THE TRUTH OF MASKS [3]
fat knight, and a detailed account of the extraordinary garb in
which Petruchio is to be married. Rosalind, he tells us, is tall,
and is to carry a spear and a little dagger; Celia is smaller, and
is to paint her face brown so as to look sunburnt. The children
who play at fairies in Windsor Forest are to be dressed in white
and green - a compliment, by the way, to Queen Elizabeth, whose
favourite colours they were - and in white, with green garlands and
gilded vizors, the angels are to come to Katherine in Kimbolton.
Bottom is in homespun, Lysander is distinguished from Oberon by his
wearing an Athenian dress, and Launce has holes in his boots. The
Duchess of Gloucester stands in a white sheet with her husband in
mourning beside her. The motley of the Fool, the scarlet of the
Cardinal, and the French lilies broidered on the English coats, are
all made occasion for jest or taunt in the dialogue. We know the
patterns on the Dauphin's armour and the Pucelle's sword, the crest
on Warwick's helmet and the colour of Bardolph's nose. Portia has
golden hair, Phoebe is black-haired, Orlando has chestnut curls,
and Sir Andrew Aguecheek's hair hangs like flax on a distaff, and
won't curl at all. Some of the characters are stout, some lean,
some straight, some hunchbacked, some fair, some dark, and some are
to blacken their faces. Lear has a white beard, Hamlet's father a
grizzled, and Benedick is to shave his in the course of the play.
Indeed, on the subject of stage beards Shakespeare is quite
elaborate; tells us of the many different colours in use, and gives
a hint to actors always to see that their own are properly tied on.
There is a dance of reapers in rye-straw hats, and of rustics in
hairy coats like satyrs; a masque of Amazons, a masque of Russians,
and a classical masque; several immortal scenes over a weaver in an
ass's head, a riot over the colour of a coat which it takes the
Lord Mayor of London to quell, and a scene between an infuriated
husband and his wife's milliner about the slashing of a sleeve.
As for the metaphors Shakespeare draws from dress, and the
aphorisms he makes on it, his hits at the costume of his age,
particularly at the ridiculous size of the ladies' bonnets, and the
many descriptions of the MUNDUS MULIEBRIS, from the long of
Autolycus in the WINTER'S TALE down to the account of the Duchess
of Milan's gown in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, they are far too
numerous to quote; though it may be worth while to remind people
that the whole of the Philosophy of Clothes is to be found in
Lear's scene with Edgar - a passage which has the advantage of
brevity and style over the grotesque wisdom and somewhat mouthing
metaphysics of SARTOR RESARTUS. But I think that from what I have
already said it is quite clear that Shakespeare was very much
interested in costume. I do not mean in that shallow sense by
which it has been concluded from his knowledge of deeds and
daffodils that he was the Blackstone and Paxton of the Elizabethan
age; but that he saw that costume could be made at once impressive
of a certain effect on the audience and expressive of certain types
of character, and is one of the essential factors of the means
which a true illusionist has at his disposal. Indeed to him the
deformed figure of Richard was of as much value as Juliet's
loveliness; he sets the serge of the radical beside the silks of
the lord, and sees the stage effects to be got from each: he has
as much delight in Caliban as he has in Ariel, in rags as he has in
cloth of gold, and recognises the artistic beauty of ugliness.
The difficulty Ducis felt about translating OTHELLO in consequence
of the importance given to such a vulgar thing as a handkerchief,
and his attempt to soften its grossness by making the Moor
reiterate 'Le bandeau! le bandeau!' may be taken as an example of
the difference between LA TRAGEDIE PHILOSOPHIQUE and the drama of
real life; and the introduction for the first time of the word
MOUCHOIR at the Theatre Francais was an era in that romantic-