The Truth of Masks Essay
In many of the somewhat violent attacks that have recently been made on that splendour of
mounting which now characterises our Shakespearian revivals in England, it seems to have been
tacitly assumed by the critics that Shakespeare himself was more or less indifferent to the
costumes of his actors, and that, could he see Mrs. Langtry's production of Antony and
Cleopatra, he would probably say that the play, and the play only, is the thing, and that
everything else is leather and prunella. While, as regards any historical accuracy in dress, Lord
Lytton, in an article in the Nineteenth Century, has laid it down as a dogma of art that
archaeology is entirely out of place in the presentation of any of Shakespeare's plays, and the
attempt to introduce it one of the stupidest pedantries of an age of prigs.
Lord Lytton's position I shall examine later on; but, as regards the theory that Shakespeare did
not busy himself much about the costume-wardrobe of his theatre, anybody who cares to study
Shakespeare's method will see that there is absolutely no dramatist of the French, English, or
Athenian stage who relies so much for his illusionist effects on the dress of his actors as
Shakespeare does himself.
Knowing how the artistic temperament is always fascinated by beauty of costume, he constantly
introduces into his plays masques and dances, purely for the sake of the pleasure which they
give the eye; and we have still his stage-directions for the three great processions in Henry the
Eighth, directions which are characterised by the most extraordinary elaborateness of detail
down to the collars of S.S. and the pearls in Anne Boleyn's hair. Indeed it would be quite easy for
a modern manager to reproduce these pageants absolutely as Shakespeare had them designed;
and so accurate were they that one of the court officials of the time, writing an account of the
last performance of the play at the Globe Theatre to a friend, actually complains of their
realistic character, notably of the production on the stage of the Knights of the Garter in the
robes and insignia of the order as being calculated to bring ridicule on the real ceremonies;
much in the same spirit in which the French Government, some time ago, prohibited that
delightful actor, M. Christian, from appearing in uniform, on the plea that it was prejudicial to
the glory of the army that a colonel should be caricatured.
And elsewhere the gorgeousness of apparel which distinguished the English stage under
Shakespeare's influence was attacked by the contemporary critics, not as a rule, however, on
the grounds of the democratic tendencies of realism, but usually on those moral grounds which
are always the last refuge of people who have no sense of beauty.
The point, however, which I wish to emphasise is, not that Shakespeare appreciated the value of
lovely costumes in adding picturesqueness to poetry, but that he saw how important costume is
as a means of producing certain dramatic effects. Many of his plays, such as Measure for
Measure, Twelfth Night, The Two Gentleman of Verona, All's Well That Ends Well, Cymbeline,
and others, depend for their illusion on the character of the various dresses worn by the hero or
the heroine; the delightful scene in Henry the Sixth, on the modern miracles of healing by faith,
loses all its point unless Gloster is in black and scarlet; and the dénoûment of the Merry Wives
of Windsor hinges on the colour of Anne Page's gown. As for the uses Shakespeare makes of
disguises the instances are almost numberless. Posthumus hides his passion under a peasant's
garb, and Edgar his pride beneath an idiot's rags; Portia wears the apparel of a lawyer, and
Rosalind is attired in ‘all points as a man’; the
cloak-bag of Pisanio changes Imogen to the youth Fidele; Jessica flees from her father's house in
boy's dress, and Julia ties up her yellow hair in fantastic love-knots, and dons hose and doublet;
Henry the Eighth woos his lady as a shepherd, and Romeo his as a pilgrim; Prince Hal and Poins
appear first as footpads in buckram suits, and then in white aprons and leather jerkins as the
waiters in a tavern: and as for Falstaff, does he not come on as a highwayman, as an old woman,
as Herne the Hunter, and as the clothes going to the laundry?
Nor are the examples of the employment of costume as a mode of intensifying dramatic
situation less numerous. After slaughter of Duncan, Macbeth appears in his night-gown as if
aroused from sleep; Timon ends in rags the play he had begun in splendour; Richard flatters the
London citizens in a suit of mean and shabby armour, and, as soon as he has stepped in blood to
the throne, marches through the streets in crown and George and Garter; the climax of The
Tempest is reached when Prospero, throwing off his enchanter's robes, sends Ariel for his hat
and rapier, and reveals himself as the great Italian Duke; the very Ghost in Hamlet changes his
mystical apparel to produce different effects; and as for Juliet, a modern playwright would
probably have laid her out in her shroud, and made the scene a scene of horror merely, but
Shakespeare arrays her in rich and gorgeous raiment, whose loveliness makes the vault ‘a
feasting presence full of light,’ turns the tomb into a bridal chamber, and gives the cue and
motive for Romeo's speech of the triumph of Beauty over Death.
Even small details of dress, such as the colour of a major-domo's stockings, the pattern on a
wife's handkerchief, the sleeve of a young soldier, and a fashionable woman's bonnets, become
in Shakespeare's hands points of actual dramatic importance, and by some of them the action
of the play in question is conditioned absolutely. Many other dramatists have availed
themselves of costume as a method of expressing directly to the audience the character of a
person on his entrance, though hardly so brilliantly as Shakespeare has done in the case of the
dandy Parolles, whose dress, by the way, only an archaeologist can understand; the fun of a
master and servant exchanging coats in presence of the audience, of shipwrecked sailors
squabbling over the division of a lot of fine clothes, and of a tinker dressed up like a duke while
he is in his cups, may be regarded as part of that great career which costume has always played
in comedy from the time of Aristophanes down to Mr. Gilbert; but nobody from the mere
details of apparel and adornment has ever drawn such irony of contrast, such immediate and
tragic effect, such pity and such pathos, as Shakespeare himself.
Armed cap-à-pie, the dead King stalks on the battlements of Elsinore because all is not right
with Denmark; Shylock's Jewish gaberdine is part of the stigma under which that wounded and
embittered nature writhes; Arthur begging for his life can think of no better plea than the
handkerchief he had given Hubert—
“Have you the heart? when your head did but ache,
I knit my handkerchief about your brows,
The best I had, a princess wrought it me
And I did never ask it you again;”
and Orlando's blood-stained napkin strikes the first sombre note in that exquisite woodland
idyll, and shows us the depth of feeling that underlies Rosalind's fanciful wit and wilful jesting.
“Last night 'twas on my arm; I kissed it;
I hope it be not gone to tell my lord
That I kiss aught but he,”
says Imogen, jesting on the loss of the bracelet which was already on its way to Rome to rob her
of her husband's faith; the little Prince passing to the Tower plays with the dagger in his uncle's
girdle; Duncan sends a ring to Lady Macbeth on the night of his own murder, and the ring of
Portia turns the tragedy of the merchant into a wife's comedy. The great rebel York dies with a
paper crown on his head; Hamlet's black suit is a kind of colour-motive in the piece, like the
mourning of the Chimène in the Cid; and the climax of Antony's speech is the production of
Caesar's cloak:
“I remember
The first time ever Caesar put it on.
'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,
The day he overcame the Nervii:—
Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger through:
See what a rent the envious Casca made:
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed. . . .
Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold
Our Caesar's vesture wounded?”
The flowers which Ophelia carries with her in her madness are as pathetic as the violets that
blossom on a grave; the effect of Lear's wandering on the heath is intensified beyond words by
his fantastic attire; and when Cloten, stung by the taunt of that simile which his sister draws
from her husband's raiment, arrays himself in that husband's very garb to work upon her the
deed of shame, we feel that there is nothing in the whole of modern French realism, nothing
even in Thérèse Raquin, that masterpiece of horror, which for terrible and tragic significance can
compare with this strange scene in Cymbeline.
In the actual dialogue also some of the most vivid passages are those suggested by costume.
Rosalind's
“Dost thou think, though I am caparisoned like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my
disposition?”
Constance's
“Grief fills the place of my absent child,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;”
and the quick sharp cry of Elizabeth—
“Ah! cut my lace asunder!”
are only a few of the many examples one might quote. One of the finest effects I have ever seen
on the stage was Salvini, in the last act of Lear, tearing the plume from Kent's cap and applying it
to Cordelia's lips when he came to the line,
“This feather stirs; she lives!”
Mr. Booth, whose Lear had many noble qualities of passion, plucked, I remember, some fur from
his archaeologically-incorrect ermine for the same business; but Salvini's was the finer effect of
the two, as well as the truer. And those who saw Mr. Irving in the last act of Richard the Third
have not, I am sure, forgotten how much the agony and terror of his dream was intensified, by
contrast, through the calm and quiet that preceded it, and the delivery of such lines as
“What, is my beaver easier than it was?
And all my armour laid into my tent?
Look that my staves be sound and not too heavy—”
lines which had a double meaning for the audience, remembering the last words which
Richard's mother called after him as he was marching to Bosworth:—
“Therefore take with thee my most grievous curse,
Which in the day of battle tire thee more
Than all the complete armour that thou wear'st.”
As regards the resources which Shakespeare had at his disposal, it is to be remarked that, while
he more than once complains of the smallness of the stage on which he has to produce big
historical plays, and of the want of scenery which obliges him to cut out many effective open-air
incidents, he always writes as a dramatist who had at his disposal a most elaborate theatrical
wardrobe, and who could rely on the actors taking pains about their make-up. Even now it is
difficult to produce such a play as the Comedy of Errors; and to the picturesque accident of Miss
Ellen Terry's brother resembling herself we owe the opportunity of seeing Twelfth Night
adequately performed.
Indeed, to put any play of Shakespeare's on the stage, absolutely as he himself wished it to be
done, requires the services of a good property-man, a clever wig-maker, a costumier with a
sense of colour and a knowledge of textures, a master of the methods of making-up, a
fencing-master, a dancing-master, and an artist to direct personally the whole production. For
he is most careful to tell us the dress and appearance of each character. ‘Racine abhorre la
réalité,’ says Auguste Vacquerie somewhere; ‘il ne daigne pas s'occuper de son costume. Si l'on
s'en rapportait aux indications du poète, Agamemnon serait vêtu d'un sceptre et Achille d'une
epée.’ But with Shakespeare it is very different. He gives us directions about the costumes of
Perdita, Florizel, Autolycus, the Witches in Macbeth, and the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet,
several elaborate descriptions of his fat knight, and a detailed account of the extraordinary garb
in which Petruchio is to be married. Rosalind, he tells us, is tall, and is to carry a spear and a
little dagger; Celia is smaller, and is to paint her face brown so as to look sunburnt. The children
who play at fairies in Windsor Forest are to be dressed in white and green—a compliment, by
the way, to Queen Elizabeth, whose favourite colours they were—and in white, with green
garlands and gilded vizors, the angels are to come to Katherine in Kimbolton. Bottom is in
homespun, Lysander is distinguished from Oberon by his wearing an Athenian dress, and Launce
has holes in his boots. The Duchess of Gloucester stands in a white sheet with her husband in
mourning beside her. The motley of the Fool, the scarlet of the Cardinal, and the French lilies
broidered on the English coats, are all made occasion for jest or taunt in the dialogue. We know
the patterns on the Dauphin's armour and the Pucelle's sword, the crest on Warwick's helmet
and the colour of Bardolph's nose. Portia has golden hair, Ph
œ
be is black-haired, Orlando has
chestnut curls, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek's hair hangs like flax on a distaff, and won't curl at all.
Some of the characters are stout, some lean, some straight, some hunchbacked, some fair,
some dark, and some are to blacken their faces. Lear has a white beard, Hamlet's father a
grizzled, and Benedick is to shave his in the course of the play. Indeed, on the subject of stage
beards Shakespeare is quite elaborate; tells us of the many different colours in use, and gives a
hint to actors always to see that their own are properly tied on. There is a dance of reapers in
rye-straw hats, and of rustics in hairy coats like satyrs; a masque of Amazons, a masque of
Russians, and a classical masque; several immortal scenes over a weaver in an ass's head, a riot
over the colour of a coat which it takes the Lord Mayor of London to quell, and a scene between
an infuriated husband and his wife's milliner about the slashing of a sleeve.
As for the metaphors Shakespeare draws from dress, and the aphorisms he makes on it, his hits
at the costume of his age, particularly at the ridiculous size of the ladies' bonnets, and the many
descriptions of the mundus muliebris, from the song of Autolycus in the Winter's Tale down to
the account of the Duchess of Milan's gown in Much Ado about Nothing, they are far too
numerous to quote; though it may be worth while to remind people that the whole of the
Philosophy of Clothes is to be found in Lear's scene with Edgar—a passage which has the
advantage of brevity and style over the grotesque wisdom and somewhat mouthing
metaphysics of Sartor Resartus. But I think that from what I have already said it is quite clear
that Shakespeare was very much interested in costume. I do not mean in that shallow sense by
which it has been concluded from his knowledge of deeds and daffodils that he was the
Blackstone and Paxton of the Elizabethan age; but that he saw that costume could be made at
once impressive of a certain effect on the audience and expressive of certain types of character,
and is one of the essential factors of the means which a true illusionist has at his disposal.
Indeed to him the deformed figure of Richard was of as much value as Juliet's loveliness; he sets
the serge of the radical beside the silks of the lord, and sees the stage effects to be got from
each: he has as much delight in Caliban as he has in Ariel, in rags as he has in cloth of gold, and
recognises the artistic beauty of ugliness.
The difficulty Ducis felt about translating Othello in consequence of the importance given to
such a vulgar thing as a handkerchief, and his attempt to soften its grossness by making the
Moor reiterate ‘Le bandeau! le bandeau!’ may be taken as an example of the difference
between la tragédie philosophique and the drama of real life; and the introduction for the first
time of the word mouchoir at the Théâtre Français was an era in that romantic-realistic
movement of which Hugo is the father and M. Zola the enfant terrible, just as the classicism of
the earlier part of the century was emphasised by Talma's refusal to play Greek heroes any
longer in a powdered periwig—one of the many instances, by the way, of that desire for
archaeological accuracy in dress which has distinguished the great actors of our age.
In criticising the importance given to money in La Comédie Humaine, Théophile Gautier says
that Balzac may claim to have invented a new hero in fiction, le héros métallique. Of
Shakespeare it may be said he was the first to see the dramatic value of doublets, and that a
climax may depend on a crinoline.
The burning of the Globe Theatre—an event due, by the way, to the results of the passion for
illusion that distinguished Shakespeare's stage-management—has unfortunately robbed us of
many important documents; but in the inventory, still in existence, of the costume-wardrobe of
a London theatre in Shakespeare's time, there are mentioned particular costumes for cardinals,
shepherds, kings, clowns, friars, and fools; green coats for Robin Hood's men, and a green gown
for Maid Marian; a white and gold doublet for Henry the Fifth, and a robe for Longshanks;
besides surplices, copes, damask gowns, gowns of cloth of gold and of cloth of silver, taffeta
gowns, calico gowns, velvet coats, satin coats, frieze coats, jerkins of yellow leather and of black
leather, red suits, grey suits, French Pierrot suits, a robe ‘for to goo invisibell,’ which seems
inexpensive at £3, 10s., and four incomparable fardingales—all of which show a desire to give
every character an appropriate dress. There are also entries of Spanish, Moorish and Danish
costumes, of helmets, lances, painted shields, imperial crowns, and papal tiaras, as well as of
costumes for Turkish Janissaries, Roman Senators, and all the gods and goddesses of Olympus,
which evidence a good deal of archaeological research on the part of the manager of the
theatre. It is true that there is a mention of a bodice for Eve, but probably the donnée of the
play was after the Fall.
Indeed, anybody who cares to examine the age of Shakespeare will see that archaeology was
one of its special characteristics. After that revival of the classical forms of architecture which
was one of the notes of the Renaissance, and the printing at Venice and elsewhere of the
masterpieces of Greek and Latin literature, had come naturally an interest in the ornamentation
and costume of the antique world. Nor was it for the learning that they could acquire, but
rather for the loveliness that they might create, that the artists studied these things. The curious
objects that were being constantly brought to light by excavations were not left to moulder in a
museum, for the contemplation of a callous curator, and the ennui of a policeman bored by the
absence of crime. They were used as motives for the production of a new art, which was to be
not beautiful merely, but also strange.
Infessura tells us that in 1485 some workmen digging on the Appian Way came across an old
Roman sarcophagus inscribed with the name ‘Julia, daughter of Claudius.’ On opening the coffer
they found within its marble womb the body of a beautiful girl of about fifteen years of age,
preserved by the embalmer's skill from corruption and the decay of time. Her eyes were half
open, her hair rippled round her in crisp curling gold, and from her lips and cheek the bloom of
maidenhood had not yet departed. Borne back to the Capitol, she became at once the centre of
a new cult, and from all parts of the city crowded pilgrims to worship at the wonderful shrine,
till the Pope, fearing lest those who had found the secret of beauty in a Pagan tomb might
forget what secrets Judaea's rough and rock-hewn sepulchre contained, had the body conveyed
away by night, and in secret buried. Legend though it may be, yet the story is none the less
valuable as showing us the attitude of the Renaissance towards the antique world. Archaeology
to them was not a mere science for the antiquarian; it was a means by which they could touch
the dry dust of antiquity into the very breath and beauty of life, and fill with the new wine of
romanticism forms that else had been old and outworn. From the pulpit of Niccola Pisano down
to Mantegna's ‘Triumph of Caesar,’ and the service Cellini designed for King Francis, the
influence of this spirit can be traced; nor was it confined merely to the immobile arts—the arts
of arrested movement—but its influence was to be seen also in the great Graeco-Roman
masques which were the constant amusement of the gay courts of the time, and in the public
pomps and processions with which the citizens of big commercial towns were wont to greet the
princes that chanced to visit them; pageants, by the way, which were considered so important
that large prints were made of them and published—a fact which is a proof of the general
interest at the time in matters of such kind.
And this use of archaeology in shows, so far from being a bit of priggish pedantry, is in every
way legitimate and beautiful. For the stage is not merely the meeting-place of all the arts, but is
also the return of art to life. Sometimes in an archaeological novel the use of strange and
obsolete terms seems to hide the reality beneath the learning, and I dare say that many of the
readers of Notre Dame de Paris have been much puzzled over the meaning of such expressions
as la casaque à mahoitres, les voulgiers, le gallimard taché d'encre, les craaquiniers, and the
like; but with the stage how different it is! The ancient world wakes from its sleep, and history
moves as a pageant before our eyes, without obliging us to have recourse to a dictionary or an
encyclopaedia for the perfection of our enjoyment.
Indeed, there is not the slightest necessity that the public should know the authorities for the
mounting of any piece. From such materials, for instance, as the disk of Theodosius, materials
with which the majority of people are probably not very familiar, Mr. E. W. Godwin, one of the
most artistic spirits of this century in England, created the marvellous loveliness of the first act
of Claudian, and showed us the life of Byzantium in the fourth century, not by a dreary lecture
and a set of grimy casts, not by a novel which requires a glossary to explain it, but by the visible
presentation before us of all the glory of that great town. And while the costumes were true to
the smallest points of colour and design, yet the details were not assigned that abnormal
importance which they must necessarily be given in a piecemeal lecture, but were subordinated
to the rules of lofty composition and the unity of artistic effect. Mr. Symonds, speaking of that
great picture of Mantegna's, now in Hampton Court, says that the artist has converted an
antiquarian motive into a theme for melodies of line. The same could have been said with equal
justice of Mr. Godwin's scene. Only the foolish called it pedantry, only those who would neither
look nor listen spoke of the passion of the play being killed by its paint.
It was in reality a scene not merely perfect in its picturesqueness, but absolutely dramatic also,
getting rid of any necessity for tedious descriptions, and showing us, by the colour and
character of Claudian's dress, and the dress of his attendants, the whole nature and life of the
man, from what school of philosophy he affected, down to what horses he backed on the turf.
And indeed archaeology is only really delightful when transfused into some form of art. I have
no desire to underrate the services of laborious scholars, but I feel that the use Keats made of
Lemprière's Dictionary is of far more value to us than Professor Max Müller's treatment of the
same mythology as a disease of language. Better Endymion than any theory, however sound, or,
as in the present instance, unsound, of an epidemic among adjectives! And who does not feel
that the chief glory of Piranesi's book on Vases is that it gave Keats the suggestion for his ‘Ode
on a Grecian Urn’? Art, and art only, can make archaeology beautiful; and the theatric art can
use it most directly and most vividly, for it can combine in one exquisite presentation the illusion
of actual life with the wonder of the unreal world.
But the sixteenth century was not merely the age of Vitruvius; it was the age of Vecellio also.
Every nation seems suddenly to have become interested in the dress of its neighbours. Europe
began to investigate its own clothes, and the amount of books published on national costumes
is quite extraordinary. At the beginning of the century the Nuremberg Chronicle, with its two
thousand illustrations, reached its fifth edition, and before the century was over seventeen
editions were published of Munster's Cosmography. Besides these two books there were also
the works of Michael Colyns, of Hans Weigel, of Amman, and of Vecellio himself, all of them
well illustrated, some of the drawings in Vecellio being probably from the hand of Titian.
Nor was it merely from books and treatises that they acquired their knowledge. The
development of the habit of foreign travel, the increased commercial intercourse between
countries, and the frequency of diplomatic missions, gave every nation many opportunities of
studying the various forms of contemporary dress. After the departure from England, for
instance, of the ambassadors from the Czar, the Sultan and the Prince of Morocco, Henry the
Eighth and his friends gave several masques in the strange attire of their visitors. Later on
London saw, perhaps too often, the sombre splendour of the Spanish Court, and to Elizabeth
came envoys from all lands, whose dress, Shakespeare tells us, had an important influence on
English costume.
And the interest was not confined merely to classical dress, or the dress of foreign nations;
there was also a good deal of research, amongst theatrical people especially, into the ancient
costume of England itself: and when Shakespeare, in the prologue to one of his plays, expresses
his regret at being unable to produce helmets of the period, he is speaking as an Elizabethan
manager and not merely as an Elizabethan poet. At Cambridge, for instance, during his day, a
play of Richard the Third was performed, in which the actors were attired in real dresses of the
time, procured from the great collection of historical costume in the Tower, which was always
open to the inspection of managers, and sometimes placed at their disposal. And I cannot help
thinking that this performance must have been far more artistic, as regards costume, than
Garrick's mounting of Shakespeare's own play on the subject, in which he himself appeared in a
nondescript fancy dress, and everybody else in the costume of the time of George the Third,
Richmond especially being much admired in the uniform of a young guardsman.
For what is the use to the stage of that archaeology which has so strangely terrified the critics,
but that it, and it alone, can give us the architecture and apparel suitable to the time in which
the action of the play passes? It enables us to see a Greek dressed like a Greek, and an Italian
like an Italian; to enjoy the arcades of Venice and the balconies of Verona; and, if the play deals
with any of the great eras in our country's history, to contemplate the age in its proper attire,
and the king in his habit as he lived. And I wonder, by the way, what Lord Lytton would have said
some time ago, at the Princess's Theatre, had the curtain risen on his father's Brutus reclining in
a Queen Anne chair, attired in a flowing wig and a flowered dressing-gown, a costume which in
the last century was considered peculiarly appropriate to an antique Roman! For in those
halcyon days of the drama no archaeology troubled the stage, or distressed the critics, and our
inartistic grandfathers sat peaceably in a stifling atmosphere of anachronisms, and beheld with
the calm complacency of the age of prose an Iachimo in powder and patches, a Lear in lace
ruffles, and a Lady Macbeth in a large crinoline. I can understand archaeology being attacked on
the ground of its excessive realism, but to attack it as pedantic seems to be very much beside
the mark.
However, to attack it for any reason is foolish; one might just as well speak disrespectfully of the
equator. For archaeology, being a science, is neither good nor bad, but a fact simply. Its value
depends entirely on how it is used, and only an artist can use it. We look to the archaeologist for
the materials, to the artist for the method.
In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare's plays, the first thing the artist
has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of
the play, more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it. Most Hamlets I
have seen were placed far too early. Hamlet is essentially a scholar of the Revival of Learning;
and if the allusion to the recent invasion of England by the Danes puts it back to the ninth
century, the use of foils brings it down much later. Once, however, the date has been fixed, then
the archaeologist is to supply us with the facts which the artist is to convert into effects.
It has been said that the anachronisms in the plays themselves show us that Shakespeare was
indifferent to historical accuracy, and a great deal of capital has been made out of Hector's
indiscreet quotation from Aristotle. Upon the other hand, the anachronisms are really few in
number, and not very important, and, had Shakespeare's attention been drawn to them by a
brother artist, he would probably have corrected them. For, though they can hardly be called
blemishes, they are certainly not the great beauties of his work; or, at least, if they are, their
anachronistic charm cannot be emphasised unless the play is accurately mounted according to
its proper date.
In looking at Shakespeare's plays as a whole, however, what is really remarkable is their
extraordinary fidelity as regards his personages and his plots. Many of his dramatis personae are
people who had actually existed, and some of them might have been seen in real life by a
portion of his audience. Indeed the most violent attack that was made on Shakespeare in his
time was for his supposed caricature of Lord Cobham. As for his plots, Shakespeare constantly
draws them either from authentic history, or from the old ballads and traditions which served as
history to the Elizabethan public, and which even now no scientific historian would dismiss as
absolutely untrue. And not merely did he select fact instead of fancy as the basis of much of his
imaginative work, but he always gives to each play the general character, the social atmosphere
in a word, of the age in question.
Stupidity he recognises as being one of the permanent characteristics of all European
civilisations; so he sees no difference between a London mob of his own day and a Roman mob
of pagan days, between a silly watchman in Messina and a silly Justice of the Peace in Windsor.
But when he deals with higher characters, with those exceptions of each age which are so fine
that they become its types, he gives them absolutely the stamp and seal of their time. Virgilia is
one of those Roman wives on whose tomb was written ‘Domi mansit, lanam fecit,’ as surely as
Juliet is the romantic girl of the Renaissance. He is even true to the characteristics of race.
Hamlet has all the imagination and irresolution of the Northern nations, and the Princess
Katharine is as entirely French as the heroine of Divorçons. Harry the Fifth is a pure Englishman,
and Othello a true Moor.
Again when Shakespeare treats of the history of England from the fourteenth to the sixteenth
centuries, it is wonderful how careful he is to have his facts perfectly right—indeed he follows
Holinshed with curious fidelity. The incessant wars between France and England are described
with extraordinary accuracy down to the names of the besieged towns, the ports of landing and
embarkation, the sites and dates of the battles, the titles of the commanders on each side, and
the lists of the killed and wounded.
As regards the Civil Wars of the Roses we have many elaborate genealogies of the seven sons of
Edward the Third; the claims of the rival Houses of York and Lancaster to the throne are
discussed at length; and if the English aristocracy will not read Shakespeare as a poet, they
should certainly read him as a sort of early Peerage. There is hardly a single title in the Upper
House, with the exception of course of the uninteresting titles assumed by the law lords, which
does not appear in Shakespeare along with many details of family history, creditable and
discreditable. Indeed if it be really necessary that the School Board children should know all
about the Wars of the Roses, they could learn their lessons just as well out of Shakespeare as
out of shilling primers, and learn them, I need not say, far more pleasurably. Even in
Shakespeare's own day this use of his plays was recognised. ‘The historical plays teach history to
those who cannot read it in the chronicles,’ says Heywood in a tract about the stage, and yet I
am sure that sixteenth-century chronicles were much more delightful reading than
nineteenth-century primers are.
Of course the aesthetic value of Shakespeare's plays does not, in the slightest degree, depend
on their facts, but on their Truth, and Truth is independent of facts always, inventing or selecting
them at pleasure. But still Shakespeare's use of facts is a most interesting part of his method of
work, and shows us his attitude towards the stage, and his relations to the great art of illusion.
Indeed he would have been very much surprised at any one classing his plays with ‘fairy tales,’
as Lord Lytton does; for one of his aims was to create for England a national historical drama,
which should deal with incidents with which the public was well acquainted, and with heroes
that lived in the memory of a people. Patriotism, I need hardly say, is not a necessary quality of
art; but it means, for the artist, the substitution of a universal for an individual feeling, and for
the public the presentation of a work of art in a most attractive and popular form. It is worth
noticing that Shakespeare's first and last successes were both historical plays.
It may be asked, what has this to do with Shakespeare's attitude towards costume? I answer
that a dramatist who laid such stress on historical accuracy of fact would have welcomed
historical accuracy of costume as a most important adjunct to his illusionist method. And I have
no hesitation in saying that he did so. The reference to helmets of the period in the prologue to
Henry the Fifth may be considered fanciful, though Shakespeare must have often seen
The very casque
That did affright the air at Agincourt,
where it still hangs in the dusky gloom of Westminster Abbey, along with the saddle of that ‘imp
of fame,’ and the dinted shield with its torn blue velvet lining and its tarnished lilies of gold; but
the use of military tabards in Henry the Sixth is a bit of pure archaeology, as they were not worn
in the sixteenth century; and the King's own tabard, I may mention, was still suspended over his
tomb in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, in Shakespeare's day.
For, up to the time of the unfortunate triumph of the Philistines in 1645, the chapels and
cathedrals of England were the great national museums of archaeology, and in them were kept
the armour and attire of the heroes of English history. A good deal was of course preserved in
the Tower, and even in Elizabeth's day tourists were brought there to see such curious relics of
the past as Charles Brandon's huge lance, which is still, I believe, the admiration of our country
visitors; but the cathedrals and churches were, as a rule, selected as the most suitable shrines
for the reception of the historic antiquities. Canterbury can still show us the helm of the Black
Prince, Westminster the robes of our kings, and in old St. Paul's the very banner that had waved
on Bosworth field was hung up by Richmond himself.
In fact, everywhere that Shakespeare turned in London, he saw the apparel and appurtenances
of past ages, and it is impossible to doubt that he made use of his opportunities. The
employment of lance and shield, for instance, in actual warfare, which is so frequent in his
plays, is drawn from archaeology, and not from the military accoutrements of his day; and his
general use of armour in battle was not a characteristic of his age, a time when it was rapidly
disappearing before firearms. Again, the crest on Warwick's helmet, of which such a point is
made in Henry the Sixth, is absolutely correct in a fifteenth-century play when crests were
generally worn, but would not have been so in a play of Shakespeare's own time, when feathers
and plumes had taken their place—a fashion which, as he tells us in Henry the Eighth, was
borrowed from France.
For the historical plays, then, we may be sure that archaeology was employed, and as for the
others I feel certain that it was the case also. The appearance of Jupiter on his eagle,
thunderbolt in hand, of Juno with her peacocks, and of Iris with her many-coloured bow; the
Amazon masque and the masque of the Five Worthies, may all be regarded as archaeological;
and the vision which Posthumus sees in prison of Sicilius Leonatus—‘an old man, attired like a
warrior, leading an ancient matron’—is clearly so.
Of the ‘Athenian dress’ by which Lysander is distinguished from Oberon I have already spoken;
but one of the most marked instances is in the case of the dress of Coriolanus, for which
Shakespeare goes directly to Plutarch. That historian, in his Life of the great Roman, tells us of
the oak-wreath with which Caius Marcius was crowned, and of the curious kind of dress in
which, according to ancient fashion, he had to canvass his electors; and on both of these points
he enters into long disquisitions, investigating the origin and meaning of the old customs.
Shakespeare, in the spirit of the true artist, accepts the facts of the antiquarian and converts
them into dramatic and picturesque effects: indeed the gown of humility, the ‘woolvish gown,’
as Shakespeare calls it, is the central note of the play. There are other cases I might quote, but
this one is quite sufficient for my purpose; and it is evident from it at any rate that, in mounting
a play in the accurate costume of the time, according to the best authorities, we are carrying
out Shakespeare's own wishes and method.
Even if it were not so, there is no more reason that we should continue any imperfections which
may be supposed to have characterised Shakespeare's stage mounting than that we should
have Juliet played by a young man, or give up the advantage of changeable scenery. A great
work of dramatic art should not merely be made expressive of modern passion by means of the
actor, but should be presented to us in the form most suitable to the modern spirit. Racine
produced his Roman plays in Louis Quatorze dress on a stage crowded with spectators; but we
require different conditions for the enjoyment of his art.
Perfect accuracy of detail, for the sake of perfect illusion, is necessary for us. What we have to
see is that the details are not allowed to usurp the principal place. They must be subordinate
always to the general motive of the play. But subordination in art does not mean disregard of
truth; it means conversion of fact into effect, and assigning to each detail its proper relative
value.
“Les petits détails d'histoire et de vie domestique doivent être scrupuleusement étudiés et
reproduits par le poète, mais uniquement comme des moyens d'accroître la réalité de
l'ensemble, et de faire pénétrer jusque dans les coins les plus obscurs de l'
œ
uvre cette vie
générale et puissante au milieu de laquelle les personnages sont plus vrais, et les catastrophes,
par conséquent, plus poignantes. Tout doit être subordonné à ce but. L'Homme sur le premier
plan, le reste au fond.”
This passage is interesting as coming from the first great French dramatist who employed
archaeology on the stage, and whose plays, though absolutely correct in detail, are known to all
for their passion, not for their pedantry—for their life, not for their learning. It is true that he
has made certain concessions in the case of the employment of curious or strange expressions.
Ruy Blas talks of M. de Priego as ‘sujet du roi’ instead of ‘noble du roi,’ and Angelo Malipieri
speaks of ‘la croix rouge’ instead of ‘la croix de gueules.’ But they are concessions made to the
public, or rather to a section of it.
‘J'en offre ici toute mes excuses aux spectateurs intelligents,’ he says in a note to one of the
plays; ‘espérons qu'un jour un seigneur vénitien pourra dire tout bonnement sans péril son
blason sur le théâtre. C'est un progrès qui viendra.’
And, though the description of the crest is not couched in accurate language, still the crest itself
was accurately right. It may, of course, be said that the public do not notice these things; upon
the other hand, it should be remembered that Art has no other aim but her own perfection, and
proceeds simply by her own laws, and that the play which Hamlet describes as caviare to the
general is a play he highly praises.
Besides, in England, at any rate, the public have undergone a transformation; there is far more
appreciation of beauty now than there was a few years ago; and though they may not be
familiar with the authorities and archaeological data for what is shown to them, still they enjoy
whatever loveliness they look at. And this is the important thing. Better to take pleasure in a
rose than to put its root under a microscope.
Archaeological accuracy is merely a condition of illusionist stage effect; it is not its quality. And
Lord Lytton's proposal that the dresses should merely be beautiful without being accurate is
founded on a misapprehension of the nature of costume, and of its value on the stage. This
value is twofold, picturesque and dramatic; the former depends on the colour of the dress, the
latter on its design and character.
But so interwoven are the two that, whenever in our own day historical accuracy has been
disregarded, and the various dresses in a play taken from different ages, the result has been that
the stage has been turned into that chaos of costume, that caricature of the centuries, the
Fancy Dress Ball, to the entire ruin of all dramatic and picturesque effect. For the dresses of one
age do not artistically harmonise with the dresses of another: and, as far as dramatic value
goes, to confuse the costumes is to confuse the play.
Costume is a growth, an evolution, and a most important, perhaps the most important, sign of
the manners, customs and mode of life of each century. The Puritan dislike of colour,
adornment and grace in apparel was part of the great revolt of the middle classes against
Beauty in the seventeenth century. Shakespeare, writing two hundred years after, makes the
king's fondness for gay apparel and foreign fashions a point in the play, from John of Gaunt's
reproaches down to Richard's own speech in the third act on his deposition from the throne.
And that Shakespeare examined Richard's tomb in Westminster Abbey seems to me certain
from York's speech:
“See, see, King Richard doth himself appear
As doth the blushing discontented sun
From out the fiery portal of the east,
When he perceives the envious clouds are bent
To dim his glory.”
For we can still discern on the King's robe his favourite badge—the sun issuing from a cloud.
In fact, in every age the social conditions are so exemplified in costume, that to produce a
sixteenth-century play in fourteenth-century attire, or vice versa, would make the performance
seem unreal because untrue. And, valuable as beauty of effect on the stage is, the highest
beauty is not merely comparable with absolute accuracy of detail, but really dependent on it.
To invent an entirely new costume is almost impossible except in burlesque or extravaganza,
and as for combining the dress of different centuries into one, the experiment would be
dangerous, and Shakespeare's opinion of the artistic value of such a medley may be gathered
from his incessant satire of the Elizabethan dandies for imagining that they were well dressed
because they got their doublets in Italy, their hats in Germany, and their hose in France.
And it should be noted that the most lovely scenes that have been produced on our stage have
been those that have been characterised by perfect accuracy, such as Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft's
eighteenth-century revivals at the Haymarket, Mr. Irving's superb production of Much Ado
About Nothing, and Mr. Barrett's Claudian.
Besides, and this is perhaps the most complete answer to Lord Lytton's theory, it must be
remembered that neither in costume nor in dialogue is beauty the dramatist's primary aim at
all. The true dramatist aims first at what is characteristic, and no more desires that all his
personages should be beautifully attired than he desires that they should all have beautiful
natures or speak beautiful English.
The true dramatist, in fact, shows us life under the conditions of art, not art in the form of life.
The Greek dress was the loveliest dress the world has ever seen, and the English dress of the
last century one of the most monstrous; yet we cannot costume a play by Sheridan as we would
costume a play by Sophokles.
For, as Polonius says in his excellent lecture, a lecture to which I am glad to have the opportunity
of expressing my obligations, one of the first qualities of apparel is its expressiveness. And the
affected style of dress in the last century was the natural characteristic of a society of affected
manners and affected conversation—a characteristic which the realistic dramatist will highly
value down to the smallest detail of accuracy, and the materials for which he can get only from
archaeology.
But it is not enough that a dress should be accurate; it must be also appropriate to the stature
and appearance of the actor, and to his supposed condition, as well as to his necessary action in
the play. In Mr. Hare's production of As You Like It at the St. James's Theatre, for instance, the
whole point of Orlando's complaint that he is brought up like a peasant, and not like a
gentleman, was spoiled by the gorgeousness of his dress, and the splendid apparel worn by the
banished Duke and his friends was quite out of place.
Mr. Lewis Wingfield's explanation that the sumptuary laws of the period necessitated their
doing so, is, I am afraid, hardly sufficient. Outlaws, lurking in a forest and living by the chase, are
not very likely to care much about ordinances of dress. They were probably attired like Robin
Hood's men, to whom, indeed, they are compared in the course of the play.
And that their dress was not that of wealthy noblemen may be seen by Orlando's words when
he breaks in upon them. He mistakes them for robbers, and is amazed to find that they answer
him in courteous and gentle terms. Lady Archibald Campbell's production, under Mr. E. W.
Godwin's direction, of the same play in Coombe Wood was, as regards mounting, far more
artistic. At least it seemed so to me.
The Duke and his companions were dressed in serge tunics, leathern jerkins, high boots and
gauntlets, and wore bycocket hats and hoods. And as they were playing in a real forest, they
found, I am sure, their dresses extremely convenient. To every character in the play was given a
perfectly appropriate attire, and the brown and green of their costumes harmonised exquisitely
with the ferns through which they wandered, the trees beneath which they lay, and the lovely
English landscape that surrounded the Pastoral Players.
The perfect naturalness of the scene was due to the absolute accuracy and appropriateness of
everything that was worn. Nor could archaeology have been put to a severer test, or come out
of it more triumphantly. The whole production showed once for all that, unless a dress is
archaeologically correct, and artistically appropriate, it always looks unreal, unnatural, and
theatrical in the sense of artificial.
Nor, again, is it enough that there should be accurate and appropriate costumes of beautiful
colours; there must be also beauty of colour on the stage as a whole, and as long as the
background is painted by one artist, and the foreground figures independently designed by
another, there is the danger of a want of harmony in the scene as a picture.
For each scene the colour-scheme should be settled as absolutely as for the decoration of a
room, and the textures which it is proposed to use should be mixed and re-mixed in every
possible combination, and what is discordant removed.
Then, as regards the particular kinds of colours, the stage is often too glaring, partly through the
excessive use of hot, violent reds, and partly through the costumes looking too new.
Shabbiness, which in modern life is merely the tendency of the lower orders towards tone, is
not without its artistic value, and modern colours are often much improved by being a little
faded.
Blue also is too frequently used: it is not merely a dangerous colour to wear by gaslight, but it is
really difficult in England to get a thoroughly good blue. The fine Chinese blue, which we all so
much admire, takes two years to dye, and the English public will not wait so long for a colour.
Peacock blue, of course, has been employed on the stage, notably at the Lyceum, with great
advantage; but all attempts at a good light blue, or good dark blue, which I have seen have been
failures. The value of black is hardly appreciated; it was used effectively by Mr. Irving in Hamlet
as the central note of a composition, but as a tone-giving neutral its importance is not
recognised.
And this is curious, considering the general colour of the dress of a century in which, as
Baudelaire says, ‘Nous célébrons tous quelque enterrement.’ The archaeologist of the future
will probably point to this age as the time when the beauty of black was understood; but I
hardly think that, as regards stage-mounting or house decoration, it really is.
Its decorative value is, of course, the same as that of white or gold; it can separate and
harmonise colours. In modern plays the black frock-coat of the hero becomes important in
itself, and should be given a suitable background.
But it rarely is. Indeed the only good background for a play in modern dress which I have ever
seen was the dark grey and cream-white scene of the first act of the Princesse Georges in Mrs.
Langtry's production.
As a rule, the hero is smothered in bric-à-brac and palm-trees, lost in the gilded abyss of Louis
Quatorze furniture, or reduced to a mere midge in the midst of marqueterie; whereas the
background should always be kept as a background, and colour subordinated to effect.
This, of course, can only be done when there is one single mind directing the whole production.
The facts of art are diverse, but the essence of artistic effect is unity. Monarchy, Anarchy, and
Republicanism may contend for the government of nations; but a theatre should be in the
power of a cultured despot.
There may be division of labour, but there must be no division of mind. Whoever understands
the costume of an age understands of necessity its architecture and its surroundings also, and it
is easy to see from the chairs of a century whether it was a century of crinolines or not.
In fact, in art there is no specialism, and a really artistic production should bear the impress of
one master, and one master only, who not merely should design and arrange everything, but
should have complete control over the way in which each dress is to be worn.
Mademoiselle Mars, in the first production of Hernani, absolutely refused to call her lover ‘Mon
Lion!’ unless she was allowed to wear a little fashionable toque then much in vogue on the
Boulevards; and many young ladies on our own stage insist to the present day on wearing stiff
starched petticoats under Greek dresses, to the entire ruin of all delicacy of line and fold; but
these wicked things should not be allowed.
And there should be far more dress rehearsals than there are now. Actors such as Mr.
Forbes-Robertson, Mr. Conway, Mr. George Alexander, and others, not to mention older artists,
can move with ease and elegance in the attire of any century; but there are not a few who seem
dreadfully embarrassed about their hands if they have no side pockets, and who always wear
their dresses as if they were costumes.
Costumes, of course, they are to the designer; but dresses they should be to those that wear
them. And it is time that a stop should be put to the idea, very prevalent on the stage, that the
Greeks and Romans always went about bareheaded in the open air—a mistake the Elizabethan
managers did not fall into, for they gave hoods as well as gowns to their Roman senators.
More dress rehearsals would also be of value in explaining to the actors that there is a form of
gesture and movement that is not merely appropriate to each style of dress, but really
conditioned by it. The extravagant use of the arms in the eighteenth century, for instance, was
the necessary result of the large hoop, and the solemn dignity of Burleigh owed as much to his
ruff as to his reason.
Besides until an actor is at home in his dress, he is not at home in his part.
Of the value of beautiful costume in creating an artistic temperament in the audience, and
producing that joy in beauty for beauty's sake without which the great masterpieces of art can
never be understood, I will not here speak; though it is worth while to notice how Shakespeare
appreciated that side of the question in the production of his tragedies, acting them always by
artificial light, and in a theatre hung with black; but what I have tried to point out is that
archaeology is not a pedantic method, but a method of artistic illusion, and that costume is a
means of displaying character without description, and of producing dramatic situations and
dramatic effects.
And I think it is a pity that so many critics should have set themselves to attack one of the most
important movements on the modern stage before that movement has at all reached its proper
perfection. That it will do so, however, I feel as certain as that we shall require from our
dramatic critics in the future higher qualification than that they can remember Macready or
have seen Benjamin Webster; we shall require of them, indeed, that they cultivate a sense of
beauty.
Pour être plus difficile, la tâche n'en est que plus glorieuse. And if they will not encourage, at
least they must not oppose, a movement of which Shakespeare of all dramatists would have
most approved, for it has the illusion of truth for its method, and the illusion of beauty for its
result.
Not that I agree with everything that I have said in this essay. There is much with which I
entirely disagree. The essay simply represents an artistic standpoint, and in aesthetic criticism
attitude is everything. For in art there is no such thing as a universal truth. A Truth in art is that
whose contradictory is also true. And just as it is only in art-criticism, and through it, that we can
apprehend the Platonic theory of ideas, so it is only in art-criticism, and through it, that we can
realise Hegel's system of contraries. The truths of metaphysics are the truths of masks.