plainer sort of armor, like Edgar's in Lear. Enobarbus, and Antony's other followers in the battles at Actium and in Egypt, must also be armed, but the Egyptian ambience suggests gear more ornamental than that of Caesar's or Ventidius's followers, and loose or misfastened buckles, as when Cleopatra plays Antony's squire. Other than different apparel for peace and for battle, there seems unusually little costume change in Antony and Cleopatra for so late a play. This probably is because it needs so much doubling to accommodate a large cast, including some fifty short-term roles for which no costume change was required. Antony and Enobarbus may have combined Roman and Egyptian gear in Egypt, then adopted Roman fashion to meet Caesar in Rome. Pompey and his followers are distinct from both other groups, probably wearing "sea suits." Menas and Menecrates probably looked like the pirates in Fortune by Land and Sea, and Pompey like Captain Goodlack in The Fair Maid of the West or Drake in If You Know Not Me, Part 2. Antony remains in his Roman dress through his parting from Octavia. He does his fighting after his return to Cleopatra, so he might create an Egyptian flavor by putting on his "Roman" armor over an "Egyptian" costume. His final disarming then would remove him further from his Roman self by making him look completely Egyptian. When Caesar in Act V sees three Egyptian women and asks "Which is the Queen. . . ?" (V.ii. 112), his words have been interpreted as deliberate insult. But one of Cleopatra's improprieties (like hopping through the street or wandering disguised about Alexandria) could have been to dress no more richly than her gentlewomen, since she believes that her inherent "majesty" needs no external signs of royalty. Caesar's inability to discern this inherent majesty, like his condescending "Feed, and sleep" (V.ii. 187), as if she were "a beast that wants discourse of reason," enables Cleopatra to outwit him and die at her own will. But for her death, she makes sure that her majesty will not be mistaken, whether she puts on her robe and crown to greet Antony in Elisium or to prove to Caesar how far

299

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

he is an "ass unpolicied" (V.ii.307-8). Caesar must make the best of being defeated by an enemy he has despised; he calls her "royal" even if he is but reading the language of her garments. Coriolanus, a play of exaggerated "Romanitas" gives even quite minor characters two costumes, and its hero no less than five. These many costume changes, however, are not for spectacle alone. Almost all are informative, showing visually whether a scene is one of peace in Rome or Antium, or one of war. Thus when the patricians seek Caius Martius in the first scene, they are in civil garb. Cominius and Titus Lartius change this civil dress to war gear in the Corioles scenes. When Cominius reports to the Roman senate, he is called "the Consul," implying a special garment of civil office, like the scarlet robe of London's Lord Mayor. The scene in Act IV between Adrian and Nicanor shows that the civil garb of Volscian and Roman was visually distinguishable. Because audiences need to know to which side a fighter engaged in battle belonged, and since under-rehearsed hired men needed to know whom to fight with, the Volscian and Roman warriors must also have been distinguishable at a glance. Coriolanus also uses costume expressively, whether by changing it or leaving it unchanged. The tribunes Sicinius and Brutus were probably dressed in garments of office different from the clothes of both patrician and common Romans. Unlike most other characters, they stay inside Rome from first to last, so that for them costume change seems unlikely. Unchanged costume also seems probable for Menenius, except for a travel cloak on his visit to the Volscian camp, when he must explain to the Volscian sentries not only that he is "an officer of state" but that he is "from Rome" (V.ii-3-4). In Volumnia and Virgilia's first scene, their costumes must show that Volumnia is a widow and Virgilia is not. Their first action upon entry is to "set them down on two low stools and sew" [I.iii.so], which communicates domestic feminine virtue, as in Heywood's Rape of Lucrece. Their tranquil domesticity shockingly contrasts with Volumnia's bloody-minded indifference to her son's danger, as if she is almost hoping for his death in battle. This scene also introduces Volumnia's semper eadem view of herself; Volumnia is probably like the single-minded Isabella in Measure for Measure and Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra in having only one costume. Valeria probably was to wear a "light" fashion corresponding to her wish that Virgilia "lay aside your stitchery [and] play the idle huswife with me this afternoon" on a "visit [to] the good lady that lies in" (69-70).

300

ROYAL SERVANTS

Given the fixity of their characters, costume change for the women in their public scenes in Rome is unlikely, for if they celebrate Coriolanus' triumph dressed as at home this would affirm their constancy to the principles evoked in their first scene. Constancy in dress would also increase surprise when Volumnia insists that her son bend humbly to the plebeians. When the Roman women put on mourning for their embassy to Coriolanus, these enveloping garments suppress their individual differences, their uniform black contrasting with the martial splendors of the Volscian host and making them visual exemplars of the "Romanitas" expressed in Volumnia's oration. When their embassy succeeds, they might be expected to remove the mourning before their triumphal entry into Rome, but Shakespeare could have meant them to keep it on, for in the final scene their triumph has the "most mortal" consequence Coriolanus has predicted will follow when he yields. The costumes of Coriolanus and Aufidius combine the realistic and the symbolic, showing not only changes in activity (peace or war) and changes in the status of Coriolanus, but also changes in their relationship. What Caius Martius wears in the first scene is unclear; a plebeian mentions "the services he hath done for his country" (Li.30-31), and since these "services" are in war, a suit with such military accessories as a gorget and sword seem probable. When Aufidius first enters in the second scene, he is consulting with Volscian "Senators," ex officio in civil costume, and if Martius combines civil and military in the previous scene, Aufidius may be expected to mirror him since Martius has recently indicated that they are much alike. Costumes already somewhat military would also facilitate the rapid addition of armor for the ensuing war scenes. If in battle both are more heavily armed than their followers, then they would look like the best warriors of their nations, evenly matched "mighty opposites." Their battle scenes require both to be bloodied, and excessively so: "enter Martius bleeding" (II.iv.6i so); "thou bleed'st (v. 14); "Who's yonder/That does appear as he were flea'd?" (vi.23); "if you come not in the blood of others/ But mantled in your own" (28-29); "Tis not my blood/Wherein thou seest me mask'd" (viii.Q-io). A stage direction says that the defeated Aufidius also enters "bloody" (I.x. so) before threatening to kill Coriolanus, never mind how. For him to be "bloody" makes him resemble his rival while it underlines his threat. For the company sharers, armor would have been the most practical costume for characters like these, for "a little water" will clear blood from flesh or metal; Elizabethan cleaning techniques could not remove it very well

301

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

from the unwashable fabrics that showed aristocratic standing.35 Full body armor like that of the Four Prentices title page seems appropriate for Aufidius and Coriolanus, though not necessarily for the other warriors or for the plebeians who, without armor, would appear as vulnerable as they claim to be. On his triumphant return to Rome, Coriolanus may still wear armor, though Renaissance custom would call for the elaborately decorated armor of ceremony,36 perhaps some of the mock armor made for the knights in Pericles. The one sure addition to his costume is an oaken wreath. At the Senate meeting which follows this scene, Coriolanus stands when others sit and rudely walks out when Cominius begins to report his valor; his costume was probably still military, no more decorous than his behavior in the circumstances. When, over his own objections, he becomes a candidate for consul, he is told he must wear what both a stage direction and a citizen's speech call a "gown of humility" (II.iii.SD4o). Coriolanus thinks that to wear this is to "stand naked" (II. ii. 137), so it may have looked like an inadequate covering. One possible garment was the sheet worn by such stage penitents as Heywood's Jane Shore and Shakespeare's Duchess of Gloucester, and in life by Shakespeare's son-in-law to be Thomas Quiney. But a gown (the word used in sixteenth century dictionaries to translate Latin toga) was, like the toga, a "weed of peace," not worn in public by military men. Whatever the garment, Coriolanus does not wear it with "humility"; as he solicits the citizens' votes he waves "his hat... in scorn" (Il.iii. 167) and denies them the customary sight of his battle scars. His "penance" lasts a little over a hundred lines—some five minutes—and when, perhaps five minutes after it ends, he reenters with "all the Gentry" (III.i.so), he has exchanged "the humble weed" (Il.iii.221) for the consul's robe, no doubt the same worn by his predecessor Cominius in the Senate scene. This orderly procession of patricians is rudely broken as the tribunes summon "a rabble of Plebeians" (III. i. 179 so). From under the civil robe comes the warrior's sword. Like the Volscians at Corioles, "the Tribunes, the Rediks, and the People are beat in" (228 so), but this time the outcome is not triumph, and Coriolanus, told to humble himself again to the people, antagonizes them even more spectacularly. This time, he and the "Gentry," not the people, are "beat in." When he next enters he is going into exile, certainly stripped of his robe of office and probably without armor or even a sword. When he reappears, in "a goodly city. . . this Antium" (IV.iv.i), and is "in mean apparel, disguis'd and muffled" (so), he may not be immediately recognized

302

ROYAL SERVANTS

by the audience. Aufidius' servants treat him as their inferior and bid him be gone. In contrast, Aufidius enters from feasting the Volscian lords, which must mean in "best apparel." For the first time in the play, he looks and is superior to his rival. Although nothing Aufidius says implies that he recognizes this unwonted superiority, it is the main reason he can embrace "Caius Martius" as his friend. Only when the two are warriors fighting on the same side does Aufidius' envy of his rival reassert itself. In the scenes of their joint campaign against Rome, Coriolanus is clad to look not just like Aufidius' rival but like his unequivocal conqueror. By the testimony of Cominius, from the muffled suppliant "in mean apparel" Coriolanus has become not only the Volscian commander but almost the image of a god: "I tell you, he does sit in gold" (V.i.64), like the gilded divinities on masque prosceniums. In gold he humiliates Menenius and sits enthroned to hear the ladies of Rome. There is no reason to expect a costume change when he enters among the Volscian plebeians after his surrender to his mother. Thus, when Aufidius and the conspirators strike him down, what the stage shows is something like the murder of a divinity, who is then carried off the stage by those who have murdered him, senseless as the gilt image he resembles. The Winter's Tale is associated with two court entertainments, Jonson's masque Oberon on New Year's night 1611, and the revival of an old play, Mucedorus, just before Lent in the same year; it is sometimes assumed that Shakespeare could have begun writing it only after the performance of both, since the costumes for the "men of hair" who dance at the sheepshearing are supposed to have come from the masque as the idea for the bear who kills Antigonus came from Mucedorus. Exactly when the King's Men added Mucedorus to their repertory is unknown, but they must have been playing it in public some weeks before the Court performance. Its earliest extant text was offered for acting by "ten persons" in 1598; the King's Men's version was printed with one additional scene. Costuming for Mucedorus is probably typical of 15805 pastoral shows. The entrance of Mucedorus "with a sword drawn and a bear's head in his hand" (5 so) comes from Sidney's Arcadia, and could be played with a property. But the bear which "comes in" to frighten the clown and then to chase "Segasto running, and Amadine after Kim, being pursued with a bear (Sc.iii. so) may have been added to the script when a bear's skin came into the hands of the company then playing it. This possibly opportunistic addition may eventually have decided Shakespeare on how Antigonus was to die, whether the performance of Mucedorus preceded or followed his writing of

303

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

The Winter's Tale. In fact, their possession of the bearskin and of pastoral costumes from The Winter's Tak might have been what led the King's Men to revive the old play. The idea for a dance of "saltiers" may have come from the satyrs in Jonson's Oberon, though not necessarily after the performance. Shakes' peare and Jonson not only knew each other, but Jonson at the time was writing plays for the King's Men as well as masques for the Court. Whether or not the King's Men played satyrs in Oberon, they could have known about them weeks before the masque. In any case, a tradition of "men of hair" (IV.iv.326) existed long before Jonson's satyrs, one such the villainous Bremo in Mucedorus, another the improbably chaste satyr in Fletcher's recent Faithful Shepherdess. Wherever the idea came from, however, the ten satyr costumes of Oberon would not lead to twelve "salt' iers" unless the company already owned or could easily get two more. The Winter's Tale requires costumes for a large cast with much doubling of parts and also for many costume changes; in fact, hardly a major char' acter goes without one. In the first half of the play it is important to differentiate the private Leontes and Hermione from the public King Leontes and Queen Hermione. At her trial, royal garb communicates Leontes' tyranny and assists in the pathos of Hermione's situation. During his agonized vigil after Hermione's arrest, Leontes must be clad in a nightgown and cap, to show his sleeplessness like that of the anxious King Henry IV. Cleomenes and Dion come "from Delphos," probably in the usual cloaks and boots. If they enter to the trial still cloaked and booted to deliver the "seal'd-up oracle" (III. ii. 127), then this sign of unceremo' nious haste would contrast their concern for justice with the King's denial, "There is no truth at all i' th' oracle" (Ill.ii. 140) when it contradicts him. Costume change in the second half of the play is both more frequent and more important than in the first. Given the passage of sixteen years, it seems likely that major characters from the first three acts who continue into the last two were reclad to show that they have aged. The last scene emphasizes Hermione's wrinkles, and her wooing of Leontes "in age" makes clear that the generational turnover was made visual. Leontes and Polixenes are the same age, so they would wear similar styles for both their young and their older appearance. In Act IV they probably changed to wigs and beards in which "grey do[es] somewhat mingle with Jtheir] younger brown" (Ant. viii. 19-20) and put on ceremonial gowns instead of the young men's cloaks of Act I. Camillo's greater age could be shown by

304

ROYAL SERVANTS

an old man's long gown and coif or skullcap. At the sheep-shearing, Polixenes may have disguised himself as an older man, for Perdita offers "flow'rs of winter" (IV.iv.p) to him and Camillo; when he protests, she politely substitutes the midsummer flowers for "men of middle age" (108). Paulina assumes that Antigonus "Did perish with the infant" (V.i.44), well before his death is confirmed, so in Acts IV and V she needs a widow's blacks and veil. The scene in which Polixenes proposes visiting the old Shepherd in disguise and the scene at the sheep-shearing are separated by the one in which Autolycus gulls the Clown, claiming that a rogue has beaten him, forced him to exchange garments, and left him in the road. This falsehood implicitly comments not only on the false appearance assumed by Polixenes and Camillo but also on other false appearances to come: of Florizel pretending to be a shepherd when he is really a prince, of Perdita being taken for a shepherdess when she is really a princess, of the Old Shepherd and the Clown affecting to be "gentlemen born" within hours of first putting on fine clothes, and finally of Hermione pretending to be a statue. In this play, the disguises are rather like those of masque and antimasque; the rogue and the clowns as gentlemen are comic, while princely reality is not hidden by garb that gives contrary information about social place. Much of the apparel for The Tempest is masquelike, not only in the formal masque for Ferdinand and Miranda. "Antike sutes" must have been specially made for Caliban, for Ariel in his several guises, for the mute Shapes, and for the "dogs and hounds" that harry the would-be usurpers. Prospero's "magic garment" is a kind of masquing apparel identified with "my art" and removed when he is not engaged in it. In a parody of Prospero's dignified handling of his magic garment, Stephano and Trinculo huddle themselves into the "glistering apparel" hung on a line for them to find, and perhaps they force it on the unwilling Caliban, as King Richard and his following force a masking suit on Woodstock. Trinculo knows "what belongs to a frippery" (IV. i. 225), for all the actors and many in the audience a shared inside joke about a frequent source of stage costume, though by The Tempest the King's Men probably bought less than formerly from old-clothes men. Except perhaps Ariel, no character in The Tempest changes his basic costume, only his outer garments. Ferdinand strips to doublet and hose when he carries logs and resumes his princely cloak and hat for his betrothal. The Naples party is clad in what they wore for Claribel's wed-

305

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

ding, garments, as Gonzalo notices, which are not spoiled in the shipwreck but made fresher than when new. During this group's wanderings on the island, wedding garments visually contradict the grief and ambition expressed by different members of the party. But at the play's end, these garments are appropriate not only for the general rejoicing but for the marriage contract of Ferdinand and Miranda, as Alonzo joins his blessing to Prospero's. Jonson's three plays for the King's Men contrast very much with what Shakespeare was writing at the time. Both his comedies, The Alchemist and The Devil Is an Ass, realistically exhibit London social types recognized by their different costumes. Even the wordy Catiline, with its "classical" choruses and offstage action reported by "some Nuntius" affords visual variety in costume changes for the characters' activities, especially between the Gothic horrors of the conspirators' vow scene and their subsequent appearance as senators, changes similar to those in Coriolanus. In fact, given the King's Men's earlier misadventure with a Roman tragedy from Jonson, their possession of a good stock of "Roman" costumes from Shakespeare's Roman plays may have led them to take the risk of producing this play, since they would not be much out of pocket should the new play go the way of Sejanus. Jonson's two comedies, especially The Alchemist, had far longer stage lives, and, unlike his Roman tragedy, a genre already in company repertory, The Alchemist and The Devil Is an Ass belong to a subgenre, citizen comedy, which the King's Men had seldom ventured on before. Citizen comedy had mainly been a formula genre for boy actors before Jonson wrote The A/chemist. Although the King's Men had performed plays with London settings and comic citizens, these were either the fundamentally serious "prodigal" type of the old London Prodigal and the more recent Miseries of Enforced Marriage, which both include scenes of spendthrift London "gallants," or they were histories in which citizens played only secondary roles. Lower-class urban characters, perhaps dressed like London artisans, had indeed figured in Julius Caesar and Coriolanus. But before The Alchemist, the King's Men's plays had limited what they showed of an urban underworld and underclass: Falstaff and his crew in the Henry IV plays and Merry Wives, the pimp and bawd in Measure for Measure, the London gallants in The Miseries of Enforced Marriage. Only Jonson's Volpone had made its central action "cony catching." In this play the rogues do not keep their loot unpunished while leaving their victims without redress, but in The Alchemist, no one reveals that "The

306

ROYAL SERVANTS

money is paid back again," as Hal reports of the proceeds from the Gadshill robbery (Henry IV Part i IILiii. 178). Instead, Lovewit reminds Mammon of public scorn should he go to law to prove that he owns the kitchenware now in Lovewit's cellar. Neither does Lovewit offer to refund what the Saints of Amsterdam have paid the three rogues for Mammon's goods, even though he, not the rogues, now has the money. Clever cheats that profit the cheaters were among the staples of the boy actors, whether the somewhat justifiable "tricks" of Witgood and of Easy and Thomasine that recover property from swindling usurers, or the interlocked cony-catchings of the rogues in Your Five Gallants. The action of The Alchemist depends almost wholly on costume and costume change: the varied disguises of Face, Subtle, and Dol, the Spanish disguise assumed by Surly and the cruder Spanish suit Lovewit wears to capture Dame Plyant, Dapper's pathetic dressing up to meet his "Aunt of Faery," and the garb of characters as outwardly different as the courtier Sir Epicure Mammon and the puritan Tribulation Wholesome. Besides these, costumes identify characters by trade. The young tobacconist Abel Drugger and the puritan botcher-deacon Ananias are major characters. The trades of the six neighbors Lovewit questions seem not to be shown by costume or hand properties, since he must ask if one of them is a smith, indicating that their costumes show only that they are of humbler rank than he, which is also clear from their deferential speech to him. For most of the play, the character called Face alternates between his principal guise of "suburb-captain," bewhiskered and dressed in silks and feathers, and his secondary guise as the ragged Ulen-spiegel or "Lungs." His true self, described in the opening quarrel, "the good,/Honest, plain, livery-three-pound-thrum" (Li. 15-19), is not a good visual description, so when he at last enters in Act V as the clean-shaven, blue-coated Jeremy with his keys, his appearance is as surprising as the other reversals that end his career as a cheat. Subtle, though always more or less the same character, likewise has two guises, one the working alchemist, the other the "Doctor" in a square velvet cap and a gown like those on the 1616 title page of Doctor Faustus, a costume that may have mimicked that of Faustus on the Fortune stage. Both Face and Subtle, that is, alternate grand and humble personages, according to how the current victim is to be impressed by them and most readily cozened. Face's changes of appearance involved more pieces than Subtle's, since the "suburb captain" outfit was one variant of the braggart's, with exaggerated slops, a jerkin, and a feathered hat, while the "Lungs" outfit was

307

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

the close breeches and jacket of a workman, probably worn permanently under the captain costume, and, when this was off, needing only the addition of an apron. A blue coat and no beard would transform this costume to Jeremy's. All Face's changes occur offstage and are given some bridging action, sometimes involving "Lungs" as an offstage voice, to give time to complete them. Subtle's changes are simpler, since they involve only outer garments, and are sometimes made on stage. Dol, too, has more guises than one: the "brave" whore, the "lord's sister," and the Faery Queen, of which at least one dresses her in the "velvet gown" mentioned both by a neighbor and by Face when he orders her and Subtle to go "over the wall, o' the back-side" (V.iv. 133-34). Since Dol's disguises make her seem a great lady, whether she is called a "lord's sister" or the "Queen of Faery," her costume changes probably involve only headdresses and other accessories. Her velvet gown thus would serve as basic costume for all her guises, and would remain in character when she is merely "brave" as a whore. Surly's generalized suspicion of the house leads him to adopt a cheating disguise of his own, the exaggerated Spanish get-up of huge padded hose and broad ruff which successfully deceives all three rogues because "He had dyed his beard and all" (IV.vii.py). But, while his disguise enables him to learn for himself the nature of the swindles, it does not bring him success. Instead his indignation reveals his true self, providing Face the necessary motivation to egg on Kastril and the Puritans to drive him out. Lovewit, supplied with "Hieronymo's old cloak, hat, and ruff" (71) borrowed from "the players" to put on over his own suit and band, succeeds not only in marrying Dame Plyant but also in sending Mammon, Surly, and the Puritans packing, much subdued, and in taming her angry brother. Though The A/chemist was first performed at Blackfriars, it could be played anywhere; it needs no special apparatus, and it must have been fairly inexpensive to produce. Of its entire cast, only Mammon needs good finery; since he is a "fat knight" he may have resembled a Falstaff tricked out in the height of Jacobean fashion. Otherwise the costume needs of The AZchemist could be met not only from stock but even from old stock, some very old indeed, like the Spanish garments dating, perhaps, from a lost "Hieronymo" of 1604 or before. In fact, Jonson's proposal that Drugger borrow this outfit from "the players" might imply that the King's Men had themselves borrowed the costume, perhaps from Prince Henry's Men at the Fortune, as well as being an allusion to the

308

ROYAL SERVANTS

players nearest to Lovewit's fictional house, the King's Men at Blackfriars who were actually performing The Alchemist. Jonson may have offered his play to the King's Men as he and other poets had formerly offered plays to the Admiral's Men, rather than writing it on commission. He may thus have planned it to use standard costumes that would be in any company's wardrobe, or costumes that could be acquired easily and cheaply from dealers in old clothes, though he must have known that the King's Men had long favored the use of their older costumes in roles for which the outdated and the shabby would be appropriate. Jonson wrote no plays for four years after the failure of Catiline, although he was steadily occupied with masques and with the preparation of his Folio. His next play, Bartholomew Fair, was for a new company in a new theatre, Lady Elizabeth's Men at the Hope in the fall of 1614. Soon after its first public performance it was played at court, where Jonson was high in favor for entertainments, and perhaps this induced the King's Men to risk his Devil Is an Ass in the following year. It seems possible that Jonson had to do some selling, as by including an advertisement for his own play in one of its early scenes and by praising one of the King's Men's boys, Robinson, for his success in playing ladies. Again, however, Jonson enabled the company to draw upon its old wardrobe, possibly including devil costumes left from The Devil's Charter and also assorted older costumes for many of the secondary characters, especially Everill, Engine, Trains, and the "elderly, ugly" Lady Tailbush. The play does require more finery than The Alchemist, such as the fussy garments, especially huge shoe-roses, that Pug steals from Ambler. It also needs a magnificent cloak of plush, velvet, and lace ("never made, sir,/For threescore pound" [I.iv.38-9i]) that Wittipol uses to bribe Fitzdottrel. Mistress Fitzdottrel has "Very brave" (16) fashionable apparel. Wittipol's disguise as "the Spanish lady" puts him into clothes said to be the latest style from Spain. Possibly in compensation for these costly necessaries, the play does not need much in the way of costume change. The plays collected under the names of Beaumont and Fletcher pose many problems, including who, if anyone, collaborated with Fletcher on a given play, the date of composition and first performance, and how many more-or-less extensive revisions were made by later hands before the 1647 Folio collection. Except for plays published soon after they were staged, like Philaster and The Maid's Tragedy, the extant texts are unlikely to show how these plays were produced in the years of Burbage and

309

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

Shakespeare; the actor lists introducing some of them belong to the later 16205. Nonetheless, some of the costumes are worth examining. The Scornful Lady and Monsieur Thomas are set in England, but most of the comedies take place in France, Italy, or Spain, the tragicomedies in a variety of exotic locales, the tragedies in distant times as well as distant places. Costuming in the comedies is largely conventional, used to indicate rank, age, sex, and occupation, or to ridicule those who dress inappropriately for their social roles; sometimes their costumes help to contrast characters, such as the scholar Charles and the courtier Eustace in The Elder Brother. Sometimes an original use for costume appears. In Love's Cure (much revised by Massinger but with a central situation by Fletcher) a young woman has been reared in man's apparel and trained to be a soldier, while her younger brother has been oppositely raised in women's apparel and trained in genteel feminine accomplishments. One of the play's objectives is to clothe brother and sister and fashion their behavior so that the martial maid Clara will look and act like a woman and the effeminized boy Lucio like a man. As it begins the play seems to recognize that nurture may overcome nature; while they are still crossdressed, Clara boldly intervenes in a quarrel while Lucio runs and hides. When they are clothed in the garments of their true sexes, much of the comedy depends on the inappropriate contrast between dress and reflex behavior, but in the end the problem of nurture against nature has been evaded rather than solved, when the characters adopt proper behavior as a result of falling in love. In The Loyal Subject, a tragicomedy, a male character reared in women's apparel becomes the Princess Olympia's ladyin-waiting until accused of unchastity with the lustful duke and banished. He reappears in man's apparel, and the princess's love for her attendant becomes romantic passion leading to a marriage. In this play, however, Fletcher does not question the probable effect of lifelong transvestism on his character; the "lady" Alinda always seems conscious of role-playing, and there is no feminine residue in the man Archas, though characters notice that he resembles Alinda when he claims to be her brother. Some of Fletcher's tragedies and tragicomedies appear to intentionally skirt dangerous political ground; he takes out insurance by setting them on "islands far away." The Mad Lover is set in Paphos, The Laws of Candy in Crete, Philaster in Sicily, and The Maid's Tragedy in Rhodes. The Mad Lover and The Laws of Candy (as well as the comedy The Captain) focus on the problem of the professional soldier without occupation, very much an issue in the kingdom of Rex Pacificus James. The Maid's Tragedy and

310

ROYAL SERVANTS

Philaster, and the "Roman" Tragedy of Valentinian, more dangerously focus on the punishment, by rebellion, of unjust rulers. The title pages of Philaster and The Maid's Tragedy depict scenes from the plays, with the characters dressed in immediately contemporary English fashions. Other plays in exotic settings are full of words for Jacobean articles of dress, which imply that the costuming was also contemporary. Perhaps the distancing effect of the settings and the characters' exotic names was cancelled by the contemporary costumes, so that the plays on the stage seemed more topical to the audience than did the scripts to the Master of the Revels who licensed them. Beaumont and Fletcher's early work for the King's Men resembles Shakespeare's late plays in adapting masque and courtly pastoral for a public audience. The masque in Act I of The Maid's Tragedy closely approximates the true court masque, occupying most of the second scene. The costumes specified for the presenters and masquers are like those of their counterparts in court masques. Night is in black, probably a sheer and voluminous swirl of cloth so that when she "rises in mists" at the beginning she emerges from what she wears and when she vanishes "into mists" simply wraps it around herself to exit. Cinthia has a crescent headdress, Neptune a trident, Eolus a trumpet. Proteus is "blew." The masquers are lords dressed as sea gods; the presenter Neptune says that they are to "put on/Their greatest pearles and the most sparkling stone" (198-99), an indication of glittering masque costumes. The King and his court seem to watch the masque from "above," so there are no "revels," which in any case would prolong it too much. This masque has "a peculiar, highly ironical bearing in the action of the play" both because its stress on coming marital joys is so shockingly denied by what happens when bride and groom are left together,39 and because of its own several peculiarities. It makes Night and Neptune enter "from below," the direction associated with evil, and it emphasizes the escape of the disruptive wind Boreas, who despite Neptune's promise to "take him up at sea" (I.ii. 195) remains uncaught at the end. These anticipate the "storm" in the bridal chamber and the hell which Amintor there finds he is to inhabit. If the play proper was costumed in Jacobean clothes as indicated by its title page, the "classical" garb of its masque would also have distanced it from the play's court, as such garb did actual Court masques from their audience. Masques must have contributed to a play's success, for after about 1610 they are commonly introduced, sometimes with the flimsiest of motives,

3"

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

sometimes interrupting "some necessary question of the play" and consuming time that might have been better used for final scenes less arbitrary and hasty than Fletcher's commonly are. The Mad Lover contains two masques. The first mimics the contemporary Jonsonian masque with an antimasque, of Orpheus and dancing beasts, devised and performed by characters from the play in hope to cure Memnon of love. The second is embedded in the play's denouement, with a kind of antimasque of the elderly lovers Chilax (dressed as a priestess) and the (female) Priest of Venus, and a main masque of Princess Calis and her ladies. When they pray to Venus the goddess descends, rebukes and expels Chilax and the Priest, and tells the princess how her prayer will be answered. Women Pleased concludes with a similar "Masquerado of severall Shapes and Daunces" introduced by two presenters followed by an antimasque of the subplot characters. This masque also ends with an "epiphany," "the shape of Belvidere" (the heroine) who acts as do the gods who resolve issues in Court masques. Only after she speaks her masque speech, which resolves both the masque's dilemma and the play's, does she reveal that she is not an illusory "shape" but Belvidere herself. Beaumont and Fletcher were already imitators of Shakespeare when they were writing for the boy actors. When they began to write for the King's Men, their work must have seemed compatible not only with the veteran poet's but also with the company's production habits. They obviously gave satisfaction, for about the time of Beaumont's retirement Fletcher was taken on to work with Shakespeare as a company poet, and he was kept on in this capacity for the rest of his life. In their collaboration on Henry VIII Shakespeare and Fletcher carried opulence of costume beyond anything previously seen: ... many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the Knights of the Order, with their Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats, and the like: sufficient in a while to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous.40 In his introduction to the play in the Riverside edition Herschel Baker declares that Knights of the Garter do not appear in Henry VIII, which is true if he is thinking of its ceremonial processions. All the same, several of its historical nobles had been members of the order, and it is therefore probable that such characters as Norfolk, Suffolk, Surrey, Buckingham,

312

ROYAL SERVANTS

and lesser lords, not to mention King Henry, wore simulacra of the wellknown insignia as part of their costumes, for knights routinely wore their lesser Georges and garters, and had distinctive cloaks intermediate between the Order's bulky full-dress array and its insignia. King Henry's masking at Wolsey's feast represents the old mask, a processional entry and dance in "antick sewtes"; Catherine's dying vision of "six personages clad in white robes, wearing on their heads garlands of bays and golden vizards on their faces, branches of bays or palm in their hands" who dance toward her and mime a heavenly coronation before they "in their dancing vanish" (IV.ii.82 so), borrows from the new masque. The play's three ceremonial processions in authentic garments, the first to Queen Katherine's trial, the second to Anne Bullen's coronation, the last to Princess Elizabeth's christening, elaborate the spectacle of the old dumbshow, but unlike equivalent shows in The Devil's Charter or, apparently, in Dekker's Whore of Babylon, this play spared no expense on them. Maybe the company was drawing on a nearly twenty years' costume accumulation, or maybe hired what it did not have in stock from a haberdasher or from other companies. Those costumes that were not on actors' backs when they fled the burning Globe must have burned with the theatre, and the loss may explain some faint signs of parsimony with new costumes during the period of rebuilding. But as the company clearly did not suffer the same disastrous loss of costumes and scripts as did the actors at the Fortune in their 1621 fire, they could have easily produced any new play that required no new kind of costume from what must have been, by 1613, an immense wardrobe. If Henry VIII appeals to a "concupiscence" of masque and processions, a good part of Fletcher's Two Noble Kinsmen appeals to a concupiscence of the tiltyard. It opens with the wedding procession of Theseus and Hippolyta, which is "met by three Queens in black, with veils stain'd, with imperial crowns" (V.i.24 so), each prostrating herself at the feet of a wedding principal and begging for Theseus' help. The scene is masquelike, ordered and perhaps costumed as was Jonson's Hymenaei, its marriage ceremony invaded not by the Affections but by funeral. (Fletcher was to repeat this blend of wedding and funeral in The Custom of the Country.) Through the rest of the play there is much emphasis on armor, arming, and combat conducted according to meticulous rules, and a ceremonious tournament is being anticipated from the end of Act III until it is fought in Act V, offstage like that in Pericles. Similarities to tiltyard ceremonial are thus more likely to have been noticed than similarities to masque. The play requires

313

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

much costume change, involving changed fortune, changed activity, and change for a kind of realism, though this "realism" may not have much corresponded to street reality. Certainly the tripartite scene at the three altars, though recognizably "religious" in the play's terms since characters bow and pray, is "realistic" only according to masque ritual, though by this date ceremonies which the context declared to be Christian usually followed an invented form to prevent charges of blasphemy, as in the scene before the altar of Loretto in The Duchess of Malfi and the prayer scene at the altar in Segovia that winds up The Pilgrim. These masquelike scenes in Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen take more time than do most formal masques in other plays. They also require far more costumes of limited use than had been the custom of the King's Men, special costumes for speaking characters unusable in the rest of the play, and also for mutes who never appear outside the "masques." Shakespeare or Heminges might have insisted that, for her invocation of Diana, Emily and her attendants should wear the costumes from the first scene's wedding procession. But the costumes worn by the mute knights attending Palamon and Arcite for the combat are very meticulously described, so probably were before Fletcher's eyes when he wrote, and they have no likely function elsewhere in the play. Whether they were hired from Kirkham as costumier or as Yeoman of the Revels, or purchased by the company, the fancier attire used for such short scenes of one play shows the King's Men in their prosperity and court favor willing to pay for brief visual glories like those of masques, whose costly brevity displayed the magnanimity of the person who paid so highly for ephemera. Perhaps deliberate extravagance had become obligatory because of the company's status at Court. As the Chamberlain's Men they had not shown any such inclination to prodigality when they were popular and prosperous toward the end of Elizabeth's reign. Possibly some of the military gear for Two Noble Kinsmen remained from Antorvy and Cleopatra or Coriolanus, and some of the classicizing apparel perhaps was also from these plays, from The Winter's Tale, even from Catiline, whose failure would have left the company with some virtually new garments on its hands. Any and all of these plays, as well as Gymbeline and King Lear, might have helped to furnish A King and No King, Valentinian, Bonduca, and other Fletcher "classical" plays. Since most of Fletcher's tragedies and tragicomedies are long on talk and posing and short on action, their many costume changes (and their masques) may have compensated for the sense of people doing things that one finds in

314

ROYAL SERVANTS

Shakespeare's plays and in Jonson's contemporaneous writing for the King's Men. Probably costume demands did not much matter to the King's Men by the time of Shakespeare's death, given the accumulated wardrobe visible in the costumes required for plays like The Witch, The Duchess of Malfi, More Dissemblers Besides Women, The Captain and later plays by Fletcher, and The Devil Is an Ass. Probably the King's Men could have put on almost anything handsomely, old or new, by steady replacement of their older costumes and limited addition of new ones. This capacity was important to their position as the King's servants, since they might be summoned to court on short notice not just for plays from their current repertory but for any play that they had ever put on. Although the loss of the Globe by fire in 1613 no doubt led to production economies while the sharer-housekeepers financed the reconstruction, the ownership of Blackfriars meant continuing income and no outgo for rental of another theatre, as had been necessary for the Chamberlain's Men during the hiatus between the Theatre and the Globe in 1598-99. Costuming new plays from old stock seems to have continued, but more as a company habit than a financial necessity. Even so, during the decade after the burning of the Globe, there were gradual changes in company habits, especially after the deaths of two key members, in 1616 of Shakespeare, who as a sharer may have been consulted until his death, and, perhaps with more immediate effect on everything, of Richard Burbage in 1619. Although John Lowin represented continuity with the Chamberlain's Men up to the closing of the theatres, the company of 1594 was gone by 1631, and such younger men who had worked with Shakespeare as Ostler, Underwood, and Field all had died by 1625. During this decade, the King's Men acted more and more of the year at Blackfriars, and were more and more called to perform at Court in both plays and masques. One effect of their Court employment even links the huge public theatre with the masque in Middleton's A Game at Chess, played to a packed Globe for nine days before the Spanish ambassador's protests reached the King and made him close down his servants' moneyspinner. This play's "device" of a chess game required the company to dress half its opposed characters in black and half in white costumes. Preordained color schemes had been common in masques for a century, but, though some earlier plays had sometimes used symbolic colors, as in stage funerals, the way companies acquired and used costumes would have made designing a whole play according to a symbolic color scheme impossible or difficult,

3^5

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

even supposing that the poets had thought of it and the sharers had agreed. To supply the Black House for A Game at Chess with costumes already in stock would have been easy. Black was commonly worn, and soiled garments could be dyed. But, perhaps because everybody could wear it, especially though not only as mourning, black was not a royal color. For the Black King and Queen, royal robes would therefore have had to be made. White, however, was not much used either in the theatre or in practical life, being mainly restricted to things made of washable linen: smocks and shirts, bands, ruffs and cuffs, baby clothes, and head coverings such as hoods, coifs, veils, and nightcaps. In Michaelmas Term, one sign that Andrew Lethe is an irresponsible prodigal is that he flaunts himself in white satin. Henslowe and Alleyn each inventory one white doublet, and once a white skirt is purchased. In Elizabeth's time some white silks were provided to Revels to make mask costumes. John Arnold hired out a "new black and white mask" in 1572, though this probably meant costumes that combined the colors. Another mask in 1582 used black cypress and white lawn trimming. But all-white costumes do not occur in Revels inventories. If any were made, they must have soon been discarded as "not servishable" or have been redyed. The white silks were more likely to have been used for accessories (like the aprons worn by the "Clowns" circa 1560), or for trimmings and linings, especially those pulled through slashes in doublets, hose, and sleeves. Some surviving descriptions of tiltyard gear and masking mention white garments, so Two Nobk Kinsmen may be realistic when it calls for some fancy dress in white. When the King's Men needed white costumes for Middleton's play, they probably had to have most or all of them made. Having many costumes made en suite for one entertainment was, of course, a distinctive property of the masque. While title page engravings cannot show that a garment is of costly fabric, they can show something of its construction and to some extent of its decoration. The first quarto title page shows ten of the characters, five of each color, three enlarged enough to show considerable detail. Contemporary testimony declares that the Black Knight "'counterfeited [Gondomar's] person to the life, employing a cast suit of his apparel for the purpose'... and much of the play's point would have been lost unless the political figures concerned were imitated as closely as possible; thus the engraving almost certainly shows them as they were costumed on the stage."41 The engraving suggests that the White King resembled the com-

316

ROYAL SERVANTS

pany's own patron, King James himself, but the White Queen looks like Queen Elizabeth. Costumes for them, and for the White Knight (Prince Charles), the White Duke (Buckingham), and the White Bishop (the Archbishop of Canterbury) seem likely to have translated clothes worn by the real persons into white satin, velvet, and cloth of tissue, fabrics of decorum for those of high rank like those used in Wolsey's costume by the Admiral's Men and, years before that, in the costumes for maskers "of great calling" at the court of Queen Elizabeth, Most of the black costumes could quietly disappear into the stock after the play was shut down, but these white garments would be too conspicuous for regular use in the theatre, even if not intolerably soiled after nine days of performances. If they reappeared at all, they probably did so after going to the dyer. Though the King's Men had capital to provide as many costumes as their play needed, and though its success, even curtailed, must have meant profit for everyone, such extravagance for one play is alien to the habits of Elizabethan companies, indeed of most theatres until Madame Vestris and Charles Kean. Designer theatre is expensive theatre now; in the masque and in plays that aped the masque, it was even more expensive in 1624. A Game at Chess, even more than Jonson's indignant "Expostulation," points the way toward the triumph of Inigo Jones over the poets.

3i?

This page intentionally left blank

Conclusion

Dy following the development of costume practices, we can see how the accumulation of costumes affected the scripts of late Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Increased stocks encouraged companies to accept plays which required more changes of costume and more scenes needing elaborate dress, developments which had been impossible until these companies settled in London's permanent theatres with room for presses and chests to store garments. For The Famous Victories of Henry V, the Queen's Men could manage to provide Prince Henry with one unusual gown, and also costumes for his coronation, his victory at Agincourt, and his negotiations with Princess Katherine and her parents. The other characters remained in one costume throughout: King Henry IV appears only in a sick man's costume, the King of France only in royal robes. Except for doubled parts, the basic costumes were modified with a change of accessories to turn a nobleman at court into a nobleman at war, or a workman into a common soldier. For The Troublesome Reign of King John, the King changes outer garments according to what he does: holding council, going to war, being crowned, and dying. There is little sign, however, that the other characters are allowed more than an accessory or a hand property to go with their different activities. In 1588 the Queen's Men could hardly have imagined the wealth of costumes available for the spectacular processions in Shakespeare's Henry VIII, little more than twenty-five years after they had premiered the first known play on English history. Even when, in 1599, Shakespeare discriminated French and English by their apparel in his Henry V, or when he did the same in the next decade for Romans and Egyptians in Antorvy and Cleopatra and for Romans and Volscians in Coriolanus, he is unlikely

319

Costumes and Scripts in the. Elizabethan Theatres

to have imagined the company's investment in a designer wardrobe for the Black and White Houses in A Game at Chess. Although Shakespeare, Heywood, Jonson, and Dekker all took advantage of the increases in company wardrobes, they never abandoned the habits of costume economy which they learned in their early years with the Chamberlain's and the Admiral's Men. Even Jonson, habituated to costume lavishness in the masques he wrote and Jones designed for the Jacobean court, did not demand similar extravagance of the King's Men in the plays he wrote for them in the same years. In these plays it looks almost as if he were reacting against masque extravagance by exaggerated economy with dress in The Alchemist and Catiline. Jonson shows himself still more careful to limit expenditure on garments for Bartholomew Fair, written for Lady Elizabeth's Men, a newly established company whose financiers, the economy-minded Philip Henslowe and Jacob Meade, wrote close monitoring of costume purchases into the company's contract. In The Devil Is an Ass, which uses a cloak alleged to have cost £30, dresses, Fitzdottrel's wife clad "bravely" and develops Wittipol's disguise as "the Spanish Lady" around eagerness for the latest Spanish fashions, Jonson mocks contemporary extravagance on fine clothes but calls for these fine costumes along with many old ones. In his revival of Comical Satire, The Staple of News, Jonson returned to the theme of prodigality on new fashions, but, like Shakespeare before him, balanced new finery with uses for old and worn garments. Dekker, careful of costume economy in his Admiral's Men's days, for Queen Anne's Men arranged the fire effects in If This Be Not a Good Play to take place at a safe distance from the actors, most probably out of concern for damage to their costumes. Heywood made sure that many or even most costumes used in the first of his mythological extravaganzas, for which initial expense must have been high, could be reused for similar scenes in its sequels. Though Middleton and Webster had some experience with the Admiral's Men's costume system before becoming writers for the boy companies, in their later plays for men they became more willing to call for stage finery, presumably because it was so often either on hand or readily available. This is especially visible in the rich garments prescribed for minor characters in The White Devil, and in Middleton's later adaptations of masque and masque costuming for the public stage in The World Toss'd at Tennis and A Game at Chess. Care about costume economy diminishes with the King's Men's younger playwrights, Fletcher, Massinger, Shirley,

320

CONCLUSION

and Davenant. They began writing after the wardrobe had been enriched through years of accumulation, when the company may also have been allowed to keep or at least borrow virtually new masque costumes made of rich fabrics. When Joseph Taylor became Yeoman of the Revels as well as chief actor of the King's Men, this probably de facto permission officially became a company right. The fire which destroyed not only the Fortune Theatre but the Palsgrave's Men's scripts and wardrobe was the principal cause of this company's bankruptcy not long after Alleyn had rebuilt the burned theatre on a grander scale. But the financial disaster may have been worsened by their need to rebuild the wardrobe quickly to something like the scale of that which the fire had consumed. Although no evidence survives for the value of the burned garments, they must have been worth many times more than the £100 or so at which Simon Jewel's will valued the wardrobe of Pembroke's Men in 1593. As can be seen when the Globe burned in 1613, loss of its playhouse did not necessarily ruin a company. The King's Men rebuilt at once, even though they had Blackfriars to fall back on for performance. Probably because the greatest part of their wardrobe was stored at Blackfriars, they suffered very little loss besides the burned building. Alleyn's wealth sufficed both to endow Dulwich College and rebuild the Fortune, but a company without a wardrobe could not long benefit from fine new premises. How many scripts vanished in the flames is unknown; the company seems to have relied heavily on older plays, and in any case current repertory could have been reconstructed from the actors' memories. It was mainly by loss of their costumes that John Chamberlain reported that "the poor companions are undone." The breaking of the company not long after it occupied the new Fortune suggests the accuracy of Chamberlain's assessment. Company extravagance with costumes was probably not the main cause for the instability of late Jacobean and Caroline troupes. After some years in which three adult companies and two boy companies met an increasing demand for dramatic entertainment, even so canny and experienced a manager as Henslowe seems to have thought there was "room for one more," and so backed Lady Elizabeth's Men despite the demise of the boy companies not long before. Attempts by others (such as the Beestons) to set up new companies followed for another quarter century, but these companies were never so stable as the ones surviving from Elizabeth's days. In the 16203 two of these Elizabethan survivors went under; although actors were ready enough to form new combinations, their com-

321

Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres

panics mostly proved ephemeral. Probably the actors' readiness came less from sound appraisal of the market than from a surplus of men belonging to their "quality." During King James's last decade, his men and others were moving from their great public playhouses into smaller theatres for increasing portions of the year. Except for the rebuilt Fortune, these new theatres were all much smaller than the Hope, where the problem for the actors was less one of size than of incompatibility between its use as a playhouse and as a baiting ring. Smaller theatres are clear signs that the potential audience was shrinking. In part this was because puritan antitheatricality was growing among the prosperous middle class. But for many Londoners, theatre going was being priced beyond their means. Both the always-higher admission charged for Blackfriars and other "private" houses, and rising admission prices at the public theatres were bound to exclude the poorest among their former patrons. Entertainment that once cost a penny now cost sixpence or more, and, given Jacobean inflation in general and the rising cost of living in London or at court, fewer nonpuritans could afford to visit any playhouse. Although increased admission charges could make up some of the difference between companies' income and outgo, even as their audiences diminished the companies were spending more on production, and it seems clear that overhead was rising faster than income. Some of the expense resulted from increased numbers of hired actors, but the greater part of it would appear to come from more lavish spending on costumes. For instance, James Shirley's plays, performed mainly in the small "private houses" in Salisbury Court, Drury Lane, and Blackfriars, or at court, commonly require not only rich but current fashion, and for some characters more than one such costume. The founding and foundering of so many companies between 1620 and 1642, and the troubles even of the solidlybased King's Men in the late 16205, show that these companies could not afford to maintain a standard of production approximating the extravagance of the last court masques. The King's Men held out to the end, but the other troupes put out of business in 1642 were johnny-come-latelies. Even the King's Men were by 1642 dependent on royal patronage rather than a public audience, such patronage the 16308 equivalent of government subsidies to theatre in our time. Yet even if the unsettled politics of 1641 had not diminished audiences and even if Parliament had not forbidden plays in 1642, it seems likely that theatre would have ceased to be a profitable business in 16405 Lon-

322

CONCLUSION

don and that companies would have had to return to the simplified conditions of sixteenth century strollers to survive, as in the plague suspension of 1592-94. This, in fact, seems to have been what the surreptitious troupes of the Civil War and Commonwealth years did: small repertories of abbreviated play scripts (the drolls), properties and costumes that could fit into baskets, and mobility to keep ahead of authorities who would stop their playing. Though the suspension lasted far longer than any plague inhibition, it was such economical simplification that preserved something of the actors' tradition until the Restoration.

323

This page intentionally left blank

Notes

Preface i. Communication from Pat Patton, a director at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

i THE COSTUMES QUESTION 1. William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing IV.ii.8o-86. Shakespeare's plays are quoted from The Riverside Shakespeare, G. Blakemore Evans et al. (Boston: Houghton, 1974), and hereafter are cited in the text. 2. George Fullmer Reynolds, The Staging of Elizabethan Plays at the Red Bull Theatre, 1605-1625 (New York: MLA, 1940) 172-79. Reynolds augments the observation of C.J. Sisson on the costume records in Henslowe (Le Gout Public et Le Theatre Elisabethain Jusqu' a Le Mort de Shakespeare [Dijon: Imprimerie Dramatique, 1923]), with a sampling of stage directions for costume from Red Bull Plays. 3. Marie Channing Linthicum, Costume in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Oxford: Clarendon, 1936). Virginia A. LaMar's English Dress in the Age of Shakespeare (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1958) is also glossarial and contains valuable illustrations, but makes no claim to cover the history of fashion during Shakespeare's lifetime or to describe stage costume. 4. Bernard Beckerman, Shakespeare at the Globe 1599-1609 (London: CollierMacmillan, 1966) 197-200. 5. Michael Hattaway, Elizabethan Popular Theatre (London: Routledge, 1986) cites a few entries from Henslowe's records to show the "magnificence" of the actors' appearance, quotes Platter's well-known account of costume purchase from the servants of deceased noblemen who had received rich clothes as legacies, uses

325

NOTES

Peacham's Titus Andronicus drawing and the alleged portrait of Alleyn as Tamburlaine to show that contemporary dress was used for all periods of history, and points out the frequent use of emblematic costumes (pp. 85-89). Elsewhere he mentions how costumes enhance action and words in several key scenes, but otherwise little about costumes; his belief that "the wardrobe-master (tireman) was a powerful and important member of the Chamberlain's Men" with responsibilities like those of a modern stage designer (96-99) and that "leading actors... would have dressed themselvesf;] only hired men and boys would expect to be costumed out of stock" (31) cannot be supported from the available documents. 6. T.W. Craik, The Tudor Interlude (1958; Leicester: The University Press, 1967) 73-

7. David Bevington, From Mankind to Marlowe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962) 97-97. 8. Recognition that actors in doubled parts needed time for the switch is hardly found again until Scott McMillin published Elizabethan Theatre and The Book of Sir Thomas More. Some writers have made impractical assertions about the speed with which Elizabethan actors could change from one complicated costume to another. For instance, William A. Ringler, Jr, asserts that the boy playing Jessica in The Merchant of Venice changed from a woman's costume to a boy's in about a minute while climbing to the upper level for his next entrance, because "Elizabethan actors apparently prided themselves on being quick-change artists, and like some actors today—such as Alec Guinness—delighted in playing multiple roles" (Seventeenth Century Stage 120-21). His statement seems based on Bevington's timings for itinerant players of the previous generation, and on an assumption that their quick-change methods were continued by sedentary professionals after the 15805. The idea that Elizabethan actors doubled roles merely to show personal virtuosity is unwarranted. Indeed, only recently have specific costume problems been considered, problems which might well have affected a play's structure, by provision for onstage characters to stall or delay action to permit a costume change. 9. Hal. H. Smith, "Some Principles of Elizabethan Stage Costume," Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes 25 (1962) 240. 10. David Bevington, Action Is Eloquence: Shakespeare's Language of Gesture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984) 35-54. n. Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses (New York: Garland, 1973) 34. 12. Stephen Gosson, Playes Confuted in Five Actions (New York: Garland, 1972) Sig. E5. 13. Kent T. van den Berg, Playhouse and Cosmos: Shakespearean Theater as Metaphor (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1985) 30.

326

NOTES

14. Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981) 116. 15. John Northbrooke, A Treatise Against Dicing, Dancing, Plays, and Interludes (The Shakespeare Society, 1843) 104. 16. When writers on staging imply that complete costume changes within two or three minutes were the norm, they seem not to recall how many separate items Elizabethan nobles, gentry, and citizens had to button, hook, or tie together whenever they got dressed. Accounts of Elizabethan high fashion prove that its wearers could hardly put on their clothes without help. The inventories of Henslowe and Alleyn clearly indicate that fashionable clothing predominated in the wardrobe of the Admiral's Men, and both Henslowe's Diar^ and many play scripts show the many expedients devised to get around problems of changing costumes held together by complicated fastenings. The archivist of the Stratford, Ontario, Shakespeare Festival told me that a quick costume change in a production of All's Well meant cutting an actress' lace (offstage) during every performance, which added up to a considerable expense for that season. Considering that Cleopatra at once rescinds an order to "cut my lace, Charmian, come!" (Antony 1.111.71) when such an act would have been theatrically effective, it seems unlikely that the unsubsidized Elizabethan public stage indulged in such shortcuts to costume change, and that the actors invented less costly expedients. In The Dutch Courtesan, Beatrice tells the Nurse to "unlace" her at an emotional moment; Marston preferred to forego a moment's spectacle in the interest of economy.

2 CONVENTIONS OF COSTUMES AND COSTUME CHANGES 1. Little in the scripts helps a modern interpreter decide whether to hang the costumes about the stage until needed, place them within reach inside a stage door or "house," have someone offstage reach out to hand them to the actor, or appoint some stage functionary to fetch them on cue. University of Alberta productions of MandYagoZa and Like Will to Like piled costumes on stage "outside" the defined playing space, and the actors made all their changes in sight of the audience in this visible but neutral area. 2. Craik 78-79. 3. Gamini Salgado, ed., Cony-Catchers and Bawdy Baskets (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972) 63. 4. R.A. Foakes, Illustrations of the English Stage, 1580-1642 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985) 168.

327

NOTES

5. Richard Southern says that this play needs more than two actors because he doubts that "a grown-up actor in some way visibly [was] presented as a child... for the simple reason that a child's dress then was in all main features merely a smaller version of a grown-up's dress" (Staging before Shakespeare 131). But this is true only of the seldom-worn "best apparel." A very young child like Dalliance always wore "long coats." A schoolboy like Wanton was "breeched," but played in a coat and hose without an overgarment. An adolescent like Lust and Liking would add a gown or cloak or perhaps a fancier cap to the schoolboy outfit, and only then would his clothing include all the parts an adult wore in public. Neither an adolescent nor an adult wore a gown during brisk activity; at his brother Arthur's wedding the young Prince Henry "cast off his gown and danced in his jacket." This is exactly what happens in Wit and Science when the overheated Wit drops the garment of Science when dancing with Honest Recreation. 6. Glynne Wickham, ed., English Moral Interludes (London: Dent, 1976) 143-4. 7. Philip Henslowe, Diary, eds. R.A. Foakes and R.T. Rickert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961) 328. Hereafter cited in text as Diary. 8. Albert Feuillerat, ed., Revels at Court in the Time of King Edward VI and Queen Mary (1914; Vaduz: Kraus rpt., 1963) 133-34. Hereafter cited in text as Reveb. 9. Celeste Turner Wright, "The Usurer in Elizabethan Literature" SP 31 (1934) 178-79. 10. This edition of Heywood does not number the lines of the plays; citations in the text are to volume and page. u. Scott McMillin believes that Wilson wrote the play for Leicester's Men when it had more than six actors, and that the extant text was revised for six after three of Leicester's players had been taken into the Queen's service. "The Queen's Men and the London Theatre of 1583," in The Elizabethan Theatre, X, ed. C.E. McGee (1983; Port Credit: Meany, 1988) 107. 12. Quoted by Edward I. Berry in Shakespeare's Comic Rites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) 164. 13. Color Plate 7 in The Riverside Shakespeare illustrates funereal attire of several types. Illustrations recording other funerals, and drawings showing proper mourning for persons of different ranks, are found in Phillis Cunnington and Catherine Lucas, Costume for Birt/is, Marriages, and Deaths (London: Black, 1972). 14. Hunter, and Revels 309. 15. Foakes 108. 16. C. Willett Cunnington and Phillis Cunnington, Occupational Costume in England from the Eleventh Century to 1914 (London: Black, 1968) 115. 17. Bevington, Action is Eloquence 179-81.

328

NOTES 18. C. Willett Cunnington and Phillis Cunnington, Handbook of English Costume in the Sixteenth Century (Boston: Plays, 1970) 181. 19. Garrett Mattingly, The Armada (Boston: Houghton, 1959) 5. 20. Lu Emily Pearson, Elizabethans at Home (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957) 580.

3 DOCUMENTS 1. Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. Thomas Hoby (1562; New York: Everyman, 1928) 31. 2. Castiglione 72. 3. Castiglione 85. 4. Castiglione 142. 5. Michael Shapiro, Children of the Revels: The Boy Companies of Shakespeare's Time and Their Plays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977) 20. 6. Marie Axton, The Queen's Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977) 8-10, 61-62. 7. Ben Jonson, Works, eds. C.H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1931-52) 447. Hereafter cited in text as H & S. 8. E.K. Chambers, Elizabethan Stage (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923) 168-208. 9. Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages 1300-1600 II, Vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 1963) 295. 10. Albert Feuillerat, ed., Documents Relating to the Office of the Revels in the Time of Queen Elizabeth (1908; Vaduz: Kraus rpt. 1963) 409. Hereafter cited in text as O.R. Eliz. 11. Church of England, Certain Sermons (Homilies) 211-16. 12. It seems improbable that much of the often-altered and outworn apparel recorded as "taken in fees" by Revels officers would have been saleable as costumes. Of course the officers may have lied about the condition of the things they took, but when something was too cut down for reuse or too shabby for even hired players to wear at court, why players would buy it seems obscure, especially since such or better garments might be "given in reward" after a performance. Henslowe almost never lists as sets what Alleyn calls "antic suits," which resemble the masking attire of courtiers, except for four priest's coats, four torchbearer's suits and four janissary's gowns (Diary, 317). He seldom if ever identifies the seller of a garment bought by the Admiral's Men, but nothing they bought already made matches the fancy-dress apparel recorded in the Revels Accounts except for the unique "maskyngsewtes antycke for the 2 pte of camowlle wollseye" for the very low total

329

NOTES

13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

price of £4 55. Since other sets consist of four costumes, the company probably bought four masking suits at 21 s 3d each, but the seller could as easily have been Kendall and Kirkham or someone like them, not the Revels Office itself. Most of the costume purchases Henslowe records consist of suits, doublets, hose, bodices, skirts, and gowns for men and women, largely made of satin, damask, and velvet and so evidently discards of the well-to-do. Although the Revels officers may be imagined to have acted as brokers with acting companies for courtiers' castoffs, if they did so, no record remains. The evidence that companies of players bought costumes from the Revels Office is, at best, scant in the Revels records; there is none at all in the Henslowe papers. Only when, under James, professional actors were employed for speaking roles and grotesque or comic antimasques were their costumes likely to have come into the possession of the performers, since by this time Revels stored but did not make costumes, and its main duty was to deal with players when they came to perform at court. Chambers, I, 75-76. Wickham 30, 295. "[T]he devils apparell" formed part of a set of "player's gear" inventoried at Worcester Cathedral in 1576 (EES ii. i, 38). Clatterbock's three devil suits seem more like garments from a Corpus Christi or morality play than like outworn masking apparel. Devils were perennial favorites, and their suits must have been in the wardrobe of any professional company. A costume inventory from the 15405 at St. John's College, Cambridge, lists "a black cote hose &. cappe al or one for [th]e devel" and "ij blak develles cootes wth homes" (Sandra Billington, "Sixteenth Century Drama in St. John's College, Cambridge" RES 29 [1978]: 7-8); these do not look like very expensive or elaborate outfits, and might not have differed much from Clatterbock's. LaMar 5, 10, 15, 17, 18, 24, 16, and cover. Josephine Ross, Elizabeth's Suitors (London: Weindenfeld, 1975) 170. Chambers, I, 168. Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) 32. J. Leeds Barroll, Alexander Leggatt, Richard Hosley, & Alvin Kernan. The Revels History of Drama, in English III, 1576-1613 (London: Methuen, 1975) 24. David Galloway, ed., Records of Early English Drama: Norwich (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978) 65. Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage 31. Barroll et al. 25. At Christmas 1582 the Revels Office furnished ten pair of gloves to the Chamberlain's Men for the "history of fferrar" (RO Eliz. 350), probably to both its men and

330

NOTES

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47.

its boys. The Norwich records show that there were ten in Worcester's Company in the summer of 1583, when they were charged with playing against the city's express command. Only the four leaders (probably the sharers) are named in the record, and the rest are their "fellows" (REED: Norwich 65); these may or may not include the company's boys. Muriel Clare Bradbrook, The Rise of the Common Player (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962) 79, 193. Chambers, II, 106. Shapiro 23-25. Greg, ed., Collections I, 3 (Oxford: The Malone Society, 1909) 248. Greg, I, 257-58. Greg, I, 250-51. Greg, I, 255-56. Greg, I, 252-53. Greg, I, 257-59. Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977) 134. Greg, II, 3, 341. Philip Henslowe, Papers, Being Documents Supplementary to Henslowe's Diary, ed. Walter W. Greg (London: A.H. Bullen, 1907) 113; Diary 316. Henslowe, Papers 125. Bernard Beckerman, "Philip Henslowe" in The Theatrical Manager in England America, ed. Joseph W. Donohue, Jr (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971) 40. Henslowe, Papers 31. Beckerman, Theatrical Manager 27. Henslowe, Papers 31. Mary Edmond, "Pembroke's Men," RES (1974) 131. Henslowe, Papers 33. Foakes 150. George Peele, The Dramatic Works II, eds. Frank S. Hook, John Yoklavich, et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961) 7. Once a costume or property had been bought for one play, it would be used in whatever subsequent play it could. A "poopes Miter" in Pope Joan (one 1592 performance) was then available for Doctor Faustus, first recorded for the Admiral's Men in September 1594. B. Iden Payne, Life in a Wooden O: Memoirs of the Theatre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977) 10.

331

NOTES

48. Ann Jennalie Cook, The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare's London (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981) 74. 49. C. Willett Cunnington and Phillis Cunnington, The History of Underclothes. Revised by A.D. Mansfield and Valerie Mansfield (London: Black, 1981) 31. 50. Linthicum 197. 51. Beckerman, Theatrical Manager 46. 52. Beckerman, Theatrical Manager 38-39. 53. Beckerman, Theatrical Manager 42-43. 54. Henslowe, Papers 23. 55. Henslowe, Papers 85. 56. Sir John Harington, Nugae Antiquae (1779; Hildesheim: Olms, 1968) 9. 57. Cook 74. 58. Thomas Dekker, Selected Prose Writings, ed. E.D. Pendry (London: Arnold, 1967) 99. 59. Radford, Dover, and "the tailor in the borough" were trusted to make fine stage clothes, but Henslowe himself may not have patronized them. In November 1598, one Charles Rose, servant to tailor William Pullford of Paul's Churchyard, acknowledged that he had "bargained and soulde vnto phillip Henshlowe of St Saviours in the County of Surrey gent one dublett & a paire of rownd hose of cloath of gould layde thicke wth blacke silke lace in open markett... in consideration of Iviijs in currant Englishe money," with Robert Shaw as witness (Diary 261-62). This is connected to the Admiral's Men only by Shaw's signature, so Henslowe may have been buying finery for himself. If, as was common, Henslowe had furnished Pullford with the fabric to be made up, then he was paying three times the rate charged by the company's tailors for similar work. He may, however, have been making a final payment on a suit costing rather more, or buying secondhand or undelivered finery. He himself sold clothes of his own through one of his pawn agents, Goody Watson, including broadcloth and fustian Venetians, a "payer of breches fuschen payned & layd with gowld lace," and a fustian doublet "cvtt vpon grene sylke" (44). Perhaps he felt uneasy about selling his own clothes to the players at his theatre, or perhaps his price was higher than they were willing to pay.

4 THE COMPANIES OF THE 15908 i. Alfred Harbage and S. Schoenbaum, Annals of EngUsh Drama, 975-1700 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964) 52-53.

332

NOTES

2. Henslowe's 1598 inventory lists costumes for such chief characters as "Harey the fyfte" (whether from The Famous Victories, or a play now lost), "longe-shanckes," and "Tamberlane." He probably means the most distinctive costumes worn in these roles, for in both Edward I and Tamburlaine the title characters change costume more than once. 3. C.W. Cunnington and P. Cunnington 205. 4. Foakes 107-08. 5. Editors add [aU in white] to the direction for his entry in the second scene of Act IV, a reasonable analogy to the direction "all in scarlet" in Scene iv and the direction "all in black, and very melancholy" at the beginning of Act V. 6. See David M. Bergeron, ed., Pageantry in the Shakespearean Theater (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985) 104-08. 7. Strong, The Cult pf Elizabeth 36-37, 55. 8. By the time the Admiral's Men were back in business after the Isle of Dogs inhibition and the Pembroke's defection, Stukeky may have been dropped from the repertory, for with so many new plays in 1598 they were unlikely to have revived it. 9. Thomas Dekker, Dramatic Works IV, ed. Fredson Bowers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955) 119-20. 10. Perhaps a sheet or two from another play was mixed among the pages, for near the end of Downfall Leicester enters in arms to announce Richard's return and challenges John's claim to the English crown with a long story of how Richard won his surname "Coeur de Lion." This narrative is in a style different from the rest of the play; the Garland editor suggests it may have been by someone other than Chettle or Munday (Huntingdon Plays 509), perhaps a survival from The Funeral of Richard Coeur de Lion, in which not only Munday and Chettle but also Wilson and Drayton had a hand. Drayton seems the most likely of the four to have produced Leicester's richly detailed eloquence. Possibly the speech substituted for a real skin, although Henslowe lists "j lyone skin" (Diary 319) in the 1598 inventory; perhaps something happened to the skin between the inventory and the production of The Funeral later in the year. In Shakespeare's King John, Faulconbridge's recurrent "calves skin" taunt of Austria may refer to an unsatisfactory imitation, about as convincing as Tenniel's Mock Turtle. Queen Anne's Men seem to have taken very good care of the lion skin they owned in 1611, for in Heywood's Silver Age, though Hercules fetches "the Lyons head and slcinne" and announces he will wear it as his armor when slaying other monsters (Heywood III, 131), he seems not to wear it for violent action scenes later in The Silver Age or in the part of The Brazen Age concerned with the Argonauts, Laomedon, Omphale, and his own death. When Lychas alone can carry "the Trophies of his twelve labors" in "A shew"

333

NOTES

n.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

(III, 239), though twelve Princes bear them for Hercules' later sacrifice, we can take it that these "Trophies" were emblems, not the heads, hides, and monsters actually taken. The "trusse," a close-fitting upper garment like a sleeved waistcoat, seems to have been worn by clerics earlier in the sixteenth century. Ridley had one at the time of his condemnation (Foxe, quoted in OED). Henslowe inventories a "pendante trusser" (Diary 318) but singles out "the fryers trusse in Roben Hood" (323) as if it were unlike other men's waistcoats of the 15905. In the 1620 translation of Boccaccio, a friar is said to have been "stript into his Trusse and straite Strouces" (quoted OED, "strouse"). When Friars Crab and Cole in Lust's Dominion give Philippe and Mendoza their gowns, they enter "in Trouses," but the plural perhaps indicates not "trusses" but underdrawers, as in The Staple of News, where Pennyboy Junior first enters "in his gowne, wastecoat, and trouses" (Li.2 SD). Sometimes the word begins with "t," sometimes with "s." The "iij payer of red strasers" in Henslowe's inventory look like a set, and since they are on a line with "iij fares gowne of buckrome" (Diary 317), they may be nether garments for fairies; "ij payer of black strocers" (318) seem likely to have been the close-fitting breeches worn by poor men or "wild Irish" rather than undergarments. The echo in the subtitle of Jonson's Cynthia's Revels or The Fountain of Self Love may indicate something of the tone of Chapman's play, which Jonson is bound to have known since he was writing for the Admiral's Men at the time of its production and since his friendship with Chapman probably began through their association with this company. Cunnington and Lucas, Costume for Births, Marriages, and Deaths 264-66. The distribution of black clothes in extravagant quantity was a recognized part of an earl's funeral in the late sixteenth century. "When Edward Earl of Rutland went to his grave in 1587 he was accompanied by about 560 persons, including 50 poor men, 150 of his lordship's yeomen and grooms, 80 gentlemen of the county" (Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy [Oxford: Clarendon, 1965] 573). When his successor died only a year later, Burghley advised that "Blackes should be provided for the widow, her sons and daughters and also for the gentlemen and yeomen that are ordinarily in the house" but not for any others. As it was, more cloaks were wanted, and supplied; even so, an agent grumbled that "the allowance was meaner than has been at any funeral for many years" (Cunnington and Lucas, Costumes for Births, Marriages, and Deaths 222-23). Alexander Leggatt, Citizen Comedy in the Age of Shakespeare (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973) 7. Andrew Gurr, "Who Strutted and Bellowed?" Shakespeare Survey 16 (1963) 960°.

334

NOTES 17. Ennis Rees, "Chapman's Blind Beggar and the Marlovian Hero" JEGP 57, 60; Millar MacLure, George Chapman: A Critical Study (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966) 83-85. 18. Since the Boy, like Moth in Love's Labours Lost, is put out of his part by the jeering stage audience, the scene may be mocking real amateur shows of this kind. 19. Alan Dessen, Elizabethan Drama and the Viewer's Eye (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977) 74. 20. David Wiles, Shakespeare's Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) 73-74. William Ringler thinks that Two Gentlemen needs a cast of ten to accommodate "the specified speaking parts of the second and third outlaws in IV, i, V, 3, and V, 4" but could otherwise be played by "five men and three boys" (Seventeenth Century Stage 124). He seems to believe that the three actors assigned these roles would have to put on full costume to play them. In fact, these are the kinds of parts which could be assumed by muffling in a cloak. The actor of Launce could play one, the actor of Speed a second, and the actor of Valentine a third. Since Outlaws 2 and 3 "follow him that's fled" (that is, Eglamour, who simply vanishes) while the exit of Outlaw i with Silvia is delayed for four more lines, either Outlaw 2 or 3 could drop his cloak and get to the other door in time to reenter as Valentine. There is no reason for three outlaws to fetch in the duke and Thurio, so their captors could be played by the actors of Launce and Speed, still cloaked and without anything to say. Probably they are to kneel when Valentine procures their pardon from the duke, then lead the concluding exit. 21. The deployment of actors is inefficient for doubling. In the first scene there are only two speakers, Egeon and Duke Solinus, but a fair number of attendants, one identifiable as a Jailor. I.ii needs four speakers, II. i needs three, II. ii., four, five appear in Hl.i (including Antipholus E. for the first time), four in Hl.ii, six in IV. i, three in IV. ii and iii. Then in IV. iv there are eight speakers, and in Act V there are eleven in addition to a mute but identifiable Headsmen, and guards with halberds. Of the characters progressively introduced throughout the play, only Merchant i, Balthasar, and Pinch disappear after their single appearance so that they could be played by the actor of some other role. The boy assigned to Luce, whose appearance on stage is a matter of controversy, could easily play the Courtesan, as there is ample time for a costume change, but the Abbess appears only in the last scene, where boys are needed not only for the undemanding role of the Courtesan but for the two principal women, Adriana and Luciana. Yet the Abbess is a role which needs vocal skill and stage presence, so that it could not be palmed off onto the newest apprentice. Perhaps the part went to one of the men

335

NOTES

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

in the company, if the theory that men played old women is correct. Even such tyro work as Two Gentlemen arranges roles to get maximum use of eight available players, and the early histories usually dated earlier than Errors deploy players far more efficiently in far more roles. The usual date for Comedy of Errors places it in the period when Shakespeare was writing for a men's company. All its recorded performances are by men, with boys taking only women's parts. The topical allusion on which most attempts at dating hinge, "France... making war against her heir," belongs to what looks like an expansion of Dromio S.'s part when the role went to Kempe after 1594. But the play's lack of an efficient doubling scheme and the sudden multiplication of characters on stage in the two final scenes suggest that it was not originally written for a professional company circa 1588-90, while the casting suggests that Shakespeare did not have to make effective use of a dozen men and four boys as he does in Richard III and Romeo and Juliet. Perhaps Comedy of Errors was first written for the boys of a school, and was revised by the addition of some topicalities and the expansion of one of the clown parts when Shakespeare joined such a large urban company as Strange's Men, or even when he became a sharer in the Chamberlain's. While the Chamberlain's Men would have had no trouble with the play (since the twelve men and four boys who played Romeo and Juliet could easily handle eighteen speaking parts and as many mutes as any scene needs) no play Shakespeare wrote for them distributes the roles as does this one; with a similar structure, Midsummer Night's Dream deploys its actors in twenty-two speaking parts evenly from beginning to end, with no awkwardness in the costume changes. Cunnington and Lucas, Costume for Births, Marriages, and Deaths 92. Ringler, Seventeenth Century Stage 131. Nothing in the text directly says Marcade's costume is black. Certainly he is not supposed to be wearing anything so obvious as a mourning gown, since the princess greets him with a simple "Welcome." Yet her next line, "But that thou interrupt'st our merriment" (V. 1.735), probably implies that something in his appearance is not consonant with hilarity, and since he does not need to complete his message before she understands it, commentators and producers who assume black for him are probably correct. Foakes 119. Wiles 135. Annals 66-78. Dessen, Elizabethan Stage Conventions 39. Shapiro 8-9. Reavley Gair, The Children of Pauls: The Story of a Theatre Company, 1553-1608 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 67.

336

NOTES

30. Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth 63, 131; Alan R. Young, Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Sheridan House, 1987) 155. 31. English Dress in the Age of Shakespeare 15. 32. Blackfriars was also convenient to some of the Company suppliers: such as the feathermakers who plied their trade there, near the dwellings of their fashionable customers, and very probably to their tiremaker. Shakespeare's residence with Christopher Mountjoy's family does not need Schoenbaum's attempt to find a personal connection through "his friends the Fields" and "the French church in London" (Life 260); "tires" were worn not only by ladies of rank but by actors playing them, so Mountjoy may have made tires not only for Queen Elizabeth but also for the Chamberlain's/King's Men. 33. Compare Wayne A. Rebhorn, "The Crisis of the Aristocracy in Julius Caesar," Renaissance Quarterly 43, I (1990) 79-89. 34. Stone 459-62. 35. Stone 572-77. 36. Cunnington and Lucas, Costume for Births, Marriages, and Deaths 206, 215. 37. Tilts and barriers were part of court life all over Europe in Shakespeare's time. Jacques Callot's "Combat a la Barriere" (in my possession) shows a challenger engaged with one opponent while fourteen others wait their turn. All are wearing full plate from the waist up, with closed helmets ornamented with different kinds of plume, but below the waist they wear skirtlike "bases" reaching to the midthigh or knee, stockings and either garters with large bows and pumps or knee-high buskins with elaborate ties. The nether part of the costume differs not at all from men's dancing suits in Inigo Jones's designs for masques. 38. Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth 129. 39. Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth 133. 40. Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth 139. 41. Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth 131-33. 42. Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth 137. 43. Martin Holmes, Shakespeare and His Players (London: Murray, 1972) 159-63. 44. Ann Slater sees this opening as a shock since, on the analogy of Henry VI Part I, she thinks the mourning would have signaled to the audience that the play was to be a tragedy (Shakespeare the Director 176). In fact, one Renaissance definition of comedy says that it begins with sorrow or perturbation and ends with joy, and comedies which open with a death, an assumed death, a threat of death, or even a funeral, are not infrequent: e.g., A Knack to Know an Honest Man, Comedy of Errors, Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Antonio and Mellida, The Honest Whore Part I, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest. All's Well is

337

NOTES thus quite normal, even if its beginning "all in black" goes beyond what these other plays present. 45. The King's Men in Caroline times played relatively few new plays (only about four a year at Blackfriars after circa 1620), and retained old plays, especially by Shakespeare, Jonson, and Fletcher, in their continuing repertory (Sturgess 6062). Since their membership turnover was so slow, it seems likely that this late practice was handed down as a company policy, and may have dated from the company's formation. 46. Co/lections VI 28-37.

5 THEATRE FOR ELITES 1. Shapiro 23-24. 2. C.W. Wallace, The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars 1597-1603 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1908) 80, note 4. 3. Shapiro 15-16. 4. Shapiro 14. 5. Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908) 91-92. 6. Shapiro 18, 25. 7. Shapiro 57. 8. Shapiro 181-87. 9. Gair 21-23, II3-17. 10. Gair 56- 57, italics supplied. II. Philip J. Finkelpearl, John Marston of the Middle Temple (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969) 87. 12. Gair 118, 116. 13. Gair 172-74. 14. Jane Ashelford, A Visual History of Costume: The Sixteenth Century (London: Batsford, 1983) 16. 15. Collections II 3. 16. Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth 30. 17. The lady's masque dress reproduced in A Book of Masques (fig. 42, left) is not a Blackness design and may never have gone further than the drawing, but its sheer fabric and its bodice's mimicry of nakedness might keep it off prime time television even today. If this at all resembles what the Queen and her ladies wore in Blackness, then Carleton's shock is understandable, although the one surviving

338

NOTES

drawing of a Blackness costume leads Herford and Simpson to call Carleton's criticism "absurd" (X, 450). 18. W.J. Lawrence, Shakespeare's Workshop (Boston: Houghton, 1928) 32 ff.

6 ROYAL SERVANTS 1. McMillin82. 2. J.W. Williamson, The Myth of the Conqueror: Prince Henry Stuart: A Study of Seventeenth Century Personation (New York: AMS, 1978) 33-35. 3. Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth 28, 40-41. 4. Alan Dessen, Elizabethan Stage Conventions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) in. 5. Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth 104. 6. Though the theatre of its production might have. The village of Hogsdon or Hoxton was a short distance north of London, handier for holiday-makers on foot than Brentford or Ware. The location may suggest that it was more likely to have been written for a north-side theatre—Boar's Head in Middlesex, the Curtain in Shoreditch, or the Red Bull in Clerkenwell—than for the south-bank Rose. The same seems likely for Fair Maid of the Exchange (doubtfully Heywood's) which is localized between the Exchange in Cornhill and the neighborhood outside Aldgate at the east end of London, a slender argument for production at the Curtain rather than the Rose or the Red Bull. Since the existing text does not advertise a company or even that it "hath been acted" and since it claims that "Eleaven may easily acte" it, with a doubling scheme, it may have been published like the "offered for acting" scripts of the previous century. 7. Holmes 116. 8. Holmes 153-55. 9. Foakes 96-97. 10. Dessen, Elizabethan Stage Conventions 16-17. II. Richard Southern, Changeable Scenery: Its Origin and Development in the English Theatre (London: Faber, 1952) 29-30, 40. 12. Foakes 102-3. 13. Webster's explanation for why The White Devil failed at the Red Bull charitably speaks of performance at "so dull a time of winter... in so open and black a theatre" and on the emptiness of the house, and only then that "it wanted... a full and understanding auditory" ("To the Reader," 4-7), as if bad weather and a small audience accounted for the failure and not audience distaste. As Muriel

339

NOTES

14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20. 21.

Bradbrook observes, The White Devil, like The Duchess afMalfi, is the kind of play that needed an intimate theatre and an audience made up of Hamlets, not of apprentices from the workshops of Clerkenwell. The purchase of plays from outsiders fell off when Fletcher succeeded Shakespeare as company poet, although Fletcher regularly worked with collaborators and the King's Men still bought scripts from freelancers like Webster, Middleton, and Jonson. Slater 157, 161. Two of the three productions I have seen dressed her in a nun's habit, one making her change from this to a coquettish pink dress after agreeing to the bed trick, the other keeping her throughout in a rope-girdled sackcloth gown and a matching veil. The Utah Shakespeare Festival's 1980 production was correct in clothing her in a plain, dark, but nonmonastic Renaissance costume throughout the play. According to Sr Marion Norman IBVM, nuns of her order in early seventeenth century England dressed like other gentlewomen but without ornaments, though Shakespeare may not have known this. A commonly-worn style of knee breeches was known as "Venetians"; Edward Alleyn inventoried his hose as "frenchose" and Venetians, needing no other description, and almost a decade before Alleyn's inventory Nashe wrote that Gabriel Harvey usually wore them. It is possible that, as costumes from Merchant of Venice overlapped needs for Othello and The Malcontent and costumes from Othello overlapped needs for Volpone, so those from Volpone did serve some of the needs of The Revenger's Tragedy, whose Italian setting is otherwise vague. In fact, many of the eccentricities of its production could be handled with garments and properties from a variety of earlier plays, including not only Volpone but also The Malcontent and Hamlet. The most important acquisition by the King's Men for The Revenger's Tragedy must have been the eight masquing suits worn for the multiple murders of its last act. Although later plays by this company did include masques, none of them needs eight suits alike, and their presence here and in Macbeth could indicate that, like the boy actors at Blackfriars, the King's Men may have hired them from Kendall or someone like him. As with the eight masquing suits of The Revenger's Tragedy, this assortment of royal robes may not have been a company investment but hired or borrowed from Revels. Linda Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature ofWomenkind 1540-1650 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984) 144-45. Foakes 105. In The Staple of News (1626), Pennyboy Junior enters wearing a night-gown over waistcoat and underdrawers, and is put into breeches and doublet on the stage.

340

NOTES

22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32.

33.

34. 35.

But in similar dressing scenes in Every Man Out (1599) and Eastward Ho! (1605), Fungoso and Quicksilver have on their hose when they enter. Slater 157. Slater 161. Holmes 157. Personal communication from Frances Teague. The play does use clothes not only in its imagery but also symbolically, as when Duncan's royal robes (that he seems to be wearing in the council of the second scene and for his ceremonial arrival at Macbeth's castle) reappear on Macbeth's back in Act III when he enters as King. Duncan's role in the play is small, possibly assigned to one of the bigger hired men of the company; it is an attractive conjecture that his robes, at least, were too long for Burbage as Macbeth. This "messenger" is a liveried household servant, not the man who is said to have outridden Macbeth to announce his coming and is "almost dead for breath" (I.v.36). In Macbeth, ed. Kenneth Muir (London: Methuen, 1984) 165. What Elizabethans called "naked" on stage may be inferred from the picture of Hieronymo discovering Horatio's corpse on the Spanish Tragedy title page, a disordered shirt pulled loose from the hose. In the dumb-show's costume change, pontificals could hardly go over a cardinal's voluminous robes, especially if made of satin and velvet like the Wolsey costume the Admiral's Men bought in 1601. The change could have been eased if one dumb-show devil removed Borgia's cardinal's robe and the other his fellow-devil's papal garb. While this devil helped Borgia with the pontificals, the other might put on his cardinal's outfit. Holmes 155-56. Holmes 155. At the Birmingham Repertory Theatre's 1954 Pericles Diana stood at the centre of a projected "glory" that rippled across the screen behind her; the effect was dizzying, not to say distracting. It is not certain that Timon was ever performed; the Folio version is an unfinished play, printed from papers more "foul" than were any of the others. But whether or not it reached the stage, Shakespeare's costume indications show what he knew the company owned or would secure by purchase or rental at his direction. Foakes 102, 105, 109, 112, 115, 118. A textiles expert at the University of Texas (who did not give her name) told me that it is possible to remove blood from leather and unwashable fabrics by manipulation and rubbing, which her students had done with a motorcyclist's blood-

341

NOTES

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

soaked leather suit after an accident, but that the procedure took a very long time and might break the weave or wear off the nap of silks. Stephen V. Grancsay, Arms and Armor: Essays from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin: 1920-1964 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986) 244. The Winter's Tale, ed. J.H.P. Pafford (London: Methuen, 1963) xxii; 69, note 58. Foakes 109-10. Inga-Stina Ewbank, "These Pretty Devices': A Study of Masques in Plays," in A Book of Masques (1967; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) 416. Sir Henry Wotton, quoted in The Riverside Shakespeare 976. Foakes 123. J.M. Moore identifies the White Queen with Anne of Denmark, quoting J.R. Planche's British Costumes that "The portrait of Anne... exactly resembles, in the general character of the dress, that of Queen Elizabeth," which he attributes to Holbein. ("The Contemporary Significance of Middleton's Game at Chesse" PMLA 50 [1935]: 762.) Whether or not the face resembles that of Anne, who had been dead for four years at the time of Middleton's play, the costume is like those in late miniatures of Elizabeth, who fought the Spaniards, and who therefore seems a more likely White Queen than Anne, who had favored them.

342

Bibliography

1 he following list of works consulted is divided into three parts. The first consists of plays examined or mentioned, the second, documents other than plays, the third, secondary sources. In some cases, it has seemed advantageous to consult more than one edition of a work; when this occurs, the edition cited first is the one from which all quotations are taken. ABBREVIATIONS Annals

Harbage & Schoenbaum, Annals of English Drama

Collections

Maione Society Collections

Cult

Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth

Diary

Henslowe, Diary. Ed. Foakes &. Rickert

EES

Wickham, Early English Stages

ES

Chambers, Elizabethan Stage

H &S

Jonson, Works. Ed. Herford and Simpson

Revels

Revels at Court in the Time of Edward VI and Queen Mary. Ed. Feuillerat

RO Eliz

Documents Relating to the Office

of the Revels in the Time of Queen

Elizabeth. Ed. Feuillerat

PLAYS Adams, J.Q., ed. Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas. Cambridge: Houghton, 1904. Bale, John. Dramatic Writings. Ed. John S. Farmer. 1907. Guildford: Traylor, n.d. Barnes, Barnabe. The Devil's Charter. Ed. Jim Pogue. New York: Garland, 1983. Barry, Lording. Ram Alley. Ed. Claude E. Jones. Louvain: Wystpruyst, 1952. Battle of Alcazar. Ed. W.W. Greg. Oxford: Maione, 1906.

343

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beaumont, Francis. Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, in A Book of Masques. 1967. Cambridge University Press, 1980. Beaumont, Francis, John Fletcher, et al. Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon. Ed. Fredson Bowers et al. 8 vols. Cambridge University Press, 1966. Brooke, C.F. Tucker, ed. The Shakespeare Apocryphya. Oxford: Clarendon, 1908. Chapman, George. Plays: The Comedies. Ed. Allan Holaday et al. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970. . Plays: The Tragedies. Ed. Allan Holaday et al. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1987. Chettle, Henry. Tragedy of Hoffman. Ed. Harold Jenkins. Oxford: Malone, 1950 (1951)Chettle, Henry, and John Day, Blind Beggar of Bednatt Green. 1914. New York: AMS, 1970. Clyomon and Ckmydes. Ed. W.W. Greg. Oxford: Malone, 1913. Cobbler' s Prophecy. Ed. A.C. Wood. Oxford: Malone, 1914. Cooke, J. Greene's Tu Quoque. Ed. Alan J. Berman. New York: Garland, 1984. Daborne, Robert. A Christian Turned Turk. 1612. STC Reel 830. . The Poor Man's Comfort. Ed. Kenneth Palmer. Oxford: Malone, 1955. Day, John. The Isle of Gulls. Ed. Raymond S. Burns. New York: Garland, 1980. . Law Tricks. Ed. John Crow. Oxford: Malone, 1950. Day, John, William Rowley and George Wilkins. The Travels of the Three English Brothers, in Works. Ed. A.H. Bullen, 1881. Dekker, Thomas. Dramatic Works. Ed. Fredson Bowers. 4 vols. Cambridge University Press, 1955. Edwards, Richard. Damon and Pithias. Eds. Arthur Brown and P.P. Wilson. Oxford: Malone, 1957. The Fair Maid ofBristoui. 1912. New York: AMS, 1970. The Famous Historye of Captain Thomas Stukeley. Eds. Judith C. Levinson and G.R. Proudfoot. Oxford: Malone, 1974. Fraser, Russell, and Norman Rabkin, eds. Drama of the English Renaissance: I. The Tudor Period: 11. The Stuart Period. New York: Macmillan, 1976. Gammer Gurton's Needle. Ed. John S. Farmer. 1906. Guildford: Traylor, n.d. Garter, Thomas. The Commody of the Moste Vertuous and Godlye Susanna. Eds. B. Ifor Evans and W.W. Greg. Oxford: Malone, 1936 (1937). George a Greene. Eds. F.W. Clark & W.W. Greg. Oxford: Malone, 1911. Greene, Robert. Alphonsus King of Aragon, 1599. Oxford: Malone, 1926. . Orlando Furioso: A Textual Study with an Elizabethan Text. Ed. Tetsumaro Hayashi. Muncie, Ind.: Ball State University, 1973.

344

BIBLIOGRAPHY

. The Scottish History of James IV. Eds. A.E.H. Swaen and W.W. Greg. Oxford: Malone, 1921. Happe', Peter, ed. Tudor Interludes. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. Haughton, William. Englishmen for My Money. Ed. W.W. Greg. Oxford: Malone, 1912. Heywood, Thomas. Dramatic Works. 1874. New York: Russell and Russell, 1964. Hyckscorner. 1908. New York: AMS, 1970. Ingelond, Thomas. The Disobedient CMd. Ed. John S. Farmer. 1905. Guildford: Traylor, 1966. Jack juggler. Ed. Eunice Lillian Smart. Oxford: Malone, 1933. Jacob and Esau. Eds. John Crow and P.P. Wilson. Oxford: Malone, 1956. Jonson, Ben. Works. Eds. C.H. Herford, and Percy and Evelyn Simpson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1931-52. A Knock to Know an Honest Man. Ed. H. De Vocht. Oxford: Malone, 1910. A Knock to Know a Knave. Ed. G.R. Proudfoot. Oxford: Malone, 1963. Kyd, Thomas. The Spanish Tragedy (1592). Eds. W.W. Greg and D. Nichol Smith. Oxford: Malone, 1949. A Lorum for London. Ed. W.W. Greg. Oxford: Malone, 1913. Liberality and Prodigality. Ed. W.W. Greg. Oxford: Malone, 1921. Lodge, Thomas. The Wounds of Civil War. Ed. Joseph W. Houppert. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969. Lodge, Thomas, and Robert Greene. A Looking Glass for London and England. Ed. Joseph W. Houppert. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969. Look About You. Ed. Richard S.M. Hirsch. New York: Garland, 1980. Lyly, John. Gallathea and Midas. Ed. Anne Begor Lancashire. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969. . Plays. Ed. Carter A. Daniel. Lewisburg: Buchnell University Press, 1988. The Maid's Metamorphosis. 1912. New York: AMS, 1970. Marlowe, Christopher. Complete Plays and Poems. Eds. E.D. Pendry and J.C. Maxwell. London: Dent, 1976. Marston, John. Pla;ys. Ed. H. Harvey Wood. Edinburgh: Oliver &. Boyd, 1936. . Antonio and Mellida i & 2 [Antonio's Revenge]. Ed. W.W. Greg. Oxford: Malone, 1922. . The Dutch Courtesan. Ed. M.L. Wine. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965. . The Fawn. Ed. Gerald A. Smith. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965. . The Malcontent. Ed. M.L. Wine. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964.

345

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Massinger, Philip. Plays. Ed. Colin Gibson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Middleton, Thomas. A Mad World, My Masters. Ed. Standish Henning. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965. . Michaelmas Term. Ed. Richard Levin. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966. . The Phoenix. Ed. John Bradbury Brooks. New York: Garland, 1980. . Works. Ed, A.H. Bullen. 8 vols. 1885. New York: AMS, 1964. . Your Five Gallants. Ed. C. Lee Colegrove. New York: Garland, 1979. Munday, Anthony, et al. The Huntingdon Plays: The Downfall and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. Ed. John Carney Meagher. New York: Garland, 1980. . John a Kent and John a Cumber. Oxford: Malone, 1923. . The Life of Sir John Oldcastle 1600. Ed. Percy Simpson. Oxford: Malone, 1908. Nashe, Thomas. Have With You to Saffron Walden in Works. Ed. R.B. McKerrow. Oxford 1958. Nobody and Somebody. Ed. David L. Hay. New York: Garland, 1980. Peele, George. The Dramatic Works. Ed. Frank S. Hook, John Yoklavich, et al. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961. Pickering, John. Interlude of Vice (Horestes). Ed. Daniel Seltzer. Oxford: Malone, 1962. Porter, Henry. The Two Angry Women of Abingdon. Ed. Marianne Brish Evett. New York: Garland, 1980. Preston, Thomas. Cambises in Fraser and Rabkin, Drama of the English Renaissance, supra. R.B. Apius and Virginia 1575. Eds. Ronald B. McKerrow and W.W. Greg. Oxford: Malone, 1911. The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune. Ed. W.W. Greg. Oxford: Malone, 1930. Rowley, Samuel. When You See Me, You Know Me. Ed. P.P. Wilson. Oxford: Malone, 1952. Schell, Edgar T., and J.D. Shuchter, eds. English Morality Plays and Moral Interludes. New York: Holt, 1969. Selimus 1594. Ed. W. Bang. Oxford: Malone, 1908 (1909). Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G.Blakemore Evans et al. Bos' ton: Houghton, 1974. . Comedy of Errors. Ed. R.A. Foakes. London: Methuen, 1962. . Hamlet. Ed. Harold Jenkins. London: Methuen, 1982. . Measure for Measure. Ed. J.W. Lever. London: Methuen, 1965.

346

BIBLIOGRAPHY

. Pericles. Ed. F.D. Hoeniger. London: Methuen, 1963. . Taming of the Shrew. Ed. Brian Morris. London: Methuen, 1981. . Troilus and Cressida. Ed. Kenneth Palmer. London: Methuen, 1982. . The Winter's Tale. Ed. J.H.P. Pafford. London: Methuen, 1963. Sharpham, Edward. The Fleer. Ed. Hunold Nibbe. 1912. Vaduz: Kraus, 1963. Shirley, James. The Triumph of Peace, in Dramatic Works and Poems. Ed. Alexander Dyce, 1833. Somerset, J.A.B., ed. Four Tudor Interludes. London: Athlone, 1974. Swetnam the Woman-Hater [Arraigned by Women]: The Controversy and the Play. Ed. Coryl Crandall. Purdue University Studies, 1969. Tennenhouse, Leonard, ed. The Tudor Interludes: Nice Wanton and Impatient Poverty. New York: Garland, 1984. Thomas of Woodstock. Eds. George Parfitt and Simon Shepherd. Nottingham University Press, 1977. Troublesome Reign of King John. Ed. J.W. Sider. New York: Garland, 1979. Tydeman, William, ed. Four Tudor Comedies. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984. Udall, Nicholas. [Rafe]

Roister-Doister. Ed. W.W. Greg. Oxford: Malone, 1934

(i935)Wager, Lewis. The Life and Repentance of Mary Magdalene. Ed. Frederic Ives Carpenter. University of Chicago Press, 1904. Wager, W. The Longer Thou Livest and Enough is as Good as a Feast. Ed. R. Mark Benbow. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967. Wapull, George. The Tide Tarrieth No Man, in English Morality Plays and Moral Interludes. Eds. Edgar T. Schell and J.D. Shuchter. New York: Holt, 1969. A Warning for Fair Women. Ed. Charles Dale Cannon. The Hague: Mouton, 1975. Webster, John. Selected Plays. Eds. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Wever, Richard. Lusty Juventus. Ed. Helen Scarborough Thomas. New York: Garland, 1982. Wickham, Glynne, ed. English Moral Interludes. London: Dent, 1976. W[ilmot], R[obert]. Tancred and Gismund 1591-2. Ed. W.W. Greg. Oxford: Malone, 1914. W[ilson], R[obert]. Cooler's Prophecy. 1594. (Oxford: Malone, 1914). . Three Ladies of London. 1911. New York: AMS, 1970. . Three Lords and Three Ladies of London. 1912. New York: AMS, 1970. The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypod. Ed. M.N. Matson. New York: Garland, 1980. Woodstock: A Moral History. Ed. A.P. Rossiter. London: Chatto and Windus, 1946.

347

BIBLIOGRAPHY DOCUMENTS Feuillerat, Albert, ed. Documents Relating to the Office of the Revels in the Time of Queen Elizabeth. 1908. Vaduz: Kraus rpt, 1963. . Revels at Court in the Time of King Edward VI and Queen Mary. 1914. Vaduz: Kraus rpt, 1963. Galloway, David, ed. Records of Early English Drama: Norwich. University of Toronto Press, 1978. Gosson, Stephen. Playes Confuted in Five Actions. New York: Garland, 1972. Greg, W.W., Ed. Collections. Oxford: Malone, 1909. 3rd ed. Henslowe, Philip. Diary. Ed. R.A. Foakes and R.T. Rickert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961. . Papers, Being Documents Supplementary to Henslowe's Diary. Ed. Walter W. Greg. London: A.M. Bullen, 1907. Herbert, Sir Henry. The Dramatic Records. Ed. J.Q. Adams, 1917. New York: Benjamin Blom, n.d.

SECONDARY SOURCES Akrigg, G.P.V. Jacobean Pageant: The Court of King James I. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962. Ascham, Roger. The Scholemaster. Ed. R.J. Schoeck. London: Dent, 1966. Ashelford, Jane. A Visual History of Costume: The Sixteenth Century. London: Batsford, 1983. Axton, Marie. The Queen's Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession. London: Royal Historical Society, 1977. Barish, Jonas. The Antitheatrical Prejudice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Barroll, J. Leeds., Alexander Leggatt, Richard Hosley, and Alvin Keman. The Revels History of Drama in English 111: 1576-1613. London: Methuen, 1975. Beckerman, Bernard. "Philip Henslowe" in The Theatrical Manager in England and America. Ed. Joseph W. Donohue, Jr. 19-62. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. . Shakespeare at the Globe 1599—1609. London: Collier-Macmillan, 1966. Bennet, Josephine Waters. Measure for Measure as Royal Entertainment. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966. Bentley, Gerald Eades. The Profession of Player in Shakespeare's Time 1590—1616. Princeton University Press, 1984. . The Jacobean and Caroline Stage. 7 Vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1941-68.

348

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bergeron, David M. English Civic Pageantry. Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1971. , ed. Pageantry in the Shakespearean Theatre. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985. Berry, Edward I. Shakespeare's Comic Rites. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Bevington, David. Action Is Eloquence: Shakespeare's Language of Gesture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. . From Mankind to Marlowe. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962. Billington, Sandra. "Sixteenth Century Drama in St. John's College, Cambridge." RES 29 (1978): i-10. Bradbrook, Muriel Clare. John Webster, Citizen and Dramatist. London: Weidenfeld 1980. . The Rise of the Common Player. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962. Brooks, Cleanth. The Weil-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. New York: Harcourt, 1947. Cardozo, Jacob Lopes. The Contemporary Jew in the Elizabethan Drama. 1925. New York: Burt Franklin, n.d. Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier. Trans. Thomas Hoby. 1562. New York: Everyman, 1928. Chambers, E.K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1923. Church of England. Certain Sermons [Homilies]. Ed. G.E. Corrie. 1850. Cook, Ann Jennalie. The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare's London. Princeton University Press, 1981. Craik, T.W. The Tudor Interlude. 1958. Leicester: The University Press, 1967. Cunnington, C. Willett, and Phillis Cunnington. Handbook of English Costume in the Sixteenth Century. Boston: Plays, 1970. Cunnington, Phillis, and Catherine Lucas. Costume for Births, Marriages, and Deaths. London: Black, 1972. . The History of Underclothes. Revised by A.D. Mansfield and Valerie Mansfield. London: Black, 1981. . Occupational Costume in England from the Eleventh Century to 1914. London: Black, 1968. Dekker, Thomas. Selected Prose Writings. Ed. E.D. Pendry. London: Arnold, 1967. de Marly, Diana. Costume on the Stage 1600-1940. London: Batsford, 1982. Dessen, Alan C. Elizabethan Drama and the Viewer's Eye. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977. . Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

349

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Edmond, Mary. "Pembroke's Men." RES (1974): 129-36. Ewbank, Inga-Stina. "'These Pretty Devices': A Study of Masques in Plays," in A Book of Masques. 1967. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Finkelpearl, Philip J. John Marston of the Middle Temple. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969. Foakes, R.A. Illustrations of the English Stage, 1580-1642. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985. Freeburg, Victor Oscar. Disguise Plots in Elizabethan Drama: A Study in Stage Tradition. 1915. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1965. Gair, Reavley. The Children of Pauls: The Story of a Theatre Company, 1553-1608. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Gilbert, Allan H. The Symbolic Persons in the Masques of Ben Jonson. Durham: Duke University Press, 1948. Gildersleeve, Virginia Crocheron. Government Regulation of die Elizabethan Drama. New York: Columbia University Press, 1908. Grancsay, Stephen V. Arms and Armor: Essays from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 1920—1964. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986. Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. . "Who Strutted and Bellowed?" Shakespeare Survey 16 (1963): 95-101. Harbage, Alfred. Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions. 1952. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1970. Harbage, Alfred and S. Schoenbaum. Annals of English Drama, 975-1700. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1964. Harangton, Sir John. Nugae Antiquae 1779. Hildesterm: Olms, 1968. Hattaway, Michael. Elizabethan Popular Theatre. London: Routledge, 1984. Heinemann, Margot. Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama under the Early Stuarts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Holmes, Martin. Shakespeare and His Players. London: Murray, 1972. Hunter, G.K. "Flat Caps and Blue Coats." Essays and Studies n.s., 33 (1980): 16-47. King, T.J. Shakespearean Staging 1599-1642. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971. LaMar, Virginia A. English Dress in the Age of Shakespeare. Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1958. Lawrence, W.J. Shakespeare's Workshop. Boston: Houghton, 1928. Leggatt, Alexander. Citizen Comedy in the Age of Shakespeare. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973. Lennam, Trevor. Sebastian Westcott, the Children of Paul's, and "The Marriage of Wit and Science." Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975.

350

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Linthicum, C.M. Costume in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Oxford: Clarendon, 1936. Maclntyre, Jean. "Conventions of Costume Change in Elizabethan Plays." Explorations in Renaissance Culture. 12 (1986): 105-14. . "'One that hath two gowns': Costume Change in Some Elizabethan Plays." ESC 13 (1987): 12-22. . "Words, Acts, and Things: Visual Language in Coriokmus." ESC 10 (1984): i—10. MacLure, Millar. George Chapman: A Critical Study. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966. Mattingly, Garrett. The Armada. Boston: Houghton, 1959. McAlindon, T[homas]. Shakespeare and Decorum. London: Macmillan, 1973. McMillin, Scott. The Elizabethan Theatre and The Book of Sir Thomas More. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987. . "The Queen's Men and the London Theatre of 1583," in The Elizabethan Theatre X. Ed. C.E. McGee. Port Credit, Ontario: Meany, 1983 (1988): 1-17. Mehl, Dieter. The Elizabethan Dumb Show: The History of a Dramatic Convention. London: Methuen, 1965. Moore, J.M. "The Contemporary Significance of Middleton's Game at Chesse." PMLA5o(i935):76i-68. Mowat, Barbara. "The Getting Up of the Spectacle: The Role of the Visual on the Elizabethan Stage." The Elizabethan Theatre IX. Ed. George R. Hibbard. Port Credit, Ontario: Meany, 1981 (1987): 60—76. Newton, Stella Mary. Renaissance Theatre Costume and the Sense of the Heroic Past. London: Rapp and Whiting, 1975. Northbrooke, John. A Treatise Against Dicing, Dancing, PZa^s, and Interludes. 1843. Orgel, Stephen. The Illusion of Power: Political Theatre in the Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. Payne, B. Iden. Life in a Wooden O. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. Pearson, Lu Emily. Elizabethans at Home. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957. Rebhom, Wayne A. "The Crisis of the Aristocracy in Julius Caesar." Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990): 75-mRees, Ennis. "Chapman's Blind Beggar and the Marlovian Hero." JEGP 57 (1958): 60-63. Reynolds, George Fullmer. The Staging of Elizabethan Plays at the Red Bull Theatre, 1605-1625. New York: MLA, 1940. Ringler, William A. Jr. "The Number of Actors in Shakespeare's Early Plays," in The Seventeenth Century Stage. Ed. Gerald Eades Bentley. 110-34. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.

351

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ross, Josephine. Elizabeth's Suitors. London: Weidenfeld, 1975. Salgado. Gamini. Ed. Cony-Catchers and Bawdy Baskets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. Schoenbaum, S. William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Shapiro, Michael. Children of the Revels: The Boy Companies of Shakespeare's Time and Their Plays. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977. Sidney, Sir Philip. Works. 1622. Sisson, C.J. Le Gout Public et Le Theatre Elisabethain Jusque' a Le Mart de Shakespeare. Dijon: Imprimerie Dramatique, 1923. Slater, Ann Pasternak. Shakespeare the Director. Brighton: Harvester, 1982. Smith, Hal H. "Some Principles of Elizabethan Stage Costume": Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes 25 (1962): 240-57. Smith, Irwin. Shakespeare's Blackfriars Playhouse. New York: New York University Press, 1964. Southern, Richard. Changeable Scenery: Its Origin and Development in the English Theatre. London: Faber, 1952. . The Staging of Plays Before Shakespeare. New York: Theatre Arts, 1973. Stone, Lawrence. The Crisis of the Aristocracy: 1558-1641. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. Streitberger, W.R. "On Edmund Tyllney's Biography." RES 29 (1978): 11-35. Strong, Roy. Art and Power: Renaissance Festival 1450—1650. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1984. . The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. . Henry Prince of Woks and England's Lost Renaissance. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1986. Stubbes, Philip. The Anatomie of Abuses. New York: Garland, 1973. Sturgess, Keith. Jacobean Private Theatre. London: Routledge, 1987. Thomson, Peter. Shakespeare's Theatre. London: Routledge, 1983. van den Berg, Kent T. Playhouse and Cosmos: Shakespearean Theater As Metaphor. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1985. Venezky, Alice S. Pageantry on the Shakespearean Stage. New York: Twayne, 1951. Wallace, C.W. The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars 1597-1603. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1908. Wickham, Glynne. Early English Stages 1300-1600 II. 3 vols. London: Routledge, 1963. Wiles, David. Shakespeare's Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

352

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Williamson, J.W. The Myth, of the Conqueror: Prince Henry Stuart: A Study of i/th Century Personation. New York: AMS, 1978. Wilson, Jean. Entertainments for Elizabeth I. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1980. Wright, Celeste Turner. "The Usurer in Elizabethan Literature." SP 31 (1934): 176-97. Young, Alan R. Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments. Doobs Ferry, N.Y.: Sheridan House, 1987.

353