ABSTRACT
The costumes in Wisdom are meticulously described because it is a morality with masque-like qualities, where the costume is meant to speak emblematically. This is usually seen as a feature of morality rather than mystery plays, though Anima's transformation probably echoes the symbolic change of costume when Lucifer and his angels fall:
We, that were angels so fare ... Now are we waxen blak as any coyll, and vgly, tatyrd as a foyil (Towneley, Play 1, lines 134, 136-7)
Any mystery play designer is strongly counselled to read the dialogue itself in some detail, as the characters tend to comment on each others' clothes. In the Chester Cycle Joseph refuses to approach the Doctors in the Temple because their furres fine intimidate him; the Mothers of the Innocents threaten to beat the Knights over their bassnetts (helmets) ... bygge & broade; Antichrist sneers at Enoch and Elijah as thieves because they are muffeled in mantelles. Rarely, the script gives a complete costume description, like that of the Chester Serpent:
A maner of an edder is in this place that wynges like a bryde shee hase - feet as an edder, a maydens facehir kynde I will take . . . the edders coate I will take one
(Chester Play II, lines 193-6, 206)
Set out as accustomablie vsed haue ye The Deuel! in his ffeathers. all Rugged and rente
(REED Chester, p. 244)
Nonetheless, one should be able to deduce certain things even from the amounts spent on materials and making. How did they compare in price with real clothes, for example? Did the plays make do with cheaper materials? Which costume was the most lavish? Were any radical changes made in the costuming of the same character over the years? Did the sums spent on costume vary from town to town, from guild to guild? No one has yet, as far as I know, attempted to analyse this systematically, though R. W. Ingram has done some very interesting work on Coventry,5 and it would be a complicated exercise in economic history, involving price fluctuations from season to season and from city to city.
