Intentions
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 archæological
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
archæology 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 Judæa’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. Archæology 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 Cæsar,’ 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
Græco-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 archæology 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 archæological 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 encyclopædia
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 archæology 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 archæology
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 archæology 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 archæology 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 archæology 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 archæology, 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 archæologist for the materials, to the artist for the method.
In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare’s plays, the