The Tiring House

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The tiring house (or ‘attiring house’) was the area behind the stage where costumes and props were stored and where actors dressed to prepare themselves before their performances. The most expensive items owned by acting companies were their costumes.

Costumes had two functions on the Elizabethan stage. First, they created a spectacular effect, since many of the clothes actors wore on stage were made of fine materials such as silk, velvet and taffeta. The second function of costume was to help the audience identify the characters: a clown, a nurse, a shepherd or a king would be instantly recognisable.

During Shakespeare’s lifetime, there were laws forbidding people from wearing clothes better than their social rank, making it easy to identify people from wearing clothes better than their social rank, making it easy to identify the social status of people on the streets. So, if an actor who played a king wore his costume outside of the playhouse he could be prosecuted.

Theatre inventories like Edward Alleyn’s show off the elaborate and costly nature of costumes: for an acting company to own ‘a doublet of black velvet cut on silver tinsel’ tells us how wealthy successful actors could become.

When performing plays that were set in a different period, like ancient Rome, Elizabethan actors did not go to great length to look Roman; instead they might just put on a toga or a laurel wreath. Most of the time they dressed like their audiences: in ‘modern clothes’.

There were many critics of the theatre in Shakespeare’s time who wrote about the ‘sins’ actors were committing. They did not like boy actors dressing like women, or poor actors dressing like men of status. In the 16th century, Stephen Gosson said actors were nothing but liars: ‘In Stage Playes for a boy to put on the attire, the gesture, the passions of a woman; for a mean person to take upon him the title of a Prince with counterfeit port and train…is to show themselves otherwise than they are.’

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