Stocking (noun): 1a: a usually knit close-fitting covering for the foot and leg; b: SOCK; 2: something resembling a stocking, especially: a ring of distinctive color on the lower part of the leg of an animal
In Twelfth Night, yellow stockings are a recurring theme, as are references to being “cross-gartered.” In “Malvolio's Yellow Stockings: Coding Illicit Sexuality in Early Modem London,” Loreen L. Giese asserts that “stockings in this period were also not limited since they varied in terms of material, design, color, and usage.” As Joan Thirsk points out, many different kinds of stockings were made to suit all purses and purposes. Nevertheless, the wearing of yellow stockings had particular resonance, as two well-known usages suggest. The wearing of yellow stockings may be most commonly associated with two contexts: the children at Christ's Hospital, which opened in 21 November 1552 and was officially founded on 26 June 1553, and the dramatic figure MalvoUo in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, the first performance of which was 6 January 1601/2. Indeed, evidence of this sartorial practice from other literary and legal texts supplements and refines our understanding of their meaning by indicating the sexual symbolism of wearing yellow stockings in early modem London. Specifically, this evidence indicates that some early modem Londoners understood the wearing of yellow stockings to signal illicit sexuality and marital betrayal.”
She says it is worth noting that Leshe Hotson interpreted the issue a little differently, claiming that Queen Elizabeth hated yellow. “For six years yellow had been the colour of danger in her Court—being fiaunted by the faction of the Duke of Norfolk until his attainder and execution in 1572. And the flag of her arch-enemy, Spain, was yellow.”
It turns out that there is a lot of scholarly debate around yellow stockings. Here’s some additional context:
In the article titled, “The Rise and Fall of Sumptuary Laws: Rules for dressing in Shakespeare’s England,” scholar Karen Lyon relays a story about a man who was arrested for padding his calves beneath his stockings. There were very strict laws about what could or not could be worn in England at this time, and there was surprisingly a lot of pressure on men to dress in certain ways:
“In 1565, a man named Richard Walweyn was detained for wearing ‘a very monsterous and outraygous greate payre of hose.’ While the arrest record does not reveal what the officers found ‘monsterous and outraygous’ about Walweyn’s hose, scholar Amanda Bailey suggests that he may have been guilty of padding his calves, in deference to an Elizabethan fad for shapely legs. As a member of ‘the meaner sort’ (e.g., a servant), Walweyn would, like apprentices and students, not be permitted to wear stockings that were stuffed with more than a yard and three quarters of material.”
She goes on to write that during this time, clothing defined people by rank and income, or “made the man.” The law wanted to target peole who tried to make themselves something other than what they were (according to society).
Interestingly, Elizabethans had a fad for shapely legs. This gives us some insight into the significance of stockings. In “Clothing in Elizabethan England,” Lisa Picard writes: “the Elizabethan era saw men’s clothes depart more widely from their physique than in any other time. At least if you had good legs – and they were important – you could show them off up to crotch level.” We often think about the ways that women are forced to look a certain way by a youth and chastity-obsessed society, and the study of stockings in Elizabethan England reveals that men also faced pressure in terms of their physical appearances.
“STOCKING” IS ALSO MENTIONED IN THE FOLLOWING TEXTS:
HAMLET
My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd,
No hat upon his head, his stockings foul'd,
Ungart'red, and down-gyved to his ankle;
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors- he comes before me.
HENRY IV, PART I
Wilt thou rob this leathern jerkin, crystal-button,
not-pated, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddis-garter,
smooth-tongue, Spanish-pouch,—
HENRY IV, PART II
Belike then my appetite was not-princely got; for, by
troth, I do now remember the poor creature, small beer. But
indeed these humble considerations make me out of love with
greatness. What a disgrace is it to me to remember thy name,
to know thy face to-morrow, or to take note how many pair of
stockings thou hast—viz., these, and those that were thy
peach-colour'd ones—or to bear the inventory of thy shirts-
one for superfluity, and another for use!
HENRY III
They must either,
For so run the conditions, leave those remnants
Of fool and feather that they got in France,
With all their honourable point of ignorance
Pertaining thereunto, as fights and fireworks,
Abusing better men than they can be,
Out of a foreign wisdom, renouncing clean
The faith they have in tennis, and tall stockings,
Short blister'd breeches, and those types of travel,
And understand again like honest men;
Or pack to their old playfellows: there, I take it,
They may, 'cum privilegio,' wear away
The lag end of their lewdness and be laugh'd at.
TWELFTH NIGHT
Remember who commended thy
yellow stockings, and wished to see thee ever
cross-gartered: I say, remember. Go to, thou art
made, if thou desirest to be so; if not, let me see
thee a steward still, the fellow of servants, and
not worthy to touch Fortune's fingers. Farewell.
She that would alter services with thee,
THE FORTUNATE-UNHAPPY.'
Daylight and champaign discovers not more: this is
open. I will be proud, I will read politic authors,
I will baffle Sir Toby, I will wash off gross
acquaintance, I will be point-devise the very man.
I do not now fool myself, to let imagination jade
me; for every reason excites to this, that my lady
loves me. She did commend my yellow stockings of
late, she did praise my leg being cross-gartered;
and in this she manifests herself to my love, and
with a kind of injunction drives me to these habits
of her liking. I thank my stars I am happy. I will
be strange, stout, in yellow stockings, and
cross-gartered, even with the swiftness of putting
on. Jove and my stars be praised!
TWELFTH NIGHT
You can say none of this: well, grant it then
And tell me, in the modesty of honour,
Why you have given me such clear lights of favour,
Bade me come smiling and cross-garter'd to you,
To put on yellow stockings and to frown
Upon Sir Toby and the lighter people;
And, acting this in an obedient hope,
Why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd,
Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,
And made the most notorious geck and gull
That e'er invention play'd on? tell me why.
KING LEAR
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud,
shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy,
worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver'd, action-taking, whoreson,
glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of
good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave,
beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch;
one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deny the
least syllable of thy addition.
KING LEAR
Sir, I am too old to learn.
Call not your stocks for me. I serve the King;
On whose employment I was sent to you.
You shall do small respect, show too bold malice
Against the grace and person of my master,
Stocking his messenger.
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.
TAMING OF THE SHREW
I am Christophero Sly; call not me 'honour' nor 'lordship.' I
ne'er drank sack in my life; and if you give me any conserves,
give me conserves of beef. Ne'er ask me what raiment I'll wear,
for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than
legs, nor no more shoes than feet- nay, sometime more feet than
shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the overleather.
TAMING OF THE SHREW
Why, therefore, fire; for I have caught extreme cold.
Where's the cook? Is supper ready, the house trimm'd, rushes
strew'd, cobwebs swept, the serving-men in their new fustian,
their white stockings, and every officer his wedding-garment on?
Be the jacks fair within, the jills fair without, the carpets
laid, and everything in order?
TWELFTH NIGHT
If you will then see the fruits of the sport, mark
his first approach before my lady: he will come to
her in yellow stockings, and 'tis a colour she
abhors, and cross-gartered, a fashion she detests;
and he will smile upon her, which will now be so
unsuitable to her disposition, being addicted to a
melancholy as she is, that it cannot but turn him
into a notable contempt. If you will see it, follow
me.
TWELFTH NIGHT
If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourself
into stitches, follow me. Yond gull Malvolio is
turned heathen, a very renegado; for there is no
Christian, that means to be saved by believing
rightly, can ever believe such impossible passages
of grossness. He's in yellow stockings.
TWELFTH NIGHT
'Remember who commended thy yellow stockings,'—
TWELFTH NIGHT
Thy yellow stockings!