ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the complex relationship between characters, bodies, and their clothing. Within this paradigm, the culturally received ideas surrounding the body and its coverings are discussed in relation to chromatic markers. The cultural assumptions around clothing and their colours are investigated in relation to the tensions which arise when they are augmenting emotional transactions. Within Twelfth Night, clothing is deployed, in some circumstances, to underpin emotional registers, and these fluctuating registers are supported by chromatic flags. The mutability of both colour and clothing gives rise to tensions which are exploited by Shakespeare evidenced, for example, in cross-dressing. By examining the colour-coding that accompanies the body and its clothing further insights can be uncovered in emotional relationships. Throughout the play, colours can be observed to enable and augment the emotional register of the physical and figurative space that the body occupies.
