Shakespeare Essay

Shakespeare’s Play Costumes

      Parts of the costumes were likely to be decorated with braid; embroidery, or puffing, or it might be encrusted with pearls, jewels, and spangles or trimmed with lace or artificial flowers. Men's clothing was gorgeous with color and ornamentation. The many parts of male attire contributed to the colorful effect of the outfit. Men wore hats even indoors. Feathers and jewels were normal ornaments. A small flat cap like a beret with a narrow brim continued to be worn by craftsman and many citizens of London. Masculine hair styles varied greatly. Sometimes the hair was cut closely at the sides, but it could be brushed up and held with gum, or it might be curled all over the head.

     Upper class people in the audience also dressed up, as how we do today if we were going to a play. Elizabethan men and women of the upper class dressed more for display than for comfort, and even their undergarments were designed to contribute to their appearance. The clothing was very intricate, and the amount of time that must have been put into making clothing with so many independent parts to be tied or pinned together is unbelievable in the modern day. The main female garment usually consisted of at least two parts: bodice and skirt.

    Elizabethan women loved to dress beautifully. But despite the richness of their clothing, men frequently outshone them in complexity of costume and the variety of cuts the fashion of that time provided.


http://www.wikipedia.org/

http://www.bard.org/Education/studyguides/shakespeare/whattheywore.html