In Shakespeare’s time, Smocks were “loose, high-necked, shirt-like undergarments worn by women, sometimes used for nightwear; some were plan and made of coarse material” (Clark). In the BBC article “Dressing to impress in the 17th century,” we learn that Early Modern women had a hard time figuring out the right balance of clothing to wear. They were encouraged to be “virtuous,” and one way they could display their virtue and purity was to dress in a way that didn’t show too much skin. The article gives us this interesting scenario where one person brought a woman in front of the court for dressing inappropriately: “In 1628 Catherine Baker was brought before the church courts for defaming Christian Nevell as a “button-smock whore”, an insult which suggests that Catherine thought Christian’s outfit was too revealing.”
“Domitius Enobarus: “This grief is crowned with consolation; your old smock brings forth a new petticoat: and indeed the tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow.” ”
Britannica defines a smock as “a loose, shirtlike garment worn by women in the European Middle Ages under their gowns. The smock eventually developed into a loose, yoked, shirtlike outer garment of coarse linen, used to protect the clothes; it was worn, for example, by peasants in Europe. Modern smocks are loose, lightweight, sleeved garments, often worn to protect the clothes while working. Artists traditionally wore smocks to protect their clothing from paint, marble dust, or any other detritus from the medium in which they worked. Smocks have also been popular garments for pregnant women.”
Made of linen, smocks were often worn by farmers and peasants. It was rare to see a person of nobility wearing a smock. They had to be cleaned often, and children wore them frequently.
“Elizabethan Costume” tells us that smocks were simple garments “worn by all women of all classes;” the smock “was a basic undergarment worn to protect outer clothing from sweat and body oil.” We also learn that “As Elizabethans rarely indulged in full-body baths, and as the clothing of the middle and upper classes was not the kind one could pound on a river rock or scrub regularly with ashes and lye soap, the chemise was vital to Elizabethan costume.” Smocks came in many different styles. There were low-necked smocks, high-necked gathered smocks/shirts, high-necked ungathered smock, and low-necked gathered smocks. This sources also tells us that smocks could be decorated: “Sometimes the chemise was gathered by smocking; sometimes the neckband, cuffs, and the chemise itself were decorated with embroidery, particularly ‘blackwork’ embroidery. Blackwork was a common type of elizabethan embroidery which used only one color to create designs, usually black. Like so much of English Fashion, it originated in Spain. Monochromatic designs in red or blue silk were also popular. Colored silk embroidery was rarer, but is seen in some pictures. The neckline could be edged with thin bobbin lace. in some cases the neck and cuff gathers were covered with a tablet-woven or embroidered band.”
Finally, in “The History of Smocks,” we learn that “The exact origin of the word ‘smocks’ remains a mystery to this day. It is said that the term was first coined to name the linen shirts worn by men and women during the Elizabethan era as undergarments. Gradually its definition shifted and came to be applied to the ornamental embroidered gatherings around the collars of these shirts.” It is interesting to think about what women from this time wore beneath their elaborate clothing.
“SMOCK” APPEARS IN THE FOLLOWING TEXTS:
LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST
When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he, . Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
When shepherds pipe on oaten straws
And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he, . Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
By the Lord, a buck-basket! rammed me in with foul
shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy
napkins; that, Master Brook, there was the rankest
compound of villanous smell that ever offended nostril.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
This says she now when she is beginning to write to
him; for she'll be up twenty times a night, and
there will she sit in her smock till she have writ a
sheet of paper: my daughter tells us all.
OTHELLO
Behold, I have a weapon;
A better never did itself sustain
Upon a soldier's thigh: I have seen the day,
That, with this little arm and this good sword,
I have made my way through more impediments
Than twenty times your stop: but, O vain boast!
Who can control his fate? 'tis not so now.
Be not afraid, though you do see me weapon'd;
Here is my journey's end, here is my butt,
And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.
Do you go back dismay'd? 'tis a lost fear;
Man but a rush against Othello's breast,
And he retires. Where should Othello go?
Now, how dost thou look now? O ill-starr'd wench!
Pale as thy smock! when we shall meet at compt,
This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven,
And fiends will snatch at it. Cold, cold, my girl!
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock,
Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry,
Till honour be bought up and no sword worn
But one to dance with! By heaven, I'll steal away.
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When
it pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a man
from him, it shows to man the tailors of the earth;
comforting therein, that when old robes are worn
out, there are members to make new. If there were
no more women but Fulvia, then had you indeed a cut,
and the case to be lamented: this grief is crowned
with consolation; your old smock brings forth a new
petticoat: and indeed the tears live in an onion
that should water this sorrow.
HENRY VI, PART I
Doubtless he shrives this woman to her smock;
Else ne'er could he so long protract his speech.
LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST
Forestall our sport, to make us thus untrue?
Do not you know my lady's foot by the squier,
And laugh upon the apple of her eye?
And stand between her back, sir, and the fire,
Holding a trencher, jesting merrily?
You put our page out: go, you are allow'd;
Die when you will, a smock shall be your shroud.
You leer upon me, do you? there's an eye
Wounds like a leaden sword.
ROMEO AND JULIET
Two, two; a shirt and a smock.
THE WINTER’S TALE
He hath ribbons of an the colours i' the rainbow;
points more than all the lawyers in Bohemia can
learnedly handle, though they come to him by the
gross: inkles, caddisses, cambrics, lawns: why, he
sings 'em over as they were gods or goddesses; you
would think a smock were a she-angel, he so chants
to the sleeve-hand and the work about the square on't.