archæology was one of its special characteristics. After that revival of
the classical forms of architecture which was one of the notes of the
Renaissance, and the printing at Venice and elsewhere of the masterpieces
of Greek and Latin literature, had come naturally an interest in the
ornamentation and costume of the antique world. Nor was it for the
learning that they could acquire, but rather for the loveliness that they
might create, that the artists studied these things. The curious objects
that were being constantly brought to light by excavations were not left
to moulder in a museum, for the contemplation of a callous curator, and
the _ennui_ of a policeman bored by the absence of crime. They were used
as motives for the production of a new art, which was to be not beautiful
merely, but also strange.
Infessura tells us that in 1485 some workmen digging on the Appian Way
came across an old Roman sarcophagus inscribed with the name ‘Julia,
daughter of Claudius.’ On opening the coffer they found within its
marble womb the body of a beautiful girl of about fifteen years of age,
preserved by the embalmer’s skill from corruption and the decay of time.
Her eyes were half open, her hair rippled round her in crisp curling
gold, and from her lips and cheek the bloom of maidenhood had not yet
departed. Borne back to the Capitol, she became at once the centre of a
new cult, and from all parts of the city crowded pilgrims to worship at
the wonderful shrine, till the Pope, fearing lest those who had found the
secret of beauty in a Pagan tomb might forget what secrets Judæa’s rough
and rock-hewn sepulchre contained, had the body conveyed away by night,
and in secret buried. Legend though it may be, yet the story is none the
less valuable as showing us the attitude of the Renaissance towards the
antique world. Archæology to them was not a mere science for the
antiquarian; it was a means by which they could touch the dry dust of
antiquity into the very breath and beauty of life, and fill with the new
wine of romanticism forms that else had been old and outworn. From the
pulpit of Niccola Pisano down to Mantegna’s ‘Triumph of Cæsar,’ and the
service Cellini designed for King Francis, the influence of this spirit
can be traced; nor was it confined merely to the immobile arts—the arts
of arrested movement—but its influence was to be seen also in the great
Græco-Roman masques which were the constant amusement of the gay courts
of the time, and in the public pomps and processions with which the
citizens of big commercial towns were wont to greet the princes that
chanced to visit them; pageants, by the way, which were considered so
important that large prints were made of them and published—a fact which
is a proof of the general interest at the time in matters of such kind.
And this use of archæology in shows, so far from being a bit of priggish
pedantry, is in every way legitimate and beautiful. For the stage is not
merely the meeting-place of all the arts, but is also the return of art
to life. Sometimes in an archæological novel the use of strange and
obsolete terms seems to hide the reality beneath the learning, and I dare
say that many of the readers of _Notre Dame de Paris_ have been much
puzzled over the meaning of such expressions as _la casaque à mahoitres_,
_les voulgiers_, _le gallimard taché d’encre_, _les craaquiniers_, and
the like; but with the stage how different it is! The ancient world
wakes from its sleep, and history moves as a pageant before our eyes,
without obliging us to have recourse to a dictionary or an encyclopædia
for the perfection of our enjoyment. Indeed, there is not the slightest
necessity that the public should know the authorities for the mounting of
any piece. From such materials, for instance, as the disk of Theodosius,
materials with which the majority of people are probably not very
familiar, Mr. E. W. Godwin, one of the most artistic spirits of this
century in England, created the marvellous loveliness of the first act of
_Claudian_, and showed us the life of Byzantium in the fourth century,
not by a dreary lecture and a set of grimy casts, not by a novel which
requires a glossary to explain it, but by the visible presentation before
us of all the glory of that great town. And while the costumes were true
to the smallest points of colour and design, yet the details were not
assigned that abnormal importance which they must necessarily be given in
a piecemeal lecture, but were subordinated to the rules of lofty
composition and the unity of artistic effect. Mr. Symonds, speaking of
that great picture of Mantegna’s, now in Hampton Court, says that the
artist has converted an antiquarian motive into a theme for melodies of
line. The same could have been said with equal justice of Mr. Godwin’s
scene. Only the foolish called it pedantry, only those who would neither
look nor listen spoke of the passion of the play being killed by its
paint. It was in reality a scene not merely perfect in its
picturesqueness, but absolutely dramatic also, getting rid of any
necessity for tedious descriptions, and showing us, by the colour and
character of Claudian’s dress, and the dress of his attendants, the whole
nature and life of the man, from what school of philosophy he affected,
down to what horses he backed on the turf.
And indeed archæology is only really delightful when transfused into some
form of art. I have no desire to underrate the services of laborious
scholars, but I feel that the use Keats made of Lemprière’s Dictionary is
of far more value to us than Professor Max Müller’s treatment of the same
mythology as a disease of language. Better _Endymion_ than any theory,
however sound, or, as in the present instance, unsound, of an epidemic
among adjectives! And who does not feel that the chief glory of
Piranesi’s book on Vases is that it gave Keats the suggestion for his
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’? Art, and art only, can make archæology
beautiful; and the theatric art can use it most directly and most
vividly, for it can combine in one exquisite presentation the illusion of
actual life with the wonder of the unreal world. But the sixteenth
century was not merely the age of Vitruvius; it was the age of Vecellio
also. Every nation seems suddenly to have become interested in the dress
of its neighbours. Europe began to investigate its own clothes, and the
amount of books published on national costumes is quite extraordinary.
At the beginning of the century the _Nuremberg Chronicle_, with its two
thousand illustrations, reached its fifth edition, and before the century
was over seventeen editions were published of Munster’s _Cosmography_.
Besides these two books there were also the works of Michael Colyns, of
Hans Weigel, of Amman, and of Vecellio himself, all of them well
illustrated, some of the drawings in Vecellio being probably from the
hand of Titian.
Nor was it merely from books and treatises that they acquired their
knowledge. The development of the habit of foreign travel, the increased
commercial intercourse between countries, and the frequency of diplomatic
missions, gave every nation many opportunities of studying the various
forms of contemporary dress. After the departure from England, for
instance, of the ambassadors from the Czar, the Sultan and the Prince of
Morocco, Henry the Eighth and his friends gave several masques in the
strange attire of their visitors. Later on London saw, perhaps too
often, the sombre splendour of the Spanish Court, and to Elizabeth came
envoys from all lands, whose dress, Shakespeare tells us, had an
important influence on English costume.
And the interest was not confined merely to classical dress, or the dress
of foreign nations; there was also a good deal of research, amongst
theatrical people especially, into the ancient costume of England itself:
and when Shakespeare, in the prologue to one of his plays, expresses his
regret at being unable to produce helmets of the period, he is speaking
as an Elizabethan manager and not merely as an Elizabethan poet. At
Cambridge, for instance, during his day, a play of _Richard The Third_
was performed, in which the actors were attired in real dresses of the
time, procured from the great collection of historical costume in the
Tower, which was always open to the inspection of managers, and sometimes
placed at their disposal. And I cannot help thinking that this
performance must have been far more artistic, as regards costume, than
Garrick’s mounting of Shakespeare’s own play on the subject, in which he
himself appeared in a nondescript fancy dress, and everybody else in the
costume of the time of George the Third, Richmond especially being much
admired in the uniform of a young guardsman.
For what is the use to the stage of that archæology which has so
strangely terrified the critics, but that it, and it alone, can give us
the architecture and apparel suitable to the time in which the action of
the play passes? It enables us to see a Greek dressed like a Greek, and
an Italian like an Italian; to enjoy the arcades of Venice and the
balconies of Verona; and, if the play deals with any of the great eras in
our country’s history, to contemplate the age in its proper attire, and
the king in his habit as he lived. And I wonder, by the way, what Lord
Lytton would have said some time ago, at the Princess’s Theatre, had the
curtain risen on his father’s Brutus reclining in a Queen Anne chair,
attired in a flowing wig and a flowered dressing-gown, a costume which in
the last century was considered peculiarly appropriate to an antique
Roman! For in those halcyon days of the drama no archæology troubled the
stage, or distressed the critics, and our inartistic grandfathers sat
peaceably in a stifling atmosphere of anachronisms, and beheld with the
calm complacency of the age of prose an Iachimo in powder and patches, a
Lear in lace ruffles, and a Lady Macbeth in a large crinoline. I can
understand archæology being attacked on the ground of its excessive
realism, but to attack it as pedantic seems to be very much beside the
mark. However, to attack it for any reason is foolish; one might just as
well speak disrespectfully of the equator. For archæology, being a
science, is neither good nor bad, but a fact simply. Its value depends
entirely on how it is used, and only an artist can use it. We look to
the archæologist for the materials, to the artist for the method.
In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare’s plays, the
first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama.
This should be determined by the general spirit of the play, more than by
any actual historical references which may occur in it. Most _Hamlets_ I
have seen were placed far too early. _Hamlet_ is essentially a scholar
of the Revival of Learning; and if the allusion to the recent invasion of
England by the Danes puts it back to the ninth century, the use of foils
brings it down much later. Once, however, that the date has been fixed,
then the archæologist is to supply us with the facts which the artist is
to convert into effects.
It has been said that the anachronisms in the plays themselves show us
that Shakespeare was indifferent to historical accuracy, and a great deal
of capital has been made out of Hector’s indiscreet quotation from
Aristotle. Upon the other hand, the anachronisms are really few in
number, and not very important, and, had Shakespeare’s attention been
drawn to them by a brother artist, he would probably have corrected them.
For, though they can hardly be called blemishes, they are certainly not
the great beauties of his work; or, at least, if they are, their
anachronistic charm cannot be emphasised unless the play is accurately
mounted according to its proper date. In looking at Shakespeare’s plays
as a whole, however, what is really remarkable is their extraordinary
fidelity as regards his personages and his plots. Many of his _dramatis
personæ_ are people who had actually existed, and some of them might have
been seen in real life by a portion of his audience. Indeed the most
violent attack that was made on Shakespeare in his time was for his
supposed caricature of Lord Cobham. As for his plots, Shakespeare
constantly draws them either from authentic history, or from the old
ballads and traditions which served as history to the Elizabethan public,
and which even now no scientific historian would dismiss as absolutely
untrue. And not merely did he select fact instead of fancy as the basis
of much of his imaginative work, but he always gives to each play the
general character, the social atmosphere in a word, of the age in
question. Stupidity he recognises as being one of the permanent
characteristics of all European civilisations; so he sees no difference
between a London mob of his own day and a Roman mob of pagan days,
between a silly watchman in Messina and a silly Justice of the Peace in
Windsor. But when he deals with higher characters, with those exceptions
of each age which are so fine that they become its types, he gives them
absolutely the stamp and seal of their time. Virgilia is one of those
Roman wives on whose tomb was written ‘Domi mansit, lanam fecit,’ as
surely as Juliet is the romantic girl of the Renaissance. He is even
true to the characteristics of race. Hamlet has all the imagination and
irresolution of the Northern nations, and the Princess Katharine is as
entirely French as the heroine of _Divorçons_. Harry the Fifth is a pure
Englishman, and Othello a true Moor.
Again when Shakespeare treats of the history of England from the
fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, it is wonderful how careful he is
to have his facts perfectly right—indeed he follows Holinshed with
curious fidelity. The incessant wars between France and England are
described with extraordinary accuracy down to the names of the besieged
towns, the ports of landing and embarkation, the sites and dates of the
battles, the titles of the commanders on each side, and the lists of the
killed and wounded. And as regards the Civil Wars of the Roses we have
many elaborate genealogies of the seven sons of Edward the Third; the
claims of the rival Houses of York and Lancaster to the throne are
discussed at length; and if the English aristocracy will not read
Shakespeare as a poet, they should certainly read him as a sort of early
Peerage. There is hardly a single title in the Upper House, with the
exception of course of the uninteresting titles assumed by the law lords,
which does not appear in Shakespeare along with many details of family
history, creditable and discreditable. Indeed if it be really necessary
that the School Board children should know all about the Wars of the
Roses, they could learn their lessons just as well out of Shakespeare as
out of shilling primers, and learn them, I need not say, far more
pleasurably. Even in Shakespeare’s own day this use of his plays was
recognised. ‘The historical plays teach history to those who cannot read
it in the chronicles,’ says Heywood in a tract about the stage, and yet I
am sure that sixteenth-century chronicles were much more delightful
reading than nineteenth-century primers are.
Of course the æsthetic value of Shakespeare’s plays does not, in the
slightest degree, depend on their facts, but on their Truth, and Truth is
independent of facts always, inventing or selecting them at pleasure.
But still Shakespeare’s use of facts is a most interesting part of his
method of work, and shows us his attitude towards the stage, and his
relations to the great art of illusion. Indeed he would have been very
much surprised at any one classing his plays with ‘fairy tales,’ as Lord
Lytton does; for one of his aims was to create for England a national
historical drama, which should deal with incidents with which the public
was well acquainted, and with heroes that lived in the memory of a
people. Patriotism, I need hardly say, is not a necessary quality of
art; but it means, for the artist, the substitution of a universal for an
individual feeling, and for the public the presentation of a work of art
in a most attractive and popular form. It is worth noticing that
Shakespeare’s first and last successes were both historical plays.
It may be asked, what has this to do with Shakespeare’s attitude towards
costume? I answer that a dramatist who laid such stress on historical
accuracy of fact would have welcomed historical accuracy of costume as a
most important adjunct to his illusionist method. And I have no
hesitation in saying that he did so. The reference to helmets of the
period in the prologue to _Henry the Fifth_ may be considered fanciful,
though Shakespeare must have often seen
The very casque
That did affright the air at Agincourt,
where it still hangs in the dusky gloom of Westminster Abbey, along with
the saddle of that ‘imp of fame,’ and the dinted shield with its torn
blue velvet lining and its tarnished lilies of gold; but the use of
military tabards in _Henry the Sixth_ is a bit of pure archæology, as
they were not worn in the sixteenth century; and the King’s own tabard, I
may mention, was still suspended over his tomb in St. George’s Chapel,
Windsor, in Shakespeare’s day. For, up to the time of the unfortunate
triumph of the Philistines in 1645, the chapels and cathedrals of England
were the great national museums of archæology, and in them were kept the
armour and attire of the heroes of English history. A good deal was of
course preserved in the Tower, and even in Elizabeth’s day tourists were
brought there to see such curious relics of the past as Charles Brandon’s
huge lance, which is still, I believe, the admiration of our country
visitors; but the cathedrals and churches were, as a rule, selected as
the most suitable shrines for the reception of the historic antiquities.
Canterbury can still show us the helm of the Black Prince, Westminster
the robes of our kings, and in old St. Paul’s the very banner that had
waved on Bosworth field was hung up by Richmond himself.
In fact, everywhere that Shakespeare turned in London, he saw the apparel
and appurtenances of past ages, and it is impossible to doubt that he
made use of his opportunities. The employment of lance and shield, for
instance, in actual warfare, which is so frequent in his plays, is drawn
from archæology, and not from the military accoutrements of his day; and
his general use of armour in battle was not a characteristic of his age,
a time when it was rapidly disappearing before firearms. Again, the
crest on Warwick’s helmet, of which such a point is made in _Henry the
Sixth_, is absolutely correct in a fifteenth-century play when crests
were generally worn, but would not have been so in a play of
Shakespeare’s own time, when feathers and plumes had taken their place—a
fashion which, as he tells us in _Henry the Eighth_, was borrowed from
France. For the historical plays, then, we may be sure that archæology
was employed, and as for the others I feel certain that it was the case
also. The appearance of Jupiter on his eagle, thunderbolt in hand, of
Juno with her peacocks, and of Iris with her many-coloured bow; the
Amazon masque and the masque of the Five Worthies, may all be regarded as
archæological; and the vision which Posthumus sees in prison of Sicilius
Leonatus—‘an old man, attired like a warrior, leading an ancient
matron’—is clearly so. Of the ‘Athenian dress’ by which Lysander is
distinguished from Oberon I have already spoken; but one of the most
marked instances is in the case of the dress of Coriolanus, for which
Shakespeare goes directly to Plutarch. That historian, in his Life of
the great Roman, tells us of the oak-wreath with which Caius Marcius was
crowned, and of the curious kind of dress in which, according to ancient
fashion, he had to canvass his electors; and on both of these points he
enters into long disquisitions, investigating the origin and meaning of
the old customs. Shakespeare, in the spirit of the true artist, accepts
the facts of the antiquarian and converts them into dramatic and
picturesque effects: indeed the gown of humility, the ‘woolvish gown,’ as
Shakespeare calls it, is the central note of the play. There are other
cases I might quote, but this one is quite sufficient for my purpose; and
it is evident from it at any rate that, in mounting a play in the
accurate costume of the time, according to the best authorities, we are
carrying out Shakespeare’s own wishes and method.
Even if it were not so, there is no more reason that we should continue
any imperfections which may be supposed to have characterised
Shakespeare’s stage mounting than that we should have Juliet played by a
young man, or give up the advantage of changeable scenery. A great work
of dramatic art should not merely be made expressive of modern passion by
means of the actor, but should be presented to us in the form most
suitable to the modern spirit. Racine produced his Roman plays in Louis
Quatorze dress on a stage crowded with spectators; but we require
different conditions for the enjoyment of his art. Perfect accuracy of
detail, for the sake of perfect illusion, is necessary for us. What we
have to see is that the details are not allowed to usurp the principal
place. They must be subordinate always to the general motive of the
play. But subordination in art does not mean disregard of truth; it
means conversion of fact into effect, and assigning to each detail its
proper relative value
‘Les petits détails d’histoire et de vie domestique (says Hugo)
doivent être scrupuleusement étudiés et reproduits par le poète, mais
uniquement comme des moyens d’accroître la réalité de l’ensemble, et
de faire pénétrer jusque dans les coins les plus obscurs de l’œuvre
cette vie générale et puissante au milieu de laquelle les personnages
sont plus vrais, et les catastrophes, par conséqueut, plus
poignantes. Tout doit être subordonné à ce but. L’Homme sur le
premier plan, le reste au fond.’