Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theaters.

Wilson, Luke

Jean MacIntyre's Costumes and Scripts claims, with some justification, to be "virtually pioneer work" (xi) in its field. Where earlier studies have generalized about costume use and management in Renaissance English theater on the basis of selected plays, MacIntyre attempts a comprehensive review of the relevant records in relation to the demands placed on costuming and costume changes in particular scripts. Preliminary chapters establish the period's conventions of costume use and present a detailed review of the Revels Accounts and the Henslowe papers as evidence of costuming practices. Following are chapters on the Admiral's Men and Chamberlain's Men in the 1590s, on the boy actors from 1599 and the court masque, and on the Prince's, Queen's and King's Men under James.

Contrary to the usual procedural assumption, MacIntyre argues, the Henslowe papers are not an accurate guide to the costuming practices of the Lord Chamberlain's Men for the period during which Shakespeare wrote his plays for them. While the Lord Admiral's Men pursued a policy of writing plays to take advantage of costumes already in the company wardrobe - particularly their suites of Oriental, Iberian and London plays - plays written for the Lord Chamberlain's Men, primarily by Shakespeare and Jonson, show less reluctance to call for new costumes, while at the same time inventively preserving economy by means of what MacIntyre intriguingly calls "a law of succession" for costumes, according to which the same garments appear in successive performances of plays which remained in the repertory, gradually making their way down the social scale as they grew shabby. Thus the slops worn by Armado in Love's Labor's Lost, by Bobadilla in Every Man In and by Benedick in Much Ado probably migrated from character to character as their state declined. "Instead of inventing serial plays to use the same sets of costumes, Shakespeare invented serial roles to give individual costumes long service no matter what their condition" (202).

Chapter 5, "Theater for Elites," covers the boy companies and the court masque. MacIntyre argues that the latter inherited their costuming practices from those of the Admiral's Men, for whom their principal writers, especially Chapman and Dekker, had previously written. Marston's plays for Paul's Boys represent attempts to make do with a limited wardrobe, while the "little eyases" of Blackfriars appear to have been less restricted in the variety and number of costumes available to them. In the short section on the court masque the approach seems less productive, and the research less thorough, than in the discussion of the commercial theater companies; and, despite the influence of the masque on Jacobean plays, this section might have been omitted.

Chapter 6, on the royally-sanctioned companies under James, discusses most of Shakespeare's plays for the King's Men, as well as those by Dekker, Heywood, and others for Prince Henry's and Queen Anne's Men. These accounts are strongest when MacIntyre is able to show how the script's structure enforces costuming and doubling patterns. Too often, however, in the absence of such constraints, MacIntyre resorts to speculation about what characters probably wore in particular scenes. Non-specialist readers interested in costuming in a particular play may find new insights here, but the discussions are often cursory and inconclusive, and rarely move beyond familiar territory. The unaccountable absence of an index, moreover, will limit the usefulness of Costumes and Scripts to such readers.

Even so, and quite apart from its contribution to the revision of the history of costume in the Renaissance theater, MacIntyre's book may prove a valuable resource for theoretical attempts to re-materialize Shakespeare's practice, since it continually invites the reader to think about the relation between Shakespeare's aesthetic motivation and the material - essentially economic - constraints which influenced his costuming choices.

Luke Wilson OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY