By the turn of the 19^th century, Elizabethan aesthetics had returned to the London stage. John Philip Kemble staged a Hamlet around this time that clearly looked back to the period of the playwright’s lifetime for its setting. Sir Thomas Lawrence’s 1801 portrait of Kemble as Hamlet depicts the actor-manager wearing a small, loose ruff, a flat hat with feather trim of an early Elizabethan style, a doublet, short hose, simple leather shoes, and a floor-length, fur-edged cloak with sleeves.

SBT PC 72 07

 

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