TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
ACTED. PAGEANTS. WOMAN’S PART. PLAY. PART. PLAY’D.
How tall was she?
About my stature: for at Pentecost
When all our pageants of delight were play’d,
Our youth got me to play the woman’s part,
And I was trimm’d in Madam Julia’s gown;
Which served me as fit by all men’s judgment,
As if the garment had been made for me;
Therefore I know she is about my height,
And at that time I made her weep a good,
For I did play a lamentable part;
Madam, ’twas Ariadne passioning
For Theseus’ perjury and unjust flight:
Which I so lively acted with my tears,
That my poor mistress moved therewithal
Wept bitterly, and would I might be dead
If I in thought felt not her very sorrow.
IV, 4, 163.
The page who delivered this speech relates how he played the woman’s part. In Shakespeare’s time, and until half a century later, no woman appeared on the public stage. I have always held the opinion that it was on this account that so many of Shakespeare’s heroines were disguised as pages, thus enabling the boys who took their parts to be more natural. Most readers will call to mind Rosalind in “As you Like It” and Imogen in “Cymbeline,” but principally Viola in that delightful of all comedies “Twelfth Night.” Julia, one of the heroines in this play, also played the part of a page. The observant will notice that Madam Julia lent her gown to the impersonator of Ariadne, but in those days the costume of the period delineated was not regarded. By all accounts, all the characters were clothed in contemporary costumes. Even as late as the eighteenth century, David Garrick played Macbeth, dressed in a scarlet coat like a military officer, a waistcoat laced with silver, with a wig and breeches of the cut of the time. Macklin, a great actor of the eighteenth century, was the first to appear in a tartan and kilt about the year 1772.
MOTION. PUPPET.
O excellent motion! O exceeding puppet!
Now will he interpret to her.
II, 1, 92.
A puppet was a figure dressed up like a doll and moved by strings by a person concealed behind a curtain, similar to our Punch and Judy and marionettes shows of to-day. The word was frequently used metaphorically by the early dramatists, when they wished to describe a person’s actions controlled by others, also applied contemptuously to a person as in the above passage. These puppet shows or motions, as they were termed, were exceedingly popular in Shakespeare’s time, and a special one is mentioned by Ben Jonson in Every Man Out of his Humour: “They say there’s a new Motion of the City of Nineveh with Jonas (not Maurice) and the whale to be seen at Fleet Bridge.” A Motion that was extremely popular was the history of the prodigal son, quoted by Shakespeare in a “Winter’s Tale.” “Then he compassed a motion of the Prodigal Son.” Biblical episodes often formed the subject of these shows.
Both puppet and motion, in their original sense, are now obsolete. “Now will he interpret her” refers to the dialogue spoken by the manipulation of the puppets
“The peeling accents of her voice, is like
a fained treble on one’s voice
that interprets to the puppets.”