Ruffs Ruffs Author Carly Hoeppner Supervising Editor Melissa Walter Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England EncyclopediaEMEE

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By Carly Hoeppner, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

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Ruffs as Essential Fashion

Starting in the 1560s, ruffled collars of the linen or cotton shirts Englishmen wore beneath their doublets or jerkins grew taller and more elaborate. Separate ruffs of starched fabric soon became the norm for fashion from the 1570s to about 1615. By the 1580s, the enormous cartwheel ruffs were worn by anyone who wished to be seen as fashionable, from skilled tradesmen and their families all the way up to the royal court. A 2013 exhibition at the National Gallery in London called Elizabeth I and Her People features formal portraits of men practicing trades such as preacher, soldier, butcher, merchant, physician, artist and publisher—most of them adorned with these fashionable ruffs.

Creating and Maintaining a Ruff

Preparing and caring for a ruff was a true craft. Using six to eighteen yards of finely textured fabric like lace or cambric, hundreds of pleats had to be folded, ironed, and either pinned or wired with a poking stick to achieve the convoluted shape. Ruffs were further stiffened with small sticks of bone, ivory, or wood. Layers of starch would be applied to create a stiffness and occasionally a color. Blue startch was the most commonly used colored version because it emphasized the pale skin of the wearer, which was also fashionable at the time. Ruffs were tied onto the wearer’s neck or secured to their clothing with many straight pins.

Ruffs as Controversial

In 1562, responding the increasing size of ruffs, the government of Elizabeth I issued Statute of Apparel that limited ruffs for commoners, commanding that neither with any shirts having double ruffs either at the collar or sleeves, which ruffs shall not be worn otherwise than single, and the singleness to be used in a due and mean sort, as was orderly and comely used before the coming in of the outrageous double ruffs which now of late are crept inupon pain of forfeiture of the same and of imprisonment and fine at the Queen's Highness's pleasure for every such offense.

The Crown’s attempt apparently did not succeed, since twenty years later the Puritan preacher Philip Stubbes again attacked the fashion. Stubbes is well known for his loathing of the theater from his 1583 pamphlet The Anatomy of Abuses pamphlet, but he also expresses his distaste for ruffs in the same text: They have great and monstrous ruffes, madeof some other the finest cloth that can be got for money, whereof some be a quarter of a yard deep, yea, some more, very few lesse; So that they stand a full quarter of a yarde (and more) from their necks, dangling over their shoulder poynts, instead of a vaile... The devil, as he in the fulnes of his malice, first invented these great ruffes

Stubbes attacks the foolish devices that people decorate ruffs with, decrying the, golde, silver, or silk lace of stately price, wrought all over with needle work, speckled and sparkled heer and there with the sonne, the moone, the starres, and many other antiquities. Stubbes clearly objects to the excess of luxury that ruffs display.

Ruffs and Identity

As it is today, clothing was one of the most important status symbols throughout the early modern era. Ella Hawkins explores how the ruff has become firmly established as an expression of Shakespeare’s identity, as well as a sartorial manifestation of the sense of tradition, prestige, and stuffiness often associated with the playwright and his works (191), even though most artists of the time were not painted wearing a ruff.

Key Print Sources Arnold, Janet et al. Patterns of Fashion 4: The Cut and Construction of Linen Shirts, Smocks, Neckwear, Headwear and Accessories for Men and Women c.1540–1660. Macmillan, 2008. Hawkins, Ella. The <soCalled>Shakespearean</soCalled> Ruff. Shakespeare Bulletin, vol. 39, no. 2, Summer 2021, pp. 1–24. Lennox, Patricia, and Bella Mirabella. Shakespeare and Costume. The Arden Shakespeare, 2015. North, Susan. What the Elizabethans Wore: Evidence from Wills and Inventories of the <q>Middling Sort</q>. Elizabeth I & Her People, National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2013, pp. 34–41.
Key Online Sources Best, Michael. Ruffs and Hairstyles. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/stage/costumes/ruffs.html. Accessed 31 Jan. 2024. Elizabeth I and Her People. Curated by Tarnya Cooper et al. National Portrait Gallery. 10 Oct. 2013–5 Jan. 2014, https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2013/elizabeth-i-her-people. Leed, Drea. Stubbes On Fashion: Excerpes from Phillip Stubbes’s 1583 <title level="m">Anatomie of Abuses. ElizabethanCostume.net, http://www.elizabethancostume.net/stubbes.html#ruffs. Acessed 31 Jan. 2024. Lyon, Karen. Clothing and Fashions in Elizabethan England: How to Look the Part. Shakespeare & Beyond, Folger Shakespeare Library, 8 Sept. 2017, https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2017/09/05/renaissance-fashion-elizabethan-clothing/. Elizabethan Ruffs. Historical Britain, 22 July 2013, https://historicalbritain.org/2013/07/22/elizabethan-ruffs/. Worsley, Lucy. A Bit of Ruff: Meet the Middle-Class Elizabethans. Lucyworsley.com, 28 Oct. 2013. https://butlercc.libguides.com/mla/databases. Accessed 1 Feb. 2024.