Foreigners as well as contemporary chronicles and the printed diatribes
against luxury bear witness to the profusion in all ranks of society and
the variety and richness in apparel. There was a rage for the display of
fine clothes. Elizabeth left hanging in her wardrobe above three thousand
dresses when she was called to take that unseemly voyage down the stream,
on which the clown's brogan jostles the queen's slipper. The plays of
Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and of all the dramatists,
are a perfect commentary on the fashions of the day, but a knowledge of
the fashions is necessary to a perfect enjoyment of the plays. We see the
fine lady in a gown of velvet (the foreigners thought it odd that velvet
should be worn in the street), or cloth of gold and silver tissue, her
hair eccentrically dressed, and perhaps dyed, a great hat with waving
feathers, sometimes a painted face, maybe a mask or a muffler hiding all
the features except the eyes, with a muff, silk stockings, high-heeled
shoes, imitated from the "chopine" of Venice, perfumed bracelets,
necklaces, and gloves--"gloves sweet as damask roses"--a
pocket-handkerchief wrought in gold and silver, a small looking-glass
pendant at the girdle, and a love-lock hanging wantonly over the
shoulder, artificial flowers at the corsage, and a mincing step. "These
fashionable women, when they are disappointed, dissolve into tears, weep
with one eye, laugh with the other, or, like children, laugh and cry they
can both together, and as much pity is to be taken of a woman weeping as
of a goose going barefoot," says old Burton.
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