Ecology of Dress in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries

Sophie Chiari is Professor of Early Modern English Literature at Université Clermont Auvergne, France, where she is also the Director of the ‘Maison des Sciences de l’Homme de Clermont-Ferrand’, a research institute encompassing the humanities and social sciences. A member of the IHRIM research team, she has edited or coedited various collections of essays including Performances at Court in the Age of Shakespeare (coedited with John Mucciolo, 2019) and The Experience of Disaster in Early Modern English Literature (2022). Her current research focuses on ecocritical issues in Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Her most recent works are Shakespeare’s Representation of Weather, Climate and Environment (2019) and Shakespeare and the Environment. A Dictionary (2022). Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise is Professor of Early Modern English Literature and Cultural Studies at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris, France), where she also directs the Epistémè research group within the PRISMES research centre. She was awarded a Research Fellowship by the Institut Universitaire for a project on the interconnectedness of poetic and material circulations within Early Modern Europe (2016–2021). Originally a specialist of poetry and religious history, she was the 2011 recipient of the SAES (French Society for English Studies) special research prize for her monograph on George Herbert, Le Verbe fait image (2010). She currently serves as the vice-president of the Société Française Shakespeare (the French Shakespeare association). Her research profile is interdisciplinary, publishing across genres and adopting a trans-regional perspective as well as a material approach to her analysis of Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry and drama, which are the centre of gravity of her work. She co-edited the volume of Shakespeare’s poetry in French translation for the Pléiade, Gallimard (2021), is currently working on a new French edition of Twelfth Night for Gallimard, and has recently translated Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris with Christine Sukic (forthcoming with Garnier Classiques).

With a keen eye to the plant and animal origins of Renaissance costume, this resplendent collection reveals how the environment is present on stage in the warp and weft of textiles and play-texts. Moving beyond Shakespeare and encompassing fabrics ranging from dirty linen and rags to luxurious furs and silks, the thirteen essays succeed brilliantly in retheorising the playhouse as a site of ecomaterial entanglement. The Ecology of Dress in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries is historical ecocriticism of the finest yarn.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgementsSeries Editors' PrefaceIntroductionSophie Chiari and Anne-Marie Miller-BlaisePart I. Fashioning Nativeness and Foreignness1. Without a National Dress but with a Climate of Their Own: The Invention of the English Climate and ‘Constitution’Margaret Tudeau-Clayton　　2. The Clothes of Insularity in Browne’s Inner Temple MasqueElisabeth LacombePart II. The Humours of Dress3. Fabrics, Fashion and the Environment: Representing Venice in Early Modern EnglandAnne Geoffroy4. ‘Come and see our frippery’: Brainworm’s Humour of Necessity and Clothes Trafficking in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour Anna DemouxPart III. Clothing the Seasons of Life5. Clad in Rags: Eco-psychology and Trans-textuality in the Lear storiesDanièle Berton-Charrière6. ‘O that I were a glove upon that hand’: Love and Gloves in ShakespeareFrançois Laroque7. Shakespeare’s GaudyDympna CallaghanPart IV. The Stuff That Gender Is Made Of8. ‘That quiff and pinner that hath the gillyflower’: Flowers, Clothes and Female Identities in Jane Cavendish and Elizabeth Brackley’s The Concealed Fancies Lisa Hopkins　9. Fashioning Falstaff: Dress and Disguise in Shakespeare’s Henry the Fourth and The Merry Wives of Windsor　Valentina Finger10. Middleton’s Ambivalent FashionsChantal SchützPart V. The Wealth of Nature's Wardrobe: Playing With The Elements11. Water and Costume: Wetness on the Early Modern StageSophie Chiari12. ‘Diana’s Shrouds’ and ‘Black Tempests’: Rites of Passage in Christopher Marlowe’s Dido Queen of CarthageSélima Lejri13. Changing Habits: The Politics and Theatricality of Clothing in Early Modern English VoyagesSophie Lemercier-GoddardNotes on ContributorsBibliographyIndex