Elizabethan Society

by the Italian sonnets, which had been introduced into the English language by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) during the reign of Henry VIII, English poets began to construct their own variations on the intricate, highly structured poetic form. Others, such as Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) in his extraordinarily ambitious poem of homage to gags for the peasant "groundlings" who stood at the foot of the stage, scenes of action and intrigue for the middle class spectators, or elevated language and characters to appeal to the more educated upper class citizens who sat in the tiered galleries around the outdoor stage.

Source 2 http://www.enotes.com/william-shakespeare/shakespeares-globe-theater

But while the Globe Theatre, and indeed, the entire Elizabethan theater scene opened its doors to the low life of the pits, it also accommodated an audience of higher-status, well-heeled, and better educated individuals. As Harry Levin notes in his general introduction to the Riverside Shakespeare (1974), the "Globe was truly a microcosm or little world of man". With its logo of Hercules holding up the earth (as a temporary replacement to Atlas), the Globe Theatre constituted a "little world" in which the social elite rubbed up against a cross-section of common vulgarians, drunken idlers, and other shady, street-wise sorts.

Source 3 http://www.springfield.k12.il.us/schools/springfield/eliz/costumes.html

The thrust stage may Accurate information concerning the clothes worn in the earliest production of Shakespeare plays is sadly deficient. Even in a play set in ancient Rome, the actors wore the dress of their own time.

English dress during the age of Shakespeare reflected the vitality and the high points of the period. Although the upper class and the even great merchants of earlier eras had also dressed in rich and colorful fabrics, the sixteenth century saw an elaboration in dress that had nor been common. The names of parts of the Elizabethan wardrobe indicate their foreign origins: French hose, French hood, Venetians, Spanish bonnet.

Elizabethan men and women of the upper class dressed more for display than for comfort, and even their undergarments were designed to contribute to their appearance. The garment worn next to the skin by both sexes was a shirt, though in the case