Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama

Description

This revised edition examines how the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries dramatise the Renaissance preoccupation with cosmetics. Farah Karim-Cooper explores the then-contentious issue of female beauty and identifies a 'culture of cosmetics', which finds its visual identity on the early modern stage. She also examines cosmetic recipes and anti-cosmetic literature focusing on their relationship to drama in its representations of gender, race, politics and beauty.

• Offers a new analysis of the construction of whiteness as a racial signifier
• Provides an original insight into women's cosmetic practice through an exploration of ingredients, methods and materials used to create cosmetics and the perception of make up in Shakespeare's time
• Includes numerous cosmetic recipes from the early modern period found in printed books and never published in a modern edition