Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama

This title examines how the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries dramatise the cultural preoccupation with cosmetics. Farah Karim-Cooper analyses contemporary tracts that address the then – contentious issue of cosmetic practice and identifies a ‘culture of cosmetics’, which finds its visual identity on the Renaissance stage. She also examines cosmetic recipes and their relationship to drama as well as to the construction of early modern identities. This is the only in-depth study of cosmetic culture and its visual representation on the Renaissance stage. It provides original views of Shakespearean and Renaissance drama by examining its preoccupation with cosmetic ingredients, metaphors and the staging of painted beauty. It offers insight into Renaissance women’s cosmetic practice by uncovering a wide range of ingredients, methods and materials used in the construction of cosmetics. It includes numerous cosmetic recipes found in early modern printed books, never before published in a modern edition.

Reviews of Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama

Provides a fascinating perspective on how early modern culture dealt with the growth and transformation of cosmetics into an 'industry' and offers exciting insight into how cosmetic textual imagery might have been interpreted in stage performance.–Tom Healy, Birkbeck College, University of London