Cross is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in drama. In this essay she discusses the use of costume in Orton's play.

Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw is notable for its use of costume. Throughout the play, characters dress and undress, discarding and exchanging clothing, and thus furthering Orton's theme of the fluidity of identity. Orton also uses clothing and the removal of clothing in the play to establish and subvert authority, to highlight the vulnerability as well as the threat of the human body, and to create a confusing and comic effect. Costume in the play provides much more than decoration or even character illumination. In What the Butler Saw, Orton's use of clothing is central to the play.

From the beginning of What the Butler Saw, the characters' clothing is used to establish who has authority and power and who does not. From the moment...