Intentions
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 archæology 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 æsthetic
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.