The Importance Of Costume In Elizabethan Theatre

The Importance of Costume in the Elizabethan Theatre As the Elizabethan theatre progressed through the sixteenth century with increasingly popular demand, costuming promoted the overall understanding of a play. The theatre grew so fast, in fact, that one out of every five citizens would attend the theatre with a population of about 160,000 people in the city of London (Brown 32). With this amount of people, the theatre contained an audience of natural critics, eager to voice their opinions of confusion and dissatisfaction. Therefore, as Robert Lublin states, “The apparel in the play serves as a key to understanding the moral argument made in dramatic guise”(Lublin 94). Not only did the costumes help explain one’s understanding of the characters, but also the general plot that a playwright wished to convey. Despite that fact that some aspects of a play could substantially contradict the …show more content…
An article called “Elizabethan Clothing” has written, “the clauses applied to actors (and their costumes)…Licenses were granted by the Queen to the aristocracy for the maintenance of troupes of players” (Alchin). The seriousness for which Elizabeth considered the matter is exemplified with the consequences for violations. These included, “fines, the loss of property, title, and even life. People living in the Elizabethan era only wore clothes that they were allowed to wear —by Law”(Alchin). In addition, Paige Hanson writes from the webpage “Renaissance Clothing and Sumptuary Laws” when she states, “Clothing violations, whether classed or gendered are enforced to keep conformity, preserve class distinctions, and with these, preserve social harmoney, as a gender- and class- segregated society”(Hanson) .The Statutes were demolished in 1603, however, and it is believed that citizens continued to display one’s social position through clothing throughout the seventeenth century (Lublin