Spanish Golden Age Theatre Costumes

During term one we have been studying spanish golden age theatre (historical context, playwrights, scenery, costumes, the works.) .
We began by summerging ourselves in long lessons of theory with roberto learning the basics and general facts, from there we were assigned to do a power point presentation in order to dig deeper into the conventions of the time, however we needed to cut away our periferal vision by focusing more on a specific point, hence the research question. Since my area of choice was costumes i came up with " What would actresses that represented higher class women wear during plays?" this allowed me to focus more on one character (called the Dama) because costumes aren't just a materialistic thing that people seem to find so shallow, they are one of the most representative aspects of both, Spanish Golden Age Theatre and its characters.

Costumes can give you unsaid information about characters, they can give details that you couldn't know by reading the script not only by the way they are built but also by the way the character wears them, with pride? (a queen) carelessly? (a servant) or with selfconcioussness?

In order for me to research roberto gave a book to me about costumes in theatre and after reading through it, it didn't provide as much information as i thought it would, not because it wasn't a good book but because it wasn't focused, it provided general information about each period of theatre (from Greek to contemporary) and the rest was more about the costume building it self. So i found my self with just a glimpse of what the S.G.A.T costumes looked like...what to do? where to go? who to ask? well Google.

But Google had failed me, there was little or no information on the costumes on S.G.A.T but i realised that there was something that linked S.P.G.A.T with the rest of the theatre traditions during the 16th and begginings of 17th century, fashion. And luckily for me, the costumes in theatre of those times were pretty much people's everyday clothing so i researched all night and got really good bits of information and great pictures. The general consensus was this:

• Increase in opulence (bigger is better, more is better, more expensive is better)


• The farthingale was very important.


• Corsets, corsets, corsets.

But a question remained to be answered, why? why go through so much trouble just to look good, to look expensive? and as i searched and searched for an answer i was unaware that the answer was less intricate than i thought, Because they liked it, because they wanted to look good and also because theatre was an oportunity to dress up in any way you wanted to (mainly because of the sumptuary laws).
In the end i was really proud of my power point, however i couldn't help but wonder: if they wore clothes that were worn in everyday life, when we put on a play that was written in S.G.A should we wear clothes from that time or should we just wear what we want to? and if so, would this have the same impact?
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