Intentions
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any actual historical references which may occur in it.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, that the date has been fixed,
then the archæologist 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
personæ_ 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. And 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 æsthetic 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 archæology, 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 archæology, 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 archæology, 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 archæology
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
archæological; 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 (says Hugo)
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’œuvre
cette vie générale et puissante au milieu de laquelle les personnages
sont plus vrais, et les catastrophes, par conséqueut, 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 archæology on the stage, and whose plays, though
absolutely correct in detail, are known to all for their passion, not for