We spoke just now of fans, which can, perhaps, be considered an article of dress as they are very often fastened to the person. There seems no doubt but that at first fans did not close, and were made of feathers like those still in use in the East from whence they are derived. Probably in the beginning, leaves were used as fans, and palm-leaf fans are still to be seen. Fans were in general use in the sixteenth century, and the folding one appeared in the next.
Sometimes, as at the end of the eighteenth century, large green fans, called sunshades, were used out of doors in the same way as a modern parasol now is. There is another use of the fan still to be noted in China, namely, for blowing up a fire, and from this we no doubt get the expression of “fanning the flame.”
Painting apparently was not only practised by women, for male courtiers at the end of the sixteenth century occasionally coloured their faces. If we are to believe some of the writers in the newspapers of to-day, men of leisure are not a whit better nor less foolish now.
Of masks as an ordinary everyday addition to costume we have no survivals, except in connection with some balls and an occasional burglary; but masks such as we see on the 5th of November will remind us, like the face of the clown, of primitive face-painting, and also of the many curious head-dresses and masks which savages wear at certain ceremonies and dances. It is easy to produce grotesque effects by means of masks, and the discomfort that would arise from the paint is thereby avoided.
The practice of wearing masks, and indeed dominoes, by private individuals came from Venice. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries masks made of black satin and velvet often formed part of the toilet of society ladies. At one period the wearing of them was restricted to the times of carnivals; at another, the nobility alone were allowed to use them, and now we only see masks at fancy-dress balls. Of the unwritten laws that rule the wearing of the mask, Mrs. Aria says[44]: “Whether worn privately or in public, its disguise has at all times and in all countries been respected as inviolably sacred. To the masked the greatest extravagance of language and gesture is permitted. He is allowed to indulge in acrid personalities and proclaim scathing truths, which, even if addressed to the monarch himself, go unrebuked. To strike a mask is a serious offence, while in no class of society, however degraded, would any one dare to unmask a woman. Yet another prerogative entitles the masked to invite any woman present, whether masked or not, to dance with him, etiquette decreeing that the queen of the land may not claim exemption from this rule. Dear to romance is the masked highwayman, who flourished until the advent of railways robbed him of his occupation; and a grim figure is ever the masked headsman.”
[XXIX]
STAGE COSTUMES
THE HARLEQUIN, PANTALOON, COLUMBINE, AND ACROBAT
While Punch has left the stage and is now a puppet, some of his coadjutors are with us, for the harlequinade is still introduced into many pantomimes at Christmas, and special plays have been written in which these characters appear. The harlequin, who gives his name to what is now an interlude, was some thousand or two years back one of the important personages in the old Italian comedy which gave us Punch, and which we have already mentioned in a previous chapter.