The blog this week is written by an Eastern University student – Mac Macolino. Be sure to catch Eastern University’s productions of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet this weekend, starting tonight at 7PM!

“Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, / But not expressed in fancy; rich, but not gaudy; / For the apparel oft proclaims the man, / And they in France of the best rank and station / Are of a most select and generous chief in that.”
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3, William Shakespeare

For many modern Westerners, clothing is an extension of personality. It can describe you, but it does not define you. There is a common modern expectation that people can choose what they want to buy and how they want to dress, and so we are comfortable with the common expression: “clothes make the man.” By contrast, Shakespeare’s famous line uses a different verb, declaring that “apparel oft proclaims the man.” Tudor people could not make themselves different from what they were, and they certainly could not do so through clothes. One example of this ideal is sumptuary laws: a set of laws that limited access to certain styles, fabrics, and techniques depending on one’s social class. Sumptuary laws had existed since 1337, but they were subject to changes under individual rulers and Parliaments. Both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I in particular made strong efforts to create and enforce regulations around dress. These laws were convoluted and specific, which made them hard to enforce, particularly on the wealthy or influential. Eleri Lynn in her book Tudor Fashion argues that sumptuary laws served a dual purpose; “to maintain class distinctions and to protect the domestic economy by limiting the amount of imported fabrics one could wear” (2017, 106). While these laws are a window into the value system of Tudor society, they also were a picture of the ideal, not necessarily the reality.
As popular entertainment and a highly visual medium, the theater was heavily regulated. Stage productions were available to everyone from royalty to peasants, and could be highly influential on thought, and even dress. In correlation to general sumptuary laws, there were also specific laws governing the theater. Regulations in the early 1600s began to exempt English actors from sumptuary laws, meaning they could wear high-class garb onstage. In 1603, the Master of Revels was appointed, who was responsible for governing all scripts, and later, all acting companies. Censorship was exercised by the Master of Revels, and later the Lord Chamberlain, over English plays, which generally had to avoid inflammatory topics. Sumptuary laws may seem strange to the average modern reader, but it was considered a right of Tudor era government and particularly monarchs to regulate apparel. The apparel really would proclaim the man.

Construction and Comfort: What were they Wearing?
Even while clothing was heavily regulated, what one wore was often one of the most important financial decisions a Tudor family faced. Making clothing was an incredibly labor-heavy, expensive process. Production was spread out over much of the English economy, and everyday life. Women and children would spend all their free hours carding fiber and spinning thread (Goodman 2016, 43). Different fibers were used for different purposes. Linen, which came from the flax plant, was used for infants, table cloths, and undergarments. It was rarely dyed (Lynn 2017, 25). Wool was an everyman fiber; it was a domestic product, and its texture and qualities could be changed depending on how it was processed. Lynn describes wool as a “breathable natural fibre that reacts to the body’s temperature to keep it cool or warm as required” (2017, 26). Silk, an imported product, was very expensive. Because of expense and sumptuary laws, it was available only to the upper class. Thus, a level of control was exerted down to the very fiber of the cloth.
Because cloth was so expensive, members on all levels of society gave a lot of thought to where those clothes came from, and where they went. Specific items were often bequeathed in wills, particularly men’s ‘gowns’ (similar to cloak with armholes), which were made of large swathes of cloth, and were therefore both adaptable to many bodies, and highly valuable for their fabric alone. In cities, markets of second-hand clothing thrived. In the early period and among the poor especially, basic items were simply constructed, requiring mostly large rectangles or triangles of cloth, and basic stitches. For lower classes, it was normal to have only 1-2 outfits. While impressive, many of the fashions of the upper-class and royalty were impractical for the working-class. Things like beading, bejeweled fabrics, ruffs, pairs of bodies, and even the wider farthingales (defined later) would have been for the higher echelon. That being said, people at all levels of society made the effort to beautify themselves, often through complex embroidery, concentrated around the neckline and wrists; areas most likely to be seen.
In the theater, both in Shakespearean England and today, costumes are an important part of portraying important information about characters. Hierarchies are identified before the actors even open their mouths. Though Hamlet itself takes place in Denmark, this sort of class definition, portrayed onstage via clothing, is a vital part of the performance.

What Proclaims the Woman?
While perhaps we are used to a gender-neutral usage of the term man, it is worthwhile in this scenario to consider its specificity. There are sharp lines driven between sexes in Tudor England, one of which being that women were exempt from sumptuary laws until 1574, well into Elizabeth’s reign (Lynn 2017, 100). If clothes could be an extension of class and, more importantly a show of power, women had little power of their own to wield, because no matter what they wore, their clothing choices could never convey a power they were not granted. Elizabeth, however, as Queen of England, had even more on the line than her father and grandfather. By subjecting women to sumptuary laws, she made another step into legitimizing a woman in power. This trend of women in power is reflected even in the fashion trends that Elizabeth popularized. Men’s fashionable silhouette, while remaining elaborate and rich, evolved to be closer to the body, taking up much less physical space than the gowns and capes of Henry VIII’s reign. By contrast, a woman’s silhouette became markedly wider. The farthingale, a structured undergarment often made with wood or whalebone that held the skirts out from the body, evolved from the somewhat natural cone-shaped skirt of the early Tudor period to the exaggerated demands of the drum shape. The drum farthingale extended a circle with a woman’ waist at its center, and kept everyone at arm’s length. This trend, along with large sleeves and elaborate ruffs, allowed women to physically take up more space in the world than they ever had before.
For hundreds of years, concepts of gender and theater have lived in close proximity. In the Shakespearean era, it is important to note that women were not permitted– at all– on the stage. Therefore, every female character penned by William Shakespeare would have been portrayed by a young man, dressed in what we today might recognize as drag; an exaggerated performance of femininity. When Shakespeare wrote, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” in As You Like It, the irony of this is that there were no women allowed on stage at all. In essence, this is another way of keeping women absent from the public sphere and away from power and influence. Even as Queen Elizabeth I made a name for herself, average women ran into barriers in every part of their lives.

Altering to Fit: How Tudor Fashion Evolved
As the Tudor period progressed, fashion changed, even taking a turn for the scandalous. Necklines dropped drastically, showing collarbones and cleavage. Shifts –the Tudor equivalent to undergarments– started to show at the collar and wrists. For men, gowns shortened, and later disappeared outside of the universities and churches. Men’s hose began to inch up the leg, leaving thigh and calf on form-fitted display. Moreover, styles and construction specifically became much more complex. Complex patterns required smaller pattern pieces, which took more time to make and were harder to reuse or rewear. Women’s fashion developed such tools as the “pair of bodies” (precursor to the corset), the farthingale (precursor to the hoop skirt), and detachable and interchangeable aspects such as sleeves or the forepart of a skirt.
Several techniques came into use as the Tudor period continued that were the stock-in-trade of conspicuous consumption. They were labor heavy, cost-high, and often done in minute detail, and, some would argue, to excess. Some, like embroidery or beading, are still used today. But others are foreign to the modern ear. One prime example of such a technique was pinking. Pinking involved making strategic cuts or slashes in the (often rich and expensive) fabric. Such a technique had several consequences. Firstly, the hours of extra labor needed, both to do the initial cutting, and also, in many cases, to do extra needlework to stabilize the raw edges. Secondly, another layer of contrasting fabric was needed underneath to pull through the decorative slashes. And finally, the expensive fabric itself was near ruined. In a society where resale and reuse was of the utmost importance, this fabric was rendered less useful. It was a clear showing of opulence for the sake of opulence.