Shakespeare would be shocked if were able to see the artistic liberties taken with modern stagings of his plays, say the pearl-clutching traditionalists. Would he even recognize his own work filtered through four centuries of bastardization? Would he despair at the state of what passes for entertainment? I actually rather imagine he would–why is the audience so passive?, he may wonder. How come they’re only laughing at the really obvious sex jokes? And are those women onstage? Cultural norm shifts aside, the postmodern “bastardization” of Shakespeare’s and his contemporaries’ plays may be more comfortable and familiar to him than one would expect. When directors–usually film directors–set out to recreate the original stagings of Shakespeare’s plays, their design decisions are informed more or less by historical fact. We know what Elizabethan theatres looked like, and that sets were sparse if they existed at all. We also know that the costumes reflected the fashions of the day…or do we? After all, we only know of a single contemporary image that depicts said costumes. Is it accurate? Maybe, maybe not–but it’s all we have.

The aforementioned image, known as the Peacham Drawing, is a simple line drawing tableau by Henricus (Henry) Peacham that is usually dated to 1595. There is some debate as to whether the image represents a specific scene or contains aspects of multiple scenes, or whether the play represented is even one of Shakespeare’s in the first place, but the most widely accepted interpretation is that it depicts Act I Scene 1 of Titus Andronicus. Peacham’s drawing shows the defeated Queen Tamora of the Goths pleading Titus Andronicus to spare her son’s life, while both characters’ respective entourages look on. The costumes are…well, eclectic. Titus Andronicus looks recognizably Roman, and Queen Tamora looks vaguely Eastern European, but their entourages’ clothing is not historically consistent with that of their respective leaders. One blatant example is that Titus Andronicus’s supposedly Roman soldiers wear pants and are armed with pikes. Pants existed in ancient Rome but were seen as a sign of weakness or barbarism, and pikes were medieval weapons that did not yet exist in Titus Andronicus’s time. Shakespeare was a sophisticated writer who chose his words carefully, so why does that care seemingly not translate into his players’ costumes?  

One historical note before I continue–we don’t actually know how representationally accurate this drawing is. Peacham was a real person, and 1595 is an educated guess, but cross-referencing it with other images of contemporary stagings or costumes is impossible given it’s the only one we’ve verified. Even if we knew for certain that Peacham’s drawing was true to life, the costume design choices it depicts may not have any bearing on those of Shakespeare’s other plays. The conclusions derived from studying this image, then, are mostly educated guesses and extrapolation based on the facts we do know.

When London’s two preeminent contemporary theatre companies parted ways in 1594, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men–of which Shakespeare was a member–got custody of Titus Andronicus; the Admiral’s Men never performed it again. There is no evidence of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men performing Titus between their January 1594 joint performance with the Admiral’s Men and their expulsion from the Theatre in 1597; this points to the 1594 performance as the most likely inspiration for Peacham’s drawing. During the Lord Chamberlain’s Men’s time at the Theatre, the size of their costume stock was limited by finances and the meager storage space available, both issues which were alleviated somewhat by their 1597 move to the Curtain. Assuming the drawing corresponds to the 1594 production at the Theatre, the historically inconsistent costuming decisions would have been made primarily out of necessity, with any creative concerns being secondary.

As one can imagine, Elizabethan-era players’ costumes were rarely, if ever, brand-new. The life cycle of a costume began in the royal court, where court maskers wore them until they became too worn for those of their elevated status to wear. At this point they handed them down to their torchbearers, who eventually handed them down to people of lower and lower status until they reached their final destination–the players. Certain originalist theatre companies, such as the modern Lord Chamberlain’s Men, put this history into practice by costuming their actors in period-accurate Elizabethan dress. I would like to note, though, that said costumes would likely be a few years out of fashion. This interpretation would prove the presence of Elizabethan dress onstage, but not the exclusive use of it. See, the players’ companies of Shakespeare’s time were not so cavalier with their materials and money that they would simply discard costumes that had become unwearable. They instead repurposed them into new costumes, which would eventually wear out and be repurposed into parts of costumes, which would eventually wear out and be repurposed into trimmings ad infinitum–or at least ad no more usable material left. It would be folly to assume that the players (who, being both cast and crew, made their own costumes) would parrot contemporary fashions by default, especially given the diversity of setting in Shakespeare’s body of work.

Although this is not evidence per se, the idea of culture-as-costume may have also influenced the costuming decisions made during the Lord Chamberlain’s Men’s residency in the Theatre. Shakespeare, despite his enduring popularity into the present day, was not immune to the widespread practice of using stereotypes to communicate a character’s foreignness. Whether this was an act of conscious malice, a surefire way to depict a culture in a manner immediately recognizable to the audience, or merely ignorance of the nuances of said culture could be a whole other essay in itself–suffice it to say that stereotype was (and to a point, still is) a common method used to communicate culture. Conversely, in the absence of sufficient time, money, and space to make and store new costumes, a non-foreign character may have been costumed fully or partially in foreign dress already present in the costume stock in order to convey that character as having traits associated with how a specific culture was stereotyped. Admittedly, this is mostly speculation, but it certainly isn’t impossible.

Of course, this is 2021, and we’re far more evolved now than those who would use cultural stereotypes in earnest. The element of historical pastiche, though, is still evident in nearly every Shakespeare staging today. These days, directors of Shakespeare’s work play fast and loose with the historical setting, no doubt because they know that even the most ardent fans of Shakespeare would tire of seeing Romeo and Juliet set in 16th-century Italy for the seventeenth time. Setting Hamlet in a midcentury American sitcom as a way of highlighting his clashes with the conformist ideals of the day seems par for the course to the modern Shakespeare devotee, but it starts to look a bit silly when you reframe it in less formal terms. Without the attached Shakespeare name recognition, a play whose protagonist was a 13th-century Danish prince speaking early modern English in 1950s American suburbia would be a hard sell to most serious theatres. The historical eclecticism, though, is well within the spirit of Shakespeare’s early years as a cash-strapped playwright who had no idea that his lowbrow plays would take on a great deal of academic legitimacy in the centuries following his death. With all due respect to the few remaining Shakespeare purists and originalists out there, his work becomes a lot more accessible–and dare I say fun–when staged in a way that is more relatable to a 21st century audience. The modern Lord Chamberlain’s Men are a fun curiosity and would certainly satisfy those who long to escape to the turn of the 17th century for a few hours, but I’ll take gender-blind casting and 1930s pulp sci-fi Macbeth over originalism any day.

So what does this say about the Peacham drawing? It’s certainly a valuable springboard off of which to speculate on Shakespeare, but I’m disinclined to believe that it’s accurate to the actual production. The idea of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men using visual historical pastiche is plausible, even probable, but Peacham was drawing a scene from a play he’d seen at least a year earlier–assuming the 1595 date is correct. Unfortunately, detail attrition is inevitable–even in the sharpest of minds. This, oddly enough, may actually suggest that the costumes worn by Titus Andronicus’ entourage have some basis in reality. Theirs are more detailed and distinct from each other than the nearly-identical costumes of Queen Tamora’s entourage are. What, then, would have caused Peacham to draw the Roman soldiers’ costumes in such detail if not memory? Of course, he might’ve just been pulling from his imagination instead, or perhaps was a little drunk–the degree of his accuracy will likely remain uncertain unless further contemporary images crop up.

Historical information sourced from <MacIntyre, Jean. Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres. The University of Alberta Press, 1992.>