dramatist who employed archæology on the stage, and whose plays, though
absolutely correct in detail, are known to all for their passion, not for
their pedantry—for their life, not for their learning. It is true that
he has made certain concessions in the case of the employment of curious
or strange expressions. Ruy Blas talks of M, de Priego as ‘sujet du roi’
instead of ‘noble du roi,’ and Angelo Malipieri speaks of ‘la croix
rouge’ instead of ‘la croix de gueules.’ But they are concessions made
to the public, or rather to a section of it. ‘J’en offre ici toute mes
excuses aux spectateurs intelligents,’ he says in a note to one of the
plays; ‘espérons qu’un jour un seigneur vénitien pourra dire tout
bonnement sans péril son blason sur le théâtre. C’est un progrès qui
viendra.’ And, though the description of the crest is not couched in
accurate language, still the crest itself was accurately right. It may,
of course, be said that the public do not notice these things; upon the
other hand, it should be remembered that Art has no other aim but her own
perfection, and proceeds simply by her own laws, and that the play which
Hamlet describes as being caviare to the general is a play he highly
praises. Besides, in England, at any rate, the public have undergone a
transformation; there is far more appreciation of beauty now than there
was a few years ago; and though they may not be familiar with the
authorities and archæological data for what is shown to them, still they
enjoy whatever loveliness they look at. And this is the important thing.
Better to take pleasure in a rose than to put its root under a
microscope. Archæological accuracy is merely a condition of illusionist
stage effect; it is not its quality. And Lord Lytton’s proposal that the
dresses should merely be beautiful without being accurate is founded on a
misapprehension of the nature of costume, and of its value on the stage.
This value is twofold, picturesque and dramatic; the former depends on
the colour of the dress, the latter on its design and character. But so
interwoven are the two that, whenever in our own day historical accuracy
has been disregarded, and the various dresses in a play taken from
different ages, the result has been that the stage has been turned into
that chaos of costume, that caricature of the centuries, the Fancy Dress
Ball, to the entire ruin of all dramatic and picturesque effect. For the
dresses of one age do not artistically harmonise with the dresses of
another: and, as far as dramatic value goes, to confuse the costumes is
to confuse the play. Costume is a growth, an evolution, and a most
important, perhaps the most important, sign of the manners, customs and
mode of life of each century. The Puritan dislike of colour, adornment
and grace in apparel was part of the great revolt of the middle classes
against Beauty in the seventeenth century. A historian who disregarded
it would give us a most inaccurate picture of the time, and a dramatist
who did not avail himself of it would miss a most vital element in
producing an illusionist effect. The effeminacy of dress that
characterised the reign of Richard the Second was a constant theme of
contemporary authors. Shakespeare, writing two hundred years after,
makes the king’s fondness for gay apparel and foreign fashions a point in
the play, from John of Gaunt’s reproaches down to Richard’s own speech in
the third act on his deposition from the throne. And that Shakespeare
examined Richard’s tomb in Westminster Abbey seems to me certain from
York’s speech:—
See, see, King Richard doth himself appear
As doth the blushing discontented sun
From out the fiery portal of the east,
When he perceives the envious clouds are bent
To dim his glory.
For we can still discern on the King’s robe his favourite badge—the sun
issuing from a cloud. In fact, in every age the social conditions are so
exemplified in costume, that to produce a sixteenth-century play in
fourteenth-century attire, or _vice versa_, would make the performance
seem unreal because untrue. And, valuable as beauty of effect on the
stage is, the highest beauty is not merely comparable with absolute
accuracy of detail, but really dependent on it. To invent, an entirely
new costume is almost impossible except in burlesque or extravaganza, and
as for combining the dress of different centuries into one, the
experiment would be dangerous, and Shakespeare’s opinion of the artistic
value of such a medley may be gathered from his incessant satire of the
Elizabethan dandies for imagining that they were well dressed because
they got their doublets in Italy, their hats in Germany, and their hose
in France. And it should be noted that the most lovely scenes that have
been produced on our stage have been those that have been characterised
by perfect accuracy, such as Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft’s eighteenth-century
revivals at the Haymarket, Mr. Irying’s superb production of _Much Ado
About Nothing_, and Mr. Barrett’s _Claudian_. Besides, and this is
perhaps the most complete answer to Lord Lytton’s theory, it must be
remembered that neither in costume nor in dialogue is beauty the
dramatist’s primary aim at all. The true dramatist aims first at what is
characteristic, and no more desires that all his personages should be
beautifully attired than he desires that they should all have beautiful
natures or speak beautiful English. The true dramatist, in fact, shows
us life under the conditions of art, not art in the form of life. The
Greek dress was the loveliest dress the world has ever seen, and the
English dress of the last century one of the most monstrous; yet we
cannot costume a play by Sheridan as we would costume a play by
Sophokles. For, as Polonius says in his excellent lecture, a lecture to
which I am glad to have the opportunity of expressing my obligations, one
of the first qualities of apparel is its expressiveness. And the
affected style of dress in the last century was the natural
characteristic of a society of affected manners and affected
conversation—a characteristic which the realistic dramatist will highly
value down to the smallest detail of accuracy, and the materials for
which he can get only from archæology.
But it is not enough that a dress should be accurate; it must be also
appropriate to the stature and appearance of the actor, and to his
supposed condition, as well as to his necessary action in the play. In
Mr. Hare’s production of _As You Like It_ at the St. James’s Theatre, for
instance, the whole point of Orlando’s complaint that he is brought up
like a peasant, and not like a gentleman, was spoiled by the gorgeousness
of his dress, and the splendid apparel worn by the banished Duke and his
friends was quite out of place. Mr. Lewis Wingfield’s explanation that
the sumptuary laws of the period necessitated their doing so, is, I am
afraid, hardly sufficient. Outlaws, lurking in a forest and living by
the chase, are not very likely to care much about ordinances of dress.
They were probably attired like Robin Hood’s men, to whom, indeed, they
are compared in the course of the play. And that their dress was not
that of wealthy noblemen may be seen by Orlando’s words when he breaks in
upon them. He mistakes them for robbers, and is amazed to find that they
answer him in courteous and gentle terms. Lady Archibald Campbell’s
production, under Mr. E. W. Godwin’s direction, of the same play in
Coombe Wood was, as regards mounting, far more artistic. At least it
seemed so to me. The Duke and his companions were dressed in serge
tunics, leathern jerkins, high boots and gauntlets, and wore bycocket
hats and hoods. And as they were playing in a real forest, they found, I
am sure, their dresses extremely convenient. To every character in the
play was given a perfectly appropriate attire, and the brown and green of
their costumes harmonised exquisitely with the ferns through which they
wandered, the trees beneath which they lay, and the lovely English
landscape that surrounded the Pastoral Players. The perfect naturalness
of the scene was due to the absolute accuracy and appropriateness of
everything that was worn. Nor could archæology have been put to a
severer test, or come out of it more triumphantly. The whole production
showed once for all that, unless a dress is archæologically correct, and
artistically appropriate, it always looks unreal, unnatural, and
theatrical in the sense of artificial.
Nor, again, is it enough that there should be accurate and appropriate
costumes of beautiful colours; there must be also beauty of colour on the
stage as a whole, and as long as the background is painted by one artist,
and the foreground figures independently designed by another, there is
the danger of a want of harmony in the scene as a picture. For each
scene the colour-scheme should be settled as absolutely as for the
decoration of a room, and the textures which it is proposed to use should
be mixed and re-mixed in every possible combination, and what is
discordant removed. Then, as regards the particular kinds of colours,
the stage is often too glaring, partly through the excessive use of hot,
violent reds, and partly through the costumes looking too new.
Shabbiness, which in modern life is merely the tendency of the lower
orders towards tone, is not without its artistic value, and modern
colours are often much improved by being a little faded. Blue also is
too frequently used: it is not merely a dangerous colour to wear by
gaslight, but it is really difficult in England to get a thoroughly good
blue. The fine Chinese blue, which we all so much admire, takes two
years to dye, and the English public will not wait so long for a colour.
Peacock blue, of course, has been employed on the stage, notably at the
Lyceum, with great advantage; but all attempts at a good light blue, or
good dark blue, which I have seen have been failures. The value of black
is hardly appreciated; it was used effectively by Mr. Irving in _Hamlet_
as the central note of a composition, but as a tone-giving neutral its
importance is not recognised. And this is curious, considering the
general colour of the dress of a century in which, as Baudelaire says,
‘Nous célébrons tous quelque enterrement.’ The archæologist of the
future will probably point to this age as the time when the beauty of
black was understood; but I hardly think that, as regards stage-mounting
or house decoration, it really is. Its decorative value is, of course,
the same as that of white or gold; it can separate and harmonise colours.
In modern plays the black frock-coat of the hero becomes important in
itself, and should be given a suitable background. But it rarely is.
Indeed the only good background for a play in modern dress which I have
ever seen was the dark grey and cream-white scene of the first act of the
_Princesse Georges_ in Mrs. Langtry’s production. As a rule, the hero is
smothered in _bric-à-brac_ and palm-trees, lost in the gilded abyss of
Louis Quatorze furniture, or reduced to a mere midge in the midst of
marqueterie; whereas the background should always be kept as a
background, and colour subordinated to effect. This, of course, can only
be done when there is one single mind directing the whole production.
The facts of art are diverse, but the essence of artistic effect is
unity. Monarchy, Anarchy, and Republicanism may contend for the
government of nations; but a theatre should be in the power of a cultured
despot. There may be division of labour, but there must be no division
of mind. Whoever understands the costume of an age understands of
necessity its architecture and its surroundings also, and it is easy to
see from the chairs of a century whether it was a century of crinolines
or not. In fact, in art there is no specialism, and a really artistic
production should bear the impress of one master, and one master only,
who not merely should design and arrange everything, but should have
complete control over the way in which each dress is to be worn.
Mademoiselle Mars, in the first production of _Hernani_, absolutely
refused to call her lover ‘_Mon Lion_!’ unless she was allowed to wear a
little fashionable _toque_ then much in vogue on the Boulevards; and many
young ladies on our own stage insist to the present day on wearing stiff
starched petticoats under Greek dresses, to the entire ruin of all
delicacy of line and fold; but these wicked things should not be allowed.
And there should be far more dress rehearsals than there are now. Actors
such as Mr. Forbes-Robertson, Mr. Conway, Mr. George Alexander, and
others, not to mention older artists, can move with ease and elegance in
the attire of any century; but there are not a few who seem dreadfully
embarrassed about their hands if they have no side pockets, and who
always wear their dresses as if they were costumes. Costumes, of course,
they are to the designer; but dresses they should be to those that wear
them. And it is time that a stop should be put to the idea, very
prevalent on the stage, that the Greeks and Romans always went about
bareheaded in the open air—a mistake the Elizabethan managers did not
fall into, for they gave hoods as well as gowns to their Roman senators.
More dress rehearsals would also be of value in explaining to the actors
that there is a form of gesture and movement that is not merely
appropriate to each style of dress, but really conditioned by it. The
extravagant use of the arms in the eighteenth century, for instance, was
the necessary result of the large hoop, and the solemn dignity of
Burleigh owed as much to his ruff as to his reason. Besides until an
actor is at home in his dress, he is not at home in his part.
Of the value of beautiful costume in creating an artistic temperament in
the audience, and producing that joy in beauty for beauty’s sake without
which the great masterpieces of art can never be understood, I will not
here speak; though it is worth while to notice how Shakespeare
appreciated that side of the question in the production of his tragedies,
acting them always by artificial light, and in a theatre hung with black;
but what I have tried to point out is that archæology is not a pedantic
method, but a method of artistic illusion, and that costume is a means of
displaying character without description, and of producing dramatic
situations and dramatic effects. And I think it is a pity that so many
critics should have set themselves to attack one of the most important
movements on the modern stage before that movement has at all reached its
proper perfection. That it will do so, however, I feel as certain as
that we shall require from our dramatic critics in the future higher
qualification than that they can remember Macready or have seen Benjamin
Webster; we shall require of them, indeed, that they cultivate a sense of
beauty. _Pour être plus difficile_, _la tâche n’en est que plus
glorieuse_. And if they will not encourage, at least they must not
oppose, a movement of which Shakespeare of all dramatists would have most
approved, for it has the illusion of truth for its method, and the
illusion of beauty for its result. Not that I agree with everything that
I have said in this essay. There is much with which I entirely disagree.
The essay simply represents an artistic standpoint, and in æsthetic
criticism attitude is everything. For in art there is no such thing as a
universal truth. A Truth in art is that whose contradictory is also
true. And just as it is only in art-criticism, and through it, that we
can apprehend the Platonic theory of ideas, so it is only in
art-criticism, and through it, that we can realise Hegel’s system of
contraries. The truths of metaphysics are the truths of masks.