(Above) Hilary Davidson, Curator of Fashion and Decorative Arts with the shoes. Courtesy Museum of London
Exhibition: Treading the Bard, Museum of London, Docklands, from December 2 2009
Buying shoes is never easy. Do you compromise fashion for comfort or force your feet into ridiculously small, but elegant footwear just to fit the scene? A new display of Shakespearian shoes at the Museum of London reveals that this really is an age old problem.
The museum is putting a theatrical foot forward this week with a small case display of shoes worn by actors at the legendary Elizabethan playhouse, The Rose.
Visitors can imagine what it was like to be in the shoes of one of the leading stars of the day, Sir Henry Irving, the charismatic actor who inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
The centrepiece of the show is a shoe recovered from The Rose site itself on the Bankside of the Thames in the late 1980s. It is believed to have been worn during actual performances on the 16th century theatrical stage.
The remarkable find has enabled Museum of London archaeologists to piece together the hidden story of the playhouse. It goes on display at the same time as the definitive book on the theatres, The Rose and The Globe: Playhouses of Shakespeare’s Bankside, Southwark, is published.
A collection of the Shoes from Shakespeare's theatre. Courtesy Museum of London
The shoe has a high "vamp" or upper, and the pink zig-zagged patterning is still visible. Its throat is stitched with delicately holed and decorated scallops and there is a hole at the toe end. This was most likely cut to offer relief from a painful bunion and gives an idea of the pressures that Elizabethan actors were under.
Viewers will also have the chance to look at three other shoes that were worn by prominent Shakespearian actors. They will be surrounded by hazelnut shells found at the Elizabethan sites, which are an historical equivalent of cinema popcorn today. Dress pins, probably dropped during costume changes, will also be on show, adding to a real sense of authenticity.
As visitors gape in wonder at the intricate patterning on these remarkably well preserved shoes, they can perhaps begin to imagine what it must have been like to command an Elizabethan audience in a performance of Henry VI or Titus Andronicus.
Trudging away through the wet London streets, they will also no doubt be relieved that shoe making has evolved considerably since Shakespeare's day.
