The Ladies of Bohemia and the Party Friar: An Allegorical Cast List from the Early Tudor Revels

What did stage costumes contribute to the allegory of Tudor theatre? We might expect an iconology based on the visual arts. The Court Revels Wardrobe accounts suggest a rather different approach. As a case history: in November 1527 the French ambassadors were shown a lavish Latin play praising Wolsey’s peace-brokering. Hall’s Chronicle, written after the English Reformation, suggests a purely political anti-imperial scenario. Wardrobe accounts show that it was in fact vigorously anti-Lutheran and pro-papal, chauvinistically using the tailors’ expertise in national and religious dress to identify undesirable sectarian trends with foreign countries, and reflecting the witch-hunt against Tyndale’s Bible.