Costume design by Hugh Stevenson for Queen Gertrude in Hamlet in a programme of scenes from Shakespeare, British Council tour, early 1950s

Costume design by Hugh Stevenson for Gertrude in Hamlet, showing a hip-length female figure wearing bright rosine Elizabethan-style square necked dress with pointed bodice, the sleeves decorated with interlaced bands of black and ochre and the neck banded in black and ochre; around the neck are ochre chains, the longest caught up at centre front and held by a bold oval brooch with 'pearls' and 'drop pearls'. On the hair is a small ochre ) crown set with 'pearls', across the back of which is fixed a mauve veil. The overskirt is sketched in with no indication of the petticoat. The design is inscribed with the name of the role and is signed and dated.
The ochre paint is used to indicate gold braid or metal.
On the reverse is the sketched outline of an Elizabethan style dress.

Cyril W. Beaumont Bequest

This is one of 25 designs by Hugh Stevenson for a programme of excerpts from Shakespeare devised for a British Council tour in the early 1950s. It was performed by a small company led by Walter Fitzgerald and called for costumes that would clearly indicate the different characters while allowing for quick changes. This Stevenson achieved by creating a basic costume in the Elizabethan style for each actor to which were added robes, tunics, overdresses or accessories.
The designs are part of the collection that came to the Museum from the dance historian and publisher Cyril Beaumont and may originally have formed part of the London Archives of the Dance.

Historical significance: A group of designs showing how a designer solves the problem of creating costumes for a programme of extracts from various Shakespeare plays (which means allowing for quick changes), by creating several basic costumes which can be adapted, or to which accessories can be added, to indicate specific characters

S.158-2000