Headgear as a Paralinguistic Signifier in King Lear

Summary

Ophelia’s identification of Hamlet as mad because when he visited her in her chamber he did not wear a hat suggests strongly that in the original performances he had one on his head at least for his opening scenes. His urgings to Osric to put his own hat to its proper use in Act 5 indicate that he was wearing it again by the play’s last act. Our current neglect of headgear with its multiple functions as what the specialists in body language like to call a paralinguistic signifier has lost us several potent features not only of the original staging of Hamlet but of King Lear with its panoply of regal and ducal crowns and their varying status, and Lear’s own progressive shedding of all his headgear. That loss is accompanied by an even bigger one: access to what actually happened in the original performances of the two divergent versions of its conclusion. The evidence about the wearing and not-wearing of headgear in the first performances of King Lear repays careful study. We have regrettably little evidence about what the original players of Lear might have worn, but the indications about headgear in the text strongly suggest that the author expected it to be used significantly. The play’s choice to open the 1606 Christmas entertainments at Court argues, if nothing else, that the players took considerable care over the correctness of their royal and courtly regalia.