There was little or no scenery to most plays. The properties, i.e. chairs, beds, etc., were simple and few. The play was the thing. The aim of the play was to give not a picture of life, but a glorified vision of life. The object was not realism but illusion. The costumes were of great splendour. In some productions (as in Henry VIII) they were of an excessive splendour. Music and singing added much to the beauty of many scenes.
Women were not then allowed upon the stage. Women's parts were played by boys. Some have thought that this must have taken from the excellence of the performances. It is highly likely that it added much to it. Nearly all boys can act extremely well. Very few men and women can.
The playing of women's parts by boys may have limited Shakespeare's art. His women are kept within the range of thought and emotion likely to be understood by boys. This may account for their wholesome, animal robustness. There is no trace of the modern heroine, the common woman overstrained, or the idle woman in her megrims, in any Shakespearean play. The people of the plays are alive and hearty. They lead a vigorous life and go to bed tired. They never forget that they are animals. They never let any one else forget that they are also divine.
CHAPTER III
THE PLAYS
Three plays belong to Shakespeare's first period of original creative writing. It is fair to suppose that the least dramatically sound of the three was the one first written. We therefore take Love's Labour's Lost as his first play. It is commonly said by critics that Love's Labour's Lost is "the work of a young man." It might more justly be said of it that it is the work of a new kind of young man. The young man knows all the trick of the theatre and uses it, as a master always uses technique, for the statement of something new to the human soul. The play no longer speaks to the human soul; for though it is the work of a master, it is the work of a master not yet alive to the depths and still doubtful among the temptations to which intellect is subject. It is one of those works of art which remind us of Blake's saying, that "the best water is the newest." When it came out, with all the glitter of newness on it, the mind of man was flattered by a new possession. To us, the persons of the play are not much more than Time's toys, who never really lived, but only glittered a little.
Love's Labour's Lost.
Written. Between 1589 and 1592.
Published, after correction and augmentation, from a badly corrected copy, 1598.