Painted Faces on the Renaissance Stage: The Moral Significance of Face-painting Conventions

"The strength of this book is its abundance of fresh, new, authoritative evidence of face-painting that conclusively establishes how widespread and how richly significant the painted face was on the Renaissance stage. This work should be valuable to anyone interested in the evidence of linking players and face-paint and in the use of face-paint as theatrical signal in Medieval, Tudor, and Renaissance drama. Anyone curious about cosmetics and attitudes toward cosmetics will enjoy reading about the ingredients of the makeup worn by both women and men in the Renaissance to achieve the fashionable white face, rosy cheeks, and light hair. Equally intriguing are the effects of sometimes poisonous ingredients like lead, mercury, and vitriol." "Supporting the text are six illustrations of face-painting that include a woodcut of the devil applying cosmetics, a painted Elizabethan lady, a made-up Elizabeth I, and Satan disguised as a fair-faced, buxom, blond lady. The first book-length study of its kind, Painted Faces on the Renaissance Stage should be of interest to all students of drama, theater history, and social custom in the age of Shakespeare and his contemporaries."--BOOK JACKET.