Recall of Shakespeare's mean solar day, and visions of ruffs, cuffs, and silk dresses will doubtless come to mind. But those fancy items of habiliment were not accessible to everyone in the Bard's London. Strict sumptuary regulations made sure that people dressed co-ordinate to their rank in life, making it like shooting fish in a barrel to tell the deviation between, say, a lady and a prostitute. Things weren't always that simple, though, every bit Cristine Thou. Varholy explains: In the brothels and theaters of the city, women engaged in a form of stylish deception that immune them to blur form lines.

While plenty of attention has been paid to the cross-dressers of Elizabethan England—a fifth of Shakespeare'due south plays feature some kind of cantankerous-dressing plot, and men regularly portrayed women on the Elizabethan stage—the act of cross-course dressing is less understood. Varholy sets out to rectify that by peering into the books of Bridewell, a prison house and hospital designed to punish London'southward fiddling, poor criminals. There, she finds plenty of bear witness of cross-form dressing, from Londoners seeking new identities by putting on new clothing, to those who wanted the prostitutes they patronized to expect and human activity like gentlewomen. Though women could enact those fantasies on the London stage, they were punished for doing so outside of the theater walls.

At the fourth dimension, English law put strictures on what women who were not born into dignity could wear. Gilt, velvet, silk embroidery, pearls, and other ornaments were outlawed for women of non-noble families, and others could not wear certain fabrics or styles of clothing unless their husband made a sure amount of money per year. Perhaps predictably, accusations of dressing above one'south class oft entered into testimony confronting those accused of bawdry, or prostitution.

"A adult female's possession of [outlawed wear] non only suggested that she was living to a higher place her ways," writes Varholy, "but also indicated her want and ability to change her identity through her clothing." This was especially apparent in women charged of "playing the harlotte." Fancy wear blurred the boundaries of who was authentically high-form and who wasn't, and who practiced what kind of sexuality.

Varholy documents cases of women who used wearable to punish other women, as a 1578 case in which a widow named Joane Wale told a court she saw "much abominable whoredome" at a brothel where she worked. Jane Ratcliffe, she testified, "is kept similar a gentlewoman…in a silk gowne" past a human being named George Johnson, who "maynteyneth the whore and giveth her all her apparell." From Wale's account—and the accuse of bawdry against Ratcliffe—information technology is credible that acting "like" a gentlewoman past wearing fancy clothing is just every bit bad equally being a prostitute or kept woman. Ratcliffe later told the court that she bought the vesture with money she brought with her to London and that Johnson was her suitor, not her customer. Unfortunately, the issue of the case is non articulate.

London women used charges of cantankerous-class dressing as evidence of both illicit and dishonest behavior. Simply some people sought out women who played ladies with their habiliment—men who were willing to pay well-dressed prostitutes who hid evidence of beingness "mutual women." Women who sold their wares while dressed similar nobles could indulge male fantasies of social equality or class clout, writes Varholy, not to mention commanding a higher price. Items of desirably high-grade vesture, like silk gowns, could be exchanged betwixt prostitutes or purchased at one of London'southward countless second-manus shops, reinforcing the desirability of this cross-class ruse.

Crossing class boundaries with silken gowns and fancy jewelry may take been taboo on the street and thrilling in the sheets, but it was accustomed inside the safety confines of the comedic stage. Comedies regularly featured cross-dressing plots—only to accept these fictitious deceptions apace discovered and the social order restored. Actresses were complimentary to "pass" as ladies…as long every bit they didn't effort to do so in existent life. In Elizabethan London, at least, dressing up offstage meant a risk of beingness dressed down.

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By: Cristine Thou. Varholy

Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Vol. viii, No. i (Bound - Summer, 2008), pp. 4-34

University of Pennsylvania Press