Print This Page
Shakespeare on Stage
American Shakespeare Center, A Midsummer Night's Dream. To Jun. 14, 2012.
Atlanta Shakespeare Company, As You Like It. To Jun. 24, 2012.
American Shakespeare Center, The Winter's Tale. To Jun. 16, 2012.
American Shakespeare Center, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. To Jun. 16, 2012.
The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, The Comedy of Errors. To Jul. 29, 2012.
More Performances…
‌

Fashion and colour

Fashionable colours* changed from season to season; some had what we would now think of as unusual names: gooseturd green, lustie gallant, the devil in the head, rat, puke, and Virginia frog.

Colours then, as now, were often symbolic:

  • red for blood and passion,
  • yellow for the sun, and optimism,
  • white for purity,
  • black for death, evil, and depression.

There is evidence, however, that white was sometimes used for mourning, and was not used for weddings. Blue symbolized constancy, and was worn by serving men and apprentices; people of high degree therefore avoided true blue, although they did wear other shades.

Philip Henslowe recorded his expenses for costumes* in his Diary.

The Castle of Perseverance and colour.

A discussion of colour in Elizabethan Dress is available on line.

Footnotes

  1. Fashion as a deformed thief

    Borachio, in Much Ado, comments on fashion:

    "See'st thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this fashion is? How giddily he turns about all the hotbloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty? Sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoh's soldiers in the reechy [greasy] painting, sometime like God Bel's priests in the old church window, sometime like the shaven Hercules in the smirched worm-eaten tapestry, where his codpiece is as massy as his club?
    (Much Ado about Nothing, 3. 3. 130-37)

    The codpiece was an article of clothing, worn by men, rather like an external jock-strap; it was often exaggerated in size and elaborately decorated.

  2. Entries in Henslowe's Diary

    Henslowe was willing to spend more on a good costume than a new play:

    Bought the 29 of December 1597 i short velvet cloak embroidered wth bugles [beads] and a hood cape. . . iii li[pounds].
    Item, i Span[ish] jerkin.
    Item, i Harry the Fifth's doublet.
    Item, i Harry the Fifth's velvet gown.
    Item, vi green coats for Robin Hood, and iiii knaves' suits.
    Item, Eve's bodice. . . i ghost's suit and i ghost's bodice
    Item, i Moor's coat
    Item, i pair of French hose, cloth of gold.
    Item, i Tamburlaine's breeches of crimson velvet
    Bought a doublet of white satin laid thick with gold lace, and a pair of round hose of cloth of silver, the panes laid with gold lace. . . 7-0-0 [pounds].