ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the changing definition and role of Christian religious apparel in early modern English theatre and culture. It also explores how the Catholics and Protestants were visually constructed onstage and in the English imagination, and it considers the apparel worn by the new stage Puritan. It examines the costumes worn to depict the other religions that were regularly depicted in early modern English drama: Mahometans and Jews. Ecclesiastical apparel, although rarely considered in histories of the early modern period, had its own Reformation and was the subject of considerable interest and anxiety following Henry VIII's separation from Catholic Church. In English drama performed between the Reformation and opening of the first professional public playhouse in 1567, popes, cardinals, monks, and friars found repeated theatrical representation, particularly in the newly transformed morality plays. However, it is important to note that practitioners of Islam were rarely identified by their religion in English plays or other Western literature of the period.
