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List of contents
Introduction
A Brief History of Jacobethanism
Chapter One – ‘Original Practices’ Costume design at Shakespeare’s Globe: Practice as Experiment and Research
Chapter Two – Tradition, Nostalgia, and Tourism: Jacobethan-inspired Costuming and the Shakespeare Institution
Chapter Three – Displaced/Repurposed Elizabethan Icons
Chapter Four – Fantastical Imaginings
Chapter Five – The Time is Out of Joint
Conclusion
Appendix – Approaches to Setting at the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare’s Globe: Performance History Data
Bibliography
Notes
Index
About the author
Ella Hawkins is a researcher at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK. Her research focuses on costume design for Shakespeare. She has advised the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Royal Shakespeare Company on representations of Shakespeare’s life and works, and has created content for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
Summary
The meanings originally communicated by Elizabethan and Jacobean dress have long been confined to history. Why, then, have doublets, hose, ruffs and farthingales featured in many Shakespeare productions staged since the turn of the 21st century?
This book scrutinizes the popular practice of costuming Shakespeare’s plays in Elizabethan and Jacobean dress. It considers why this approach to design appeals to contemporary directors, designers and audiences, and how it has shaped the meaning of Shakespeare’s works in specific performance contexts.
Informed by original interviews with several prominent theatre practitioners, including Emma Rice, Gregory Doran, Jenny Tiramani, Simon Godwin, Stephen Brimson Lewis and Tom Piper, Shakespeare in Elizabethan Costume explores how various 21st-century Shakespeare productions have drawn on myths and desires associated with early modern clothing. Its discussions range from the practicalities of historical reconstruction to the appeal of early modern sartorial culture as an embodiment of wonder, spectacle and the supernatural. Productions discussed include Shakespeare’s Globe's production of Henry V (1997), the National Theatre's Twelfth Night (2017) and the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Tempest (2016).
Ella Hawkins examines the minutiae of modern design -- how seams are sewn, whence fabrics are sourced -- as well as the widespread cultural movements that have produced our modern relationship with the period of Shakespeare’s lifetime. This is the first book to explore fully the significance of Elizabethan-inspired design in contemporary Shakespearean performance. Shakespeare in Elizabethan Costume reframes so-called ‘period’ costuming as a dynamic collection of practices capable of refashioning textual meanings, reflecting present-day political and societal shifts and confronting contemporary injustices.
Foreword
Explores how Elizabethan-inspired costume design has been used to shape the meaning of Shakespeare’s plays in contemporary theatrical performance.
Additional text
Shakespeare in Elizabethan Costume reveals the problems and opportunities offered by ‘authentic’ dress in modern productions, contrasting contemporary stage ‘Jacobethan’ costume with actual clothing from the time of Shakespeare. Backed by fresh research into early modern dress, and interviews with current costume-makers and directors, it is indispensable for anyone interested in costume – in the time of Shakespeare and now – contemporary performance, cultural history and the study of material culture.
