Samantha St. Claire
Prof. Flack
Eng 6
12 December 2012
Shakespeare, Webster,
and Societal Masquerades
Queen
Elizabeth’s reign was a time of exuberant fashion statements and strict
societal and gender conformities. Class mobility was greatly discouraged,
prejudices were set and often immovable, and yet the rules were played with all
the time. Women roamed the streets dressed as men, and young men squandered
their wealth on extravagant garbs in order to please the social elites. Into
this confusing and inconsistent world did artists and playwrights such as
William Shakespeare and John Webster find themselves in, and they wrote their
plays accordingly. Shakespeare especially took great pleasure in blurring
societal and gender lines through the use of costumes, while Webster preferred
a more direct approach by using his characters’ spoken frustrations to wrestle
through these issues.
During
the reign of Queen Elizabeth, obsession over fashion had grown to dangerous and
costly extents. Fortunes and promising futures were squandered on silks, golden
embroidery, tinseled satin, velvet, and so on, leaving many women and “young
gentleman, otherwise serviceable,” destitute and resorting to “attempting unlawful
acts” in order to pay off their debts (“Sumptuary Laws” qt. in Secara). This destructive
problem was addressed by Queen Elizabeth in her written Sumptuary Laws which
enforced a class-based dress code, and she attempted to halt this excess by prohibiting
certain classes from wearing certain fabrics, colors, and the like. However,
there was another concern that this law addressed, a concern that we do not
have in our 21st-century America. The Elizabethan government believed,
just as many societies had for hundreds of years, that “letting anyone
wear just anything must lead inexorably to moral decline. If you couldn't tell a
milkmaid from a countess at a glance, the very fabric of society might unravel”
(Secara). This obsession over clothes caused deeper societal issues than bankruptcy.
These laws regulated what you wore in order to ensure that your social class
could be instantly recognized wherever you went, thus keeping people in their respective
classes. If everyone could be anyone, if class lines were so blurred, then societal
class structure would collapse and deception and confusion would run rampant. Therefore, what one wore was key to
determining that individual’s social status.
These laws promoted the societal prejudice that one’s
outfit and appearance determined one’s identity. These laws “attempted to prevent people from changing
their social status by means of clothing” (ASL), making outfits seem far more important
and definitive in determining one’s status. Virtue and merit as portrayed
through one’s character was ignored and deemed unimportant in shaping one’s
worthiness and societal importance. Because one’s outfit was the only way to
impress others or move up in the eyes of the respectable, many people would
ignore these laws and dress like their superiors when their pocket books
allowed. Women felt this restrictive prejudice as well. Because the only strength a woman had was inward
valor and intelligence, she was deemed outwardly unimportant and powerless. In
order to attain any freedom or power, the women sometimes would cross –dress when
they roamed the streets, in order to avoid rape, be able to travel
alone, practice a profession, or simply to have adventures (Cressy 440)!
However,
there were those who were exempt from these laws. These included royal servants
and the contenders and heralds at jousting competitions. Queen Elizabeth also
granted licenses to certain groups to allow them to wear otherwise forbidden
colors and styles, and one of these groups was the Elizabethan Acting
Troupes and Actors, of which William Shakespeare and John Webster were a part
of (“Acting Troupes”). Shakespeare and Webster noticed this prejudice that was
implanted in people’s perceptions of each other, and they used their artistic
licenses to challenge such shallow views through influential displays of comedy
and tragedy.
In his tragedy, The
Duchess of Malfi, Webster shows multiple exaggerated examples of characters
falling into this societal prejudice by
portraying the upper class as vulgar and worse than the lower-class individuals
they feel superior to. The Duchess’s
brother, Ferdinand, is a cold, ruthless upper class man, who murders his own
sister and her children for his societal views. Ferdinand firmly believes a man’s
worth should be based on status. He looks down on Antonio for his lowly,
steward position, and counts him unworthy of his sister’s hand in marriage
because he was a “slave that only smelled of ink and counters, / And never in
‘t life looked like a gentleman,” (3.4.63-66). Once again, the idea of looking
the part is critical to worthiness. Ferdinand justifies his murder of his own nephews
by explaining that “the death / Of young wolves is never to be pitied”
(4.2.237-238) because children born of slaves are “bastards” and apparently do
not have the right to life. His brother the Cardinal, who is meant to be
respected for his high, religious position, is debased and commits the very sins
he preaches against. This hypocrite murders his enemies and also has a
mistress. The lower class hit man Bosola goes against his conscience throughout
most of the play simply in order to move up in the world. He obeys individuals
who disgust him and murders those who impress him. By the end of this play, the
audience despises many characters, and those characters happen to be examples
of the upper class. Not only are these supposedly important people rotten to
the core, but they got to their high position through crime and sinful compromise.
Webster very poignantly pointed out the cruelty and irrationality
of such societal prejudices through certain characters in his tragedy. Bosola is our
constant commentary throughout the play on the corruption of the current society,
that everyone believes that outward appearance is more important than inward
character. He recognizes that the upper class brothers, the
Cardinal and Ferdinand, are “like plum trees, that grow / crooked over standing
pools, [...] are rich and o'ertaken / with fruit, but none but crows, pies, and
caterpillars feed / on them” (1.1.46-48). These rich and pruned upper class
citizens look luxurious on the outside, but inwardly they are corrupt, and
therefore, only attract the corrupt. Bosola then contrasts these men with the
Duchess, who is more of a man than her brothers. Even when faced with
death, she maintains her strong character, declaring victoriously, “For know,
whether I am doomed to live or die, / I can do both like a prince” (3.2.68-69).
She believed, though wearing the garb of a weak woman, she had the same strength
of a man, but it was an internal valor, not outward. But Webster speaks these truths through the mouth of a
woman and a lower-class criminal, individuals who the audience would normally
never listen to because their inward goodness is covered with lowly garbs. Thus
Webster confronts the audience with these conflicting perspectives, challenging
them to think on exactly what kind of person should gain the respect of their peers.
Shakespeare,
in his turn, portrayed this cruel societal prejudice through the ridiculous
examples of costumes in his comedy, Twelfth
Night. He was not as direct in his criticisms as Webster was, but he
very obviously conveyed his ambivalent views towards this structure by showing
how social order and gender norms are not as cut and dry as it seems. Simply by changing one’s outfit, his
characters were suddenly considered to be of a higher or lower class than they
actually were, such as when Viola exchanged her “woman’s weeds” (5.1.271) for
male clothing in order to become a servant. However, when the annoyingly
self-righteous steward Malvolio sought to change his status by dressing the
part with a “branched velvet gown” (2.5.44-45), and when it was discovered that
Viola’s boyish garb was not her true identity, it showed the other characters
in the play as well as the audience that the type or style of clothing one wore
did not define who the person was. A more puzzling example of Shakespeare’s
point was when Feste dressed in the dark robes of the priest, Sir Topas, while
diagnosing Malvolio with insanity. Malvolio was locked in the darkness and
could not even see Feste in order to be deceived by his outfit! Once again,
Shakespeare seemed to point out a link between garments and identity, and the
frailty of such connections. Living in such an appearance-based society, in
order “to impersonate Sir Topas, Feste must
dress like him, so closely are clothes and public personae bound together”
(Sparknotes). Anyone can truly be anyone in the eyes of the public
simply by throwing on a different kind of material. Shakespeare was asking his
audience that if identity does not come down to intelligence and noble
character, does social order and gender norms all shallowly come down to what
you wear and to whom you were born?
Both plays also display the destructive influence these
societal views had on an individual’s own self-image by having their characters
consider themselves to be only
as high as their outfits declared they were, thus trapping them in the very structure
they seemed to loathe. Not satisfied with themselves, they sought costumes and
outfits to gain the approval of others or to hide their true selves in some way.
According to the Free Online Dictionary, masquerade refers to “a
disguise or false outward show; a pretense.” These characters essentially hid behind a pretty mask in order to
hide their true face. Sir Toby hid his drunkenness and poverty behind his
upper-class garb and knightly title. Duchess Olivia concealed herself behind
her black mourning veil in order to avoid interaction with the outside world,
which was much the same reason as Viola’s for hiding her identity behind a boy’s
britches. Feste hid himself behind his fool’s attire, pardoning him for being
the most brutally honest character in the play. Only as a Fool could Feste call
the Duchess a fool for “mourn[ing] for [her] brother’s soul, being in heaven”
(1.5.67-68) and still have a roof over his head! The Cardinal in Duchess put on his mask of piety and
virtue to cover up his flagrant and abundant sins. Bosola took on many masks throughout
the course of the play, changing his attitude and opinion depending on the
person in front of him. He even calls himself a “horse leech” who flatters his
superiors in order to suck what he wants out of them (1.1.48-50). Even though Bosola
had very strong and accurate opinions of the corruptness of the upper class, he
only muses on these enlightening thoughts. He falls right into the very
structure he condemns, lying and killing in order to work his way up the social
ladder.
Each play displayed the fascinating idea that maybe a
person’s identity was not improved by expensive, impressive clothes, but by a
change in character and internal virtue. Antonio from Duchess realizes
that when confronted with dire situations, “the great are like the base, nay,
they are the same, / When they seek shameful ways to avoid shame” (2.3.51-52).
Ferdinand agrees with this when he sighs his dying words, “Whether we fall by
ambition, blood, or lust, / Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust”
(5.5.68-69). Only at the end does he seem to understand the equality of the
human race and social structures. Even more, Bosola, who brings much wisdom to
the play in the end, speaks in the prose of the lower class, while Ferdinand
(who the audience hates) speaks in the upper class language of verse. Bosola is
amazed that the Duchess would lower herself to marry a mere servant, and cries
this exclamation that must have rung in the ears of the audience for a time
afterwards, “Do I not dream? Can this ambitious age / Have so much goodness in
‘t as to prefer / A man merely for worth, without these shadows / Of wealth and
painted honors? Possible?” (3.3.255-258). He believed that it is far more
important to determine what one thinks of a man by looking on the inside of
that man rather than the outside. He
himself seeks inward virtue for himself when he chooses to turn from his evil
ways after he murders the Duchess for the sake of buying a higher status. He
casts away his pandering masks and roars, “Off, my painted honor!” and insists
that he will give up his foul pursuits, vowing, “I would not change my peace of
conscience / For all the wealth of Europe” (4.2.313-18). Like Bosola, Feste
the fool from Twelfth proves to be
the wisest in the upper class household he serves, while the examples of
nobility around him drink and carouse their money and life away. These plays repeatedly
portray that wisdom comes from the lowly, while the high are the true fools.
Both Shakespeare and Webster challenged the idea that an
individual’s status and gender is determined by the situation that individual was
helplessly born into, and that a man’s societal status and pocket book is what
makes a man honorable, and not his inner virtue and character. They portrayed
the frailty of these outfits and colors by creating characters who used these
costumes to hide themselves and fool others, striking the audience with the realization
that outfits do not change an individual’s identity. Even though we do not
struggle with such an extent of class distinctions and prejudiced laws in our
21st-century America, social mobility as promoted through the
American Dream is mostly just that: a dream. If one is born in the rougher side
of town, he is not given much opportunity to move out of there. Our media,
movies, schools, and peers create for us social and gender lines that are
almost impossible to overrule, and if we dare to breach such roles, we are
punished not with the law but with social rejection and judgment. I think we
need more Shakespeares and Websters, who use their talents to question our
societies and make us wonder if our ideas are as enlightened as we think they
are. Only through such free speech and debates can we progress as a society.
Works Cited
Cressy, David.
"Gender Trouble and Cross-Dressing in Early Modern England." The Journal of British Studies. Vol. 35,
No. 4 (Oct., 1996), pp. 438-465. Web.
Duchess of Malfi. “The Early Seventeenth
Century.” The Norton Anthology of English
Literature, Volume B. New York City. W. W. Norton & Company. 2012. 1571-1647.
“Elizabethan
Acting Troupes.” Elizabethan-era.org.uk. December 2012. Web.
Secara,
Maggie. “Elizabethan Sumptuary Statutes: Controlling the Uncontrollable.” Elizabethan.org. 14 July 2001. December
2012. Web.
"Sumptuary Laws." ASL
Shakespeare Project. 2004. December 2012.
Twelfth Night. SparkNotes LLC. sparknotes.com. 2012. December 2012. Web.
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/twelfthnight/section9.rhtml
Twelfth Night.
“The Sixteenth Century.” The
Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume B. New York City. W. W.
Norton & Company. 2012. 1187-1250.
