English Costume Part 29

Also we have a cap 'moulded on a porringer.'

'Love's Labour's Lost' tells of:

'Your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin belly doublet like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in your pocket like a man after the old painting.'

'All's Well that Ends Well':

'Why dost thou garter up thy arms o' this fashion? Dost make a hose of thy sleeves?'

'Yonder's my lord your son with a patch of velvet on's face: whether there be a scar under't or no, the velvet knows.... There's a dozen of 'em, with delicate fine hats and most courteous feathers, which bow the head and nod at every man.'

In 'Henry IV.,' Part II., there is an allusion to the blue dress of Beadles. Also:

'About the satin for my short cloak and slops.'

'The smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes, and bunches of keys at their girdles.'

'To take notice how many pair of silk stockings thou hast, or to bear the inventory of thy shirts.'

There are small and unimportant remarks upon dress in other plays, as dancing-shoes in 'Romeo and Juliet' and in 'Henry VIII.':

'The remains of fool and feather that they got in France.'

'Tennis and tall stockings, Short blistered breeches and those types of travel.'

But in 'Hamlet' we find more allusions than in the rest. Hamlet is ever before us in his black:

''Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black.'

'Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced; No hat upon his head; his stockings fouled, Ungartered, and down-goes to his ancle; Pale as his shirt.'

'Your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the alt.i.tude of a chopine.'[D]

[D] Shoes with very high soles.

'O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a pa.s.sion into tatters.'

'With two provincial roses on my ragged shoes, My sea-gown scarfed about me.'

Having read this, I think it will be seen that there is no such great difficulty in costuming any play, except perhaps this last. There have been many attempts to put 'Hamlet' into the clothes of the date of his story, but even when the rest of the characters are dressed in skins and cross-gartered trousers, when the Viking element is strongly insisted upon, still there remains the absolutely Elizabethan figure in inky black, with his very Elizabethan thoughts, the central figure, almost the great symbol of his age.

JAMES THE FIRST

Reigned twenty-two years: 1603-1625.

Born 1566. Married 1589, Anne of Denmark.

THE MEN

This couplet may give a little sketch of the man we should now see before us:

'His ruffe is set, his head set in his ruff; His reverend trunks become him well enough.'

We are still in the times of the upstanding ruff; we are watching, like sartorial gardeners, for the droop of this linen flower.

Presently this pride of man, and of woman too, will lose its bristling, super-starched air, and will hang down about the necks of the cavaliers; indeed, if we look very carefully, we see towards the end of the reign the first fruits of elegance born out of Elizabethan precision.

Now in such a matter lies the difficulty of presenting an age or a reign in an isolated chapter. In the first place, one must endeavour to show how a Carolean gentleman, meeting a man in the street, might say immediately, 'Here comes one who still affects Jacobean clothes.'

Or how an Elizabethan lady might come to life, and, meeting the same man, might exclaim, 'Ah! these are evidently the new fashions.' The Carolean gentleman would notice at first a certain air of stiffness, a certain padded arrangement, a stiff hat, a crisp ornament of feathers.

He would see that the doublet varied from his own in being more slashed, or slashed in many more degrees. He would see that it was stiffened into an artificial figure, that the little skirt of it was very orderly, that the cut of the sleeves was tight. He would notice also that the man's hair was only half long, giving an appearance not of being grown long for beauty, but merely that it had not been cut for some time. He would be struck with the preciseness, the correct air of the man. He would see, unless the stranger happened to be an exquisite fellow, that his shoes were plain, that the 'roses' on them were small and neat. His trunks, he would observe, were wide and full, but stiff. Mind you, he would be regarding this man with seventeenth-century eyes--eyes which told him that he was himself an elegant, careless fellow, dressed in the best of taste and comfort--eyes which showed him that the Jacobean was a nice enough person in his dress, but old-fashioned, grandfatherly.

To us, meeting the pair of them, I am afraid that a certain notion we possess nowadays of cleanliness and such habits would oppress us in the company of both, despite the fact that they changed their linen on Sundays, or were supposed to do so. And we, in our absurd clothes, with hard hats on our heads, and stiff collars tight about our necks, creases in our trousers, and some patent invention of the devil on our feet, might feel that the Jacobean gentleman looked and was untidy, to say the least of it, and had better be viewed from a distance.

To the Elizabethan lady the case would be reversed. The man would show her that the fashions for men had been modified since her day; she would see that his hair was not kept in, what she would consider, order; she would see that his ruff was smaller, and his hat brim was larger. She would, I venture to think, disapprove of him, thinking that he did not look so 'smart.'

For ourselves, I think we should distinguish him at once as a man who wore very large knickerbockers tied at the knee, and, in looking at a company of men of this time, we should be struck by the padding of these garments to a preposterous size.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Three men of the time of James I.; three types of shoe; one type of boot}]

There has come into fashion a form of ruff cut square in front and tied under the chin, which can be seen in the drawings better than it can be described; indeed, the alterations in clothes are not easy to describe, except that they follow the general movement towards looseness. The trunks have become less like pumpkins and more like loose, wide bags. The hats, some of them stiff and hard, show in other forms an inclination to slouch. Doublets are often made loose, and little sets of slashes appear inside the elbow of the sleeves, which will presently become one long slash in Cavalier costumes.

We have still:

'Morisco gowns, Barbarian sleeves, Polonian shoes, with divers far fetcht trifles; Such as the wandering English galant rifles Strange countries for.'

But we have not, for all that, the wild extravaganza of fashions that marked the foregoing reign. Indeed, says another writer, giving us a neat picture of a man:

'His doublet is So close and pent as if he feared one prison Would not be strong enough to keep his soul in, But his taylor makes another; And trust me (for I knew it when I loved Cupid) He does endure much pain for poor praise Of a neat fitting suit.'

To wear something abnormally tight seems to be the condition of the world in love, from James I. to David Copperfield.

Naturally, a man of the time might be riding down the street across a Scotch plaid saddle cloth and pa.s.s by a beggar dressed in clothes of Henry VIII.'s time, or pa.s.s a friend looking truly Elizabethan--but he would find generally that the short, swollen trunks were very little worn, and also--another point--that a number of men had taken to walking in boots, tall boots, instead of shoes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {A man of the time of James I.; a variation of breeches}]

As he rides along in his velvet cloak, his puffed and slashed doublet, his silken hose, his hands gloved with embroidered gloves, or bared to show his rings, smelling of scents, a chain about his neck, he will hear the many street cries about him:

'Will you buy any sand, mistress?'

'Brooms, brooms for old shoes! Pouch-rings, boots, or buskings! Will ye buy any new brooms?'

'New oysters, new oysters! New, new c.o.c.kles!'

'Fresh herrings, c.o.c.kels nye!'

'Will you buy any straw?'