Clothing in The Tempest
'Rich garments, linens, stuffs and necessaries'
Roy Booth looks at the motif of costumes and clothing and reveals how the characters’ changing
wardrobes signal the importance of Prospero as controller of others, as well as key shifts in
characters’ roles.
In the will which he signed on March 25th 1616, among other bequests, Shakespeare left his sister
Joan twenty pounds ‘& all my wearing Apparrell’. Clothes were important to Elizabethans both as
items valuable in themselves (and hence this legacy to a relative who couldn’t actually wear the
garments bequeathed to her), and, inseparable from their value, as indications of social status. An
actor and dramatist would always have had a special awareness of the contribution of clothing to
identity.
You will most likely be aware from other texts how important costumes are in Shakespearean drama
– all those disguises in the comedies, the ‘borrowed robes’ of Macbeth, the ‘lendings’ King Lear
frantically discards. The Tempest continues this attention to clothing, both in major aspects of the
play, and in some of its more puzzling details.
Prospero’s Robes
This short investigation will start with the most obvious special costume of the play, addressing first
the question of what Prospero looked like when wearing his ‘Art’. (The Folio text of The Tempest
always gives ‘Art’, meaning magic robes, a capital A.) The critic Keith Sturgess envisaged a cloak
covered with cabbalistic symbols. This is possible, but William Davenant, an early fan and imitator of
Shakespeare (he carried his fandom so far that he was happy to allege that he was Shakespeare’s
son) wrote a masque in which, ‘Merlin the Prophetic Magician’ enters
apparel’d in a gown of light purple, down to his ankles, slackly girt, with wide sleeves turned up with
powdered Ermines, and a roll on his head of the same, with a tippet hanging down behind, in his
hand a silvered rod
(Britannia Triumphans, 1637)
Davenant copied Shakespeare so programmatically that this may involve a recollection of Prospero.
Either way, it’s important that we see that Prospero is able to take off his magical ‘Art’ like a lab
coat: magic has not taken him over. The moments when he coerces Ariel send the same message:
Ariel is not an evil spirit serving Prospero for his own ends, but has to be forced to serve. Prospero is
in control of his magic; it isn’t a black magic in charge of him.
Trinculo’s Clothes, Caliban’s Gaberdine
Another occupational costume in the play is that of Trinculo, who – although he is only a ‘dull fool’
(Act 5 Scene 1 line 297) – ought to be in a jester’s costume (hence Caliban’s ‘pied ninny’ insult in Act
3 Scene 2 line 62). Trinculo is our witness for what Caliban wears:
My best way is to creep under his gaberdine … under the dead mooncalf’s gaberdine for fear of the
storm
(Act 2 Scene 2 lines 38-9 and 111-3)
Caliban, whose only mentioned garment is his ‘gaberdine’, is, of course, Prospero’s sartorial
opposite. In the latest Arden text we read that a ‘gaberdine’ was ‘a long loose cloak for men made of
coarse cloth'. Its simplicity contrasts with Prospero’s and the court party’s finery. David Lindley,
editing the New Cambridge text, more imaginatively compares it with the ‘Jewish gabardine’ worn
by Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, suggesting that Shakespeare uses such a cloak as ‘an outsider
garment’. An early dictionary by Thomas Blount (1661) defined a ‘rochet’ as a ‘loose Gaberdine, or
gown of Canvas, worn by a labourer over the rest of his clothes’, while in a little play by Phineas
Fletcher (1631), a ‘gaberdine’ seems to feature as something a fisherman would wear – and that’s
appropriate, for Caliban is regularly associated with fishiness and fishing. Unlike Blount’s labourer,
Caliban might be near-naked under a canvas cloak. He is certainly barefoot (hence the painful
effectiveness of the hedgehogs Prospero’s spirits will spitefully put in his path).
Prospero’s Changes of Costume
While Caliban has his one unchanging garment, Prospero himself frequently changes his attire. In the
near-contemporary play by Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, Captain Face, dealing with the many clients
of the alchemist Subtle, wishes for a suit of clothes – ‘To fall now like a curtain, flap’ (The Alchemist,
Act 4 Scene 2). Quick-change artists still perform their strenuous and stylised routines (you can find
clips on YouTube). But Prospero is in a way a slow-change artist:
Lend thy hand,
And pluck my magic garment from me.
So, lie there, my Art
-
Act 1 Scene 2 lines 23-5
I am ready now
-
Act 1 Scene 2 line 187
Ariel sings, and helps to attire him … So, so, so
-
Act 5 Scene 1 line 87 sd; 96
Besides fussing reverently over the robes of his ‘Art’, over the course of the action, he slowly,
reluctantly, changes one role and costume (Magus) for another (Duke of Milan).
At the end of The Tempest, Caliban comes to a new perception of Prospero, who has by then
resumed the clothing he wore as Duke of Milan:
Ariel, fetch me the hat and rapier in my cell;
I will discase me and myself present
As I was sometime Milan
-
Act 5 Scene 1 lines 83-6
Trinculo says, ‘If these be true spies which I wear in my head, here’s a goodly sight’, and Caliban
agrees: ‘O Setebos, these be brave spirits indeed! How fine my master is!’ (Act 5 Scene 1 lines 259262).
Caliban as ‘savage’ (Act 1 Scene 2 line 357) was always likely to be deployed in a late moment of
endorsement like this. But consider the restless and unappeased Prospero, hander-out of costumes,
fusser about his own, assigner of roles. Dressed up again in his ducal hat, flourishing his ducal rapier
(‘these seem rather basic signs of ducal authority’, as David Lindley rightly says), presenting himself
as he formerly appeared, Prospero is effectively a pretender to his own former dukedom, dressing
up as he had appeared 12 years before to convince people he’s the same man. Though Caliban is
impressed, these tokens of semi-royal substance seem rather too close to the callow aspirations
Antonio uses to spur on Sebastian (‘My strong imagination sees a crown/Dropping upon thy head’,
Act 2 Scene 1 lines 202-3), even to the ‘trumpery’ which distracts Stephano and Trinculo (Act 4 Scene
1 line 186). Can Prospero really relinquish his ‘Art’ for such rather ordinary regalia?
Restitution to Former Position
Using clothing as a motif, the play works rather hard to make restitution to a previous state
something remarkable and worthwhile. Alonso’s entourage should be imagined as very well dressed.
They first wore their present garments at the wedding of Claribel, from which they were returning.
In Act 2, Gonzalo insensitively reiterates his fascinated observation that despite having been in the
sea, all their garments seem ‘rather new-dyed than stained with salt water’ (Act 2 Scene 1 lines 612). This is as Ariel affirmed to Prospero (Act 1 Scene 2 line 218), the boatswain later affirms the same
thing has happened for the rest of the crew (Act 5 Scene 1 line 236). Gonzalo just can’t get over it:
‘Methinks our garments are now as fresh as when we put them on first in Afric […] we were talking
that our garments seem now as fresh as when we were at Tunis […] Is not, sir, my doublet as fresh as
the first day I wore it?’ (Act 2 Scene 1 lines 66-7; 92-3; 98-9). The clothes carry some symbolic weight
of restitution and restoration, but the human loss seems far greater, both here (for Alonso believes
that he has lost a son and cannot be expected to find much comfort in this recompense that excites
Gonzalo so much), and in Prospero’s brief swagger as restored Duke of Milan (and self-deposed man
of Art).
Delusions of Grandeur
If in this case clothes seem inadequate to suggest a rejuvenation that’s stronger than a sense of loss,
clothes and costuming make other potential contributions to meaning. From beneath Caliban’s
gaberdine, Stephano pulled a fool in his fool’s pied costume. Stephano has delusions of grandeur,
and a clothes-conscious Prospero easily subverts his drunken conspiracy. Despite Caliban’s warnings
(‘it is but trash’, Act 4 Scene 1 line 224), the butler and the jester are distracted by the ‘trumpery’
Prospero had put out for them. That misfiring set of jests about the jerkin being above or below the
‘line’ may just be drunks finding something funny which isn’t, but it is obvious that stealing ‘glistering
apparel’ (Act 4 Scene 1 line 193 sd) and a befuddled conspiracy to become king go together.
Stephano and Trinculo succumb to more disasters, so that ‘at the play’s end […] they stand forlorn in
their muddied finery’, as David Lindley puts it. The clothing they had stolen came from Prospero. A
clever production might costume the two as parodic versions of Antonio and Sebastian, two more
characters who must surrender signs of status to which they have no proper claim. They must
confront a fool and a deluded drunk as mirrors of their own real status. ‘Look how well my garments
fit upon me,/Much feater than before’ Antonio had bragged, in a Macbeth-like moment (Act 2 Scene
1 lines 267-8). He deserves to see the same style of garments on a butler who steals the wine, or a
fool who isn’t even funny.
A Full Wardrobe
‘Look what a wardrobe here is for thee!’ was Trinculo’s exclamation to Stephano (Act 4 Scene 1 line
223). Prospero’s desert island is anomalously full of costumes (though as Katherine Duncan-Jones
says, with its store of glistering apparel, twanging instruments and elaborate props the island is ‘an
image of the playhouse and its backstage equipment’). We even see Prospero hand out a costume
solely for his pleasure – with it goes a command to be invisible: ‘go make thyself like a nymph of the
sea […] go take this shape/And hither come in’t’, Act 1 Scene 2 line 301; 304-5). We learn, because
the play is attentive to explaining such things, that it was Gonzalo who placed ‘rich garments, linens,
stuffs, and necessaries’ (Act 1 Scene 1 line 164) in the leaky boat aboard which Prospero and his
daughter were to be cast adrift. That the old counsellor anticipated the future needs of the infant
Miranda, and also equipped the exiles with the ‘glistering apparel’ and ‘trumpery’ doesn’t bear much
realistic examination.
Freeing Yourself from a Role
In Shakespearean tragedies, saying farewell to your crown, or the armour you fought in (as Mark
Anthony does) can be a terrible moment of loss. But in The Tempest, a play where kings ‘fade […]
into something rich and strange’ in the sea’s unfixed element, where actors are spirits who vanish,
Prospero’s last three words are ‘set me free’. He has learned from Ariel the desire to be unfixed,
neither pegged into a tree, nor a costume. Stage directors have to make up their minds about what
to do with Caliban at the end. A.D. Nuttall suggests that Caliban expects to be retained in service and
leave the island with his master. More romantic stagings leave Caliban alone on the island. Prospero
broke his staff and buried it; he drowned his grimoire, his book of magic. But aren’t we fairly sure
that he leaves his ‘Art’ to Caliban, and that our last vision ought to be of Caliban, out of his gabardine
and wrapped in purple splendour?
Dr Roy Booth is a senior lecturer at Royal Holloway College, London University. He specialises in
the literature of the 16th and 17th centuries.
This article first appeared in emagazine 57, September 2012.