CHAPTER XXXIII.
CORRECT COSTUMES.
The question of dress has always been of the gravest importance to the theatrical profession. It was a charge brought against the actors of Elizabeth's time, that they walked about the town in gaudy and expensive attire. The author of "The Return from Parnassus," first published in 1606, but held to have been written at an earlier date, specially refers to the prosperity, and the consequent arrogance of the players. He is believed to have had in view Alleyn or even Shakespeare:
Vile world that lifts them up to high degree,
And treads us down in grovelling misery!
England affords these glorious vagabonds,
That carried erst their fardels on their backs,
Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets,
Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits,
And pages to attend their masterships.
But it is clear that these "glorious vagabonds" were regardful that their dress should be splendid merely. There was no thought then as to the costumes of the stage being appropriate to the characters represented, or in harmony with the periods dealt with by the dramatists. Nor did the spectators find fault with this arrangement. It did not disturb them in the least to find Brutus and Cassius, for instance, wearing much the same kind of clothes as Bacon and Raleigh. And in this way anachronisms of other kinds readily obtained pardon, if indeed they ever moved attention at all. Certainly the hero
of an early Roman story should not have spoken of gunpowder, much less have produced a pistol from his belt; but his conduct in this wise became almost reasonable, seeing that he did not wear a toga, but doublet and hose—the dress indeed of a gallant of Elizabeth's time.
It is only in quite recent times that the correctness of stage costumes has undergone systematic consideration, and been treated as a matter of real urgency, although occasional experiments in the direction of reform are to be found recorded in early accounts of the drama. Mr. Pepys describes his visit to the theatre in 1664, to see "Heraclius, or the Emperor of the East," Carlell's translation of Corneille, and notes, "the garments like Romans very well ... at the beginning, at the drawing up of the curtain, there was the finest scene of the emperor and his people about him, standing in their fixed and different postures, in their Roman habits, above all that I ever saw at any of the theatres." But attempts to be accurate in this way were only of an intermittent kind; any enduring amendment can hardly be found until we approach a period that is within the recollection of living playgoers. Mr. Donne, lately the Examiner of Plays, writes in one of his essays on the drama: "We have seen 'The Rivals' performed in a sort of chance-medley costume—a century intervening between the respective attires of Sir Anthony and Captain Absolute;" and he adds, "we have seen the same comedy dressed with scrupulous attention to the date of the wigs and hoops; but we doubt whether in any essential respect that excellent play was a gainer by the increased care and expenditure of the manager." Sir Walter Scott had previously written: "We have seen 'Jane Shore' acted with Richard in the old English cloak, Lord Hastings in a full court dress, with his white rod like a Lord Chamberlain of the last reign, and Jane Shore and Alicia in stays and hoops. We have seen Miss Young act Zara, incased in whalebone, to an Osman dressed properly enough as a Turk, while Nerestan, a Christian knight, in the time of the Crusades, strutted in the white uniform of the old French guards!"
Even as late as 1842 a writer in a critical journal, reviewing a performance of "She Stoops to Conquer" at the Haymarket Theatre, reminds the representatives of Young Marlow and Hastings that the costumes they wear being "of the year 1842
accord but ill with those of 1772, assumed by the other characters." "The effect of the scene is marred by it," writes the critic. And ten years before Leigh Hunt had admitted into the columns of his Tatler many letters dwelling upon the defects of stage costume in regard to incongruousness and general lack of accuracy. One correspondent complains of a performance of "The Merry Wives of Windsor" at Covent Garden, in which Bartley had played Falstaff "in a dress belonging to the age of the first Charles;" Caius had appeared as "a doctor of the reign of William and Mary, with a flowing periwig, cocked hat, large cuffs, and ruffles;" while John Rugby's costume was that "of a countryman servant of the present day." Another remonstrant describes Kean as dressing Othello "more in the garb of an Albanian Greek than a Moor; Richard goes through the battle without armour, while Richmond is armed cap-à-pie; and Young plays Macbeth in a green and gilded velvet jacket, and carries a shield until he begins to fight, and then throws it away." A third correspondent draws attention to "The School for Scandal" and Mr. Farren's performance of Sir Peter Teazle in a costume appropriate to the date of the comedy, the other players wearing dresses of the newest vogue. "Even Sir Oliver," it is added, "appeared in a fashionable modern drab greatcoat." In a note Leigh Hunt records his opinion that Mr. Farren was right, and that it was "the business of all the other performers to dress up to his costume, not for him to wrong himself into theirs," and adds, "there is one way of settling the matter which puts an end to all questions except that of immediate convenience and economy; and this is to do as the French do, who rigidly adhere to the costume of the period in which the scene is supposed to take place. Something of immediate sympathy is lost, perhaps, by this system, for we can hardly admire a young beauty so much in the dress of our grandmothers as in such as we see our own charmers in; but this defect is compensated by a sense of truth and propriety, by the very quaintness and novelty of the ancient aspect, and even by the information it conveys to us."