Textile Shakespeare
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:11th Nov '25
Should be back in stock very soon
Textile Shakespeare argues for the vital presence of the 'textile imagination' in the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, as it explores the economic, cultural, and social centrality of textiles to life in early modern England. Cloth, broadly interpreted, could function as a form of knowledge, skill, and expertise, of power, status, and control; it was a means of both storing and displaying wealth. Cloth, especially in the layered forms of early modern dress, furnished ways of imagining the body and the body politic, the community, the city, the nation, and the self; it was also central to thinking about language, rhetoric, literature, and the act of writing. In chapters based around different materials (linen, leather, wool, silk) and processes (sewing, cutting, folding), Textile Shakespeare recovers this textile liveliness, giving a comprehensive and immersive account of the place of textiles in early modern life and thought, and exploring and animating Shakespeare's plays in ways that have become largely invisible. Grounded in careful and illuminating close reading, it explores the entire range of Shakespeare's works, on the page and in performance in both the early modern theatre and on the contemporary stage. Richly illustrated, it includes detailed descriptions of surviving early modern garments and textiles, based on first-hand experience, and amasses and comprehensively reassesses the evidence for costuming and other staging in Shakespeare's time. It pays attention to textile labour, especially by women, and through its careful and original readings of Shakespeare's plays, it recovers the emotional and physical impact of clothing and other textiles on the lives and experiences of early modern people.
This book is a thick fabric of meaning and insight. It is always in interested and interesting dialogue with its multitude of evidence and with other writers ... There is a wealth of fascinating material here, delivered with style and sometimes humour. From the small detail to the large span of concept, this is a very fine book. * Catherine Richardson, The Review of English Studies *
In this comprehensive and elegantly written study, Hester Lees-Jeffries reveals textiles as the stuff of emotion and memory, and as a language capable of expressing both glory and abjection. A deeply researched book, underpinned throughout by thoughtful close readings of the plays and poems, Textile Shakespeare uncovers a richly nuanced picture of early modern habits of mind and ways of being ... a wonderful treasury that embraces the full expressive significance of textiles in Shakespeare's theater and beyond ... the book is shot through with Lees-Jeffries's own sense of wonderment at the capacity of textiles to bring lost early modern lives back into presence. * Katharine A. Craik, Modern Philology *
Textile Shakespeare ranges widely across the Shakespearean canon (though Cymbeline, which crops up in three separate chapters, might perhaps be said to be its core text) and also mentions other early modern plays where relevant: The Changeling, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Cynthia's Revels, and The Shoemakers' Holiday are all discussed, the last extensively. The book is generously illustrated with 24 colour plates and very nicely written with evocative descriptions of colours and textures, and it will encourage readers and audiences to pay closer and more informed attention to what actors wear now as well as what they may have worn then. * Lisa Hopkins, Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies *
ISBN: 9780198861133
Dimensions: 240mm x 160mm x 30mm
Weight: 800g
416 pages