What is the role of costume in Shakespeare production? Shakespeare and Costume in Practice argues that costume design choices are central not only to the creation of period setting and the actor’s work on character, but to the cultural, political, and psychological meanings that the theatre makes of Shakespeare. The book explores questions about what the first Hamlet looked like in his mourning cloak; how costumes for a Shakespeare comedy can reflect or critique the collective nostalgias a culture has for its past; how costume and casting work together to ask new questions about Shakespeare and race. Using production case studies of Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Tempest, the book demonstrates that costume design can be a site of experimentation, playfulness, and transgression in the theatre – and that it can provoke audiences to think again about what power, race, and gender look like on the Shakespearean stage.

What is the role of costume in Shakespeare production? Shakespeare and Costume in Practice argues that costume design choices are central not only to the creation of period setting and the actor’s work on character, but to the cultural, political, and psychological meanings that the theatre makes of Shakespeare. The book explores questions about what the first Hamlet looked like in his mourning cloak; how costumes for a Shakespeare comedy can reflect or critique the collective nostalgias a culture has for its past; how costume and casting work together to ask new questions about Shakespeare and race. Using production case studies of Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Tempest, the book demonstrates that costume design can be a site of experimentation, playfulness, and transgression in the theatre – and that it can provoke audiences to think again about what power, race, and gender look like on the Shakespearean stage.

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.

Inspired by new approaches in performance studies, theatre history, research in material culture and dress history, a rich discussion of the many aspects of costume in Shakespearean performance has begun. Shakespeare and Costume furthers this research, bringing together varied and stimulating essays by leading scholars that consider costume from literary, dramatic, design, performative and theatrical perspectives, as well as interviews with renowned theatre practitioners Jane Greenwood and Robert Morgan. The volume amply demonstrates how an analysis of the meaning of costume enriches our understanding of Shakespeare's plays. Beginning with an overview of the stage history of Shakespeare and costume, the volume looks at the historical context of clothing in the plays, considering topics such as royal self-fashioning, festive livery practices, and conceptions of race and gender exhibited in clothing choice, as well as costume in performance. Drawing on documentary evidence in designers' renderings, illustrations in periodicals, paintings, photographs, newspaper reviews and actors' memoirs, the volume also explores costume designs in specific Shakespeare productions from the re-opening of the London theatres in 1660 to the present day.

Cross-gender performance was an integral part of Shakespearean theatre: from boys portraying his female characters, to those characters disguising themselves as men within the story. This book examines contemporary trends in staging cross-gender performances of Shakespeare in the UK and USA. Terri Power surveys the field of gender in performance through an intersectional feminist and queer theoretical lens. In depth discussions of key productions reveal processes adapted by companies for their performances. The book also looks at how contemporary performance responds to new cultural politics of gender and creates a critical language for understanding that within Shakespeare. This book features: - First-hand interviews with professional artists - Case studies of individual performances - A practical workshop section with innovative exercises

Contributors to this collection delve into the relationship between Rome and Shakespeare. They view the presence of Rome in Shakespeare's plays not simply as an unquestioned model of imperial culture, or a routine chapter in the history of literary influence, but rather as the problematic link with a distant and foreign ancestry which is both revered and ravaged in its translation into the terms of the Bard's own cultural moment. During a time when England was engaged in constructing a rhetoric of imperial nationhood, the contributors demonstrate that Englishmen used Roman history and the classical heritage to mediate a complex range of issues, from notions of cultural identity and gender to the representation of systems of exchange with Otherness in the expanding ethnic space of the nation. This volume addresses matters of concern not only for Shakespeare scholars but also for students interested in issues connected with gender, postcolonialism and globalization. Drawing implicitly or explicitly on recent criticism (intertextual studies, postcolonial theory, Derrida's conceptualization of hospitality, gender studies, global studies) the essayists explore how the Roman Shakespeare of an emerging early modern empire asks questions of our present as well as of our past.

The systematic practice of non-traditional or "colorblind" casting began with Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival in the 1950s. Although colorblind casting has been practiced for half a century now, it still inspires vehement controversy and debate. This collection of fourteen original essays explores both the production history of colorblind casting in cultural terms and the theoretical implications of this practice for reading Shakespeare in a contemporary context.