ABSTRACT
As recent work in the field of Renaissance studies has shown, stage properties were more than passive objects that remained in the background. Items of clothing, jewels, food, weapons, and domestic goods like bed linens and tableware produced parallel narratives that complicated the linguistic construction of a given character, the moral argument of a play, and the audience’s investment in theatrical spectacle. Indeed, in the early modern period, the public stage provided the premier venue for exploring the complex meanings of material culture.1 By investigating the unexpected roles played by objects on stage, scholars have learned much about the social lives of early modern things off the stage.2 As they changed hands, moved in and out of commodity status, accrued and lost value and cemented and severed human bonds, objects remained central to the performance of identity, generally, and more particularly, fundamental to the fashioning of gendered selves.3
