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Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 3.15.97: Top | Help
Okay. If you are going to go Elizabethean, here are a few costume books I've found helpful: "Historic Costume for the Stage" by Lucy Barton is sort of a costumer's bible. A good book with a few actual pictures is "A History of Costume" by Carl Kohler. "Shakespearean Production :Then and Now" by Cecile de Banke is an excellent source of info on fabrics and colors used in the renaissance. Portraits actually painted in the time period showing actual people wearing actual clothes are a good source too. Art books and museums are good places to find portraits, and if the museum is fairly large, it may even have preserved examples of clothing - those those are rare.
Bellerophon makes a Shakespearean coloring book and a coloring book on the Renaissance (don't laugh! The drawings are quite detailed and accurate!) You can usually get those for about 5.00 at a Barnes and Noble.An Elizabeathan collar is a "ruff" and it was a huge semi circle made of stiffened cotton or sometimes paper and fastened around the neck. They served both to catch the fleas that fell from the hair and to seperate the head from the body - remember that the Elizabetheans were particularly interested in keeping the "reasonable" intellectual mind as far away from the "passionate" body as possible. The ruff was one way that they incorporated this value system into their mode of dress.
Wow. This is long. Sorry. Hope I helped!
Posted by Lillith on March 22, 1997 at 16:55:01
In Reply to "Costumes. . . " posted by Bottom on March 22, 1997 at 08:09:03
Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 3.15.97: Top | Help