The codpieces in the adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall are “definitely too small”, according to a Cambridge academic who has been researching the 16th-century accessory through the literature and paintings of its time.
Victoria Miller, who is due to give a paper on codpieces at a Cambridge University conference on 30 April, concurred with actor Mark Rylance, who plays Thomas Cromwell in the adaptation and who said late last year: “I think the codpieces are just too small. I think that was a directive from our American producers, PBS. They wanted smaller codpieces.”
“The programme is fantastic but you can barely see them,” agreed Miller. “They’re way too small to be accurate – they should be at least double the size. You can kind of see them there, but they aren’t really stuffed, and are easily missed – they’ve really toned them down for a mainstream audience. The codpiece was meant to draw the eye to the general region.”
Miller is researching the rise and fall of the codpiece as part of her PhD into the militaristic influences found in civilian male dress in 16th-century Italy and Germany – a difficult task because there are few extant examples of the accessory. Instead, she has picked through European literature, portraits and prints from the period to chart its path through fashion.
She points to the words of the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, who, writing in the 1580s, called the codpiece “an empty and useless model of a member that we cannot even decently mention by name, which however we show off and parade in public”, while the Elizabethan play Wily Beguiled sees a character boast that he has “a sweet face, a fine beard, comely corpse, and a carousing codpiece”.
“It wasn’t even around for a century – only for about 75 years. It came into fashion as something really modest, a triangular piece of fabric. In the first couple of decades of the 16th century it started to be stuffed. Then it got to epic proportions, some more phallic, some more testicular or ovoid in shape,” she said.
“It definitely did the job of drawing the eye to the genital regions. But it was gone by 1600. It just started to taper off and shrink in size by the last quarter of the century.”
Miller is adamant that the codpiece – cod was slang for scrotum – was not used to provide extra room for the bandages used to treat syphilis at the time, as has been suggested.
“Some people in the field have been looking at the remains of 16th-century graves, and have found tiny fragments of codpieces. From this we know that the genitals weren’t placed inside. They were like a pocket, almost. They were purely decorative. There are accounts of men pulling out oranges from them to impress the ladies, according to Rabelais,” she said.
“There is no evidence to support the idea [that it was used to hold infected genitals]. For one thing the genitals weren’t housed in the codpiece, and for another there is no way the codpiece would have been used by princes if it was connected with a stigmatising disease such as syphilis.”
Miller began her studies because she “wanted to know why they fell out of fashion. They were so prominent, and I thought why did they just drop off completely”.
“I found that during the last quarter of the 16th century, the codpiece practically disappeared. But before that it shrinks, it becomes really small, barely visible, very subtle in portraits,” she said. “My theory is that it shrunk because another fashion was coming in to play, competing with the codpiece.”
This, she said, is the “peascod” belly. “The peascod was a style of doublet constructed by skilful use of padding and stuffing to achieve a rounded and tapering look akin to the fecund shape of a peapod ripe for picking,” she said. “Both fashions protruded and competed for the same bodily real estate – the codpiece was reduced to accommodate the peascod.”
But Miller believes the peascod was just as imbued with notions of virility as the codpiece, with the two often mentioned together in texts, and the peapod “a potent sexual symbol, likened to male genitalia”.
Men, she added, have “always agonised about their masculinity – and especially the question of size”, with a late 15th-century manuscript, Detti Piacevoli, recounting the joke: “A woman was asked what kind of penises women preferred, big or small or medium-sized. She answered: ‘Medium ones are the best.’ When asked the reason, she replied: ‘Because there aren’t any big ones’.”
“We use dress to construct an outward image of our perceived inner selves. The items we choose to adorn ourselves with are loaded with complex cultural messages.” said Miller. “For me, the interesting thing about 16th-century male fashion is the way in which it reveals what was important to men at this time – their preoccupation with masculinity, military prowess and virility.”
By the early 17th century, however, both looks were being ridiculed, said Miller, with Robert Hayman writing in the poem Two Filthy Fashions: “Of all fond fashion, that were worne by Men. / These two (I hope) will ne’r be worne againe: / Great Codpist Doublets, and great Codpist britch, / At seuerall times worne both by meane and rich: / These two had beene, had they beene worn together, / Like two Fooles, pointing, mocking each the other.”
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