Ways of Seeing in Renaissance Theater: Speculating on Invisibility

Abstract

n a list of goods bought for his company, the Lord Admiral’s Men, Philip Henslowe recordsmaking a payment for a rather remarkable garment: “a robe for to goo invisibell.”However, Henslowe himself does not seem particularly impressed by his acquisition. For all its magical promise, this robe of invisibility sits innocuously in the middle of a list of other costumes purchased since April 3, 1598, including such basics as a “payer of long black wollen stockens.” Furthermore, the invisibility robe was not especially expensive. “Bowght” with “a gown for Nembia,” it is jointly priced at £3 and 10s. It is impossible to know howmuch of this sum was spent individually on the robe and how much on the gown, but comparison with other items in the inventory provides a sense of the relative cheapness of the double purchase. According to the same section of the accounts, Henslowe paid more than a pound more for a “black satten dublett” and a “payer of rownd howsse paned of vellevett,” and about twice as much for “a dublett of whitt satten layd thicke with gowld lace, and a payer of rowne pandes hosse of cloth of sylver, the panes laydwith gowld lace.” Invisibility came cheaper than Elizabethan glamour. But although the sumptuous garments are fastidiously