Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated) (180 page)

Nor is this all.  It is Criticism that, recognising no position as final, and refusing to bind itself by the shallow shibboleths of any sect or school, creates that serene philosophic temper which loves truth for its own sake, and loves it not the less because it knows it to be unattainable.  How little we have of this temper in England, and how much we need it!  The English mind is always in a rage.  The intellect of the race is wasted in the sordid and stupid quarrels of second-rate politicians or third-rate theologians.  It was reserved for a man of science to show us the supreme example of that ‘sweet reasonableness’ of which Arnold spoke so wisely, and, alas! to so little effect.  The author of the
Origin of Species
had, at any rate, the philosophic temper.  If one contemplates the ordinary pulpits and platforms of England, one can but feel the contempt of Julian, or the indifference of Montaigne.  We are dominated by the fanatic, whose worst vice is his sincerity.  Anything approaching to the free play of the mind is practically unknown amongst us.  People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful, but the stupid, who are our shame.  There is no sin except stupidity.

ERNEST.  Ah! what an antinomian you are!

GILBERT.  The artistic critic, like the mystic, is an antinomian always.  To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy.  It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.  Aesthetics are higher than ethics.  They belong to a more spiritual sphere.  To discern the beauty of a thing is the finest point to which we can arrive.  Even a colour-sense is more important, in the development of the individual, than a sense of right and wrong.  Aesthetics, in fact, are to Ethics in the sphere of conscious civilisation, what, in the sphere of the external world, sexual is to natural selection.  Ethics, like natural selection, make existence possible.  Aesthetics, like sexual selection, make life lovely and wonderful, fill it with new forms, and give it progress, and variety and change.  And when we reach the true culture that is our aim, we attain to that perfection of which the saints have dreamed, the perfection of those to whom sin is impossible, not because they make the renunciations of the ascetic, but because they can do everything they wish without hurt to the soul, and can wish for nothing that can do the soul harm, the soul being an entity so divine that it is able to transform into elements of a richer experience, or a finer susceptibility, or a newer mode of thought, acts or passions that with the common would be commonplace, or with the uneducated ignoble, or with the shameful vile.  Is this dangerous?  Yes; it is dangerous — all ideas, as I told you, are so.  But the night wearies, and the light flickers in the lamp.  One more thing I cannot help saying to you.  You have spoken against Criticism as being a sterile thing.  The nineteenth century is a turning point in history, simply on account of the work of two men, Darwin and Renan, the one the critic of the Book of Nature, the other the critic of the books of God.  Not to recognise this is to miss the meaning of one of the most important eras in the progress of the world.  Creation is always behind the age.  It is Criticism that leads us.  The Critical Spirit and the World-Spirit are one.

ERNEST.  And he who is in possession of this spirit, or whom this spirit possesses, will, I suppose, do nothing?

GILBERT.  Like the Persephone of whom Landor tells us, the sweet pensive Persephone around whose white feet the asphodel and amaranth are blooming, he will sit contented ‘in that deep, motionless quiet which mortals pity, and which the gods enjoy.’  He will look out upon the world and know its secret.  By contact with divine things he will become divine.  His will be the perfect life, and his only.

ERNEST.  You have told me many strange things to-night, Gilbert.  You have told me that it is more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it, and that to do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world; you have told me that all Art is immoral, and all thought dangerous; that criticism is more creative than creation, and that the highest criticism is that which reveals in the work of Art what the artist had not put there; that it is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is the proper judge of it; and that the true critic is unfair, insincere, and not rational.  My friend, you are a dreamer.

GILBERT.  Yes: I am a dreamer.  For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

ERNEST.  His punishment?

GILBERT.  And his reward.  But, see, it is dawn already.  Draw back the curtains and open the windows wide.  How cool the morning air is!  Piccadilly lies at our feet like a long riband of silver.  A faint purple mist hangs over the Park, and the shadows of the white houses are purple.  It is too late to sleep.  Let us go down to Covent Garden and look at the roses.  Come!  I am tired of thought.

A NOTE ON ILLUSION

In many of the somewhat violent attacks that have recently been made on that splendour of mounting which now characterises our Shakespearian revivals in England, it seems to have been tacitly assumed by the critics that Shakespeare himself was more or less indifferent to the costumes of his actors, and that, could he see Mrs. Langtry’s production of
Antony and
Cleopatra
, he would probably say that the play, and the play only, is the thing, and that everything else is leather and prunella.  While, as regards any historical accuracy in dress, Lord Lytton, in an article in the
Nineteenth Century
, has laid it down as a dogma of art that archaeology is entirely out of place in the presentation of any of Shakespeare’s plays, and the attempt to introduce it one of the stupidest pedantries of an age of prigs.

Lord Lytton’s position I shall examine later on; but, as regards the theory that Shakespeare did not busy himself much about the costume-wardrobe of his theatre, anybody who cares to study Shakespeare’s method will see that there is absolutely no dramatist of the French, English, or Athenian stage who relies so much for his illusionist effects on the dress of his actors as Shakespeare does himself.

Knowing how the artistic temperament is always fascinated by beauty of costume, he constantly introduces into his plays masques and dances, purely for the sake of the pleasure which they give the eye; and we have still his stage-directions for the three great processions in
Henry the Eighth
, directions which are characterised by the most extraordinary elaborateness of detail down to the collars of S.S. and the pearls in Anne Boleyn’s hair.  Indeed it would be quite easy for a modern manager to reproduce these pageants absolutely as Shakespeare had them designed; and so accurate were they that one of the court officials of the time, writing an account of the last performance of the play at the Globe Theatre to a friend, actually complains of their realistic character, notably of the production on the stage of the Knights of the Garter in the robes and insignia of the order as being calculated to bring ridicule on the real ceremonies; much in the same spirit in which the French Government, some time ago, prohibited that delightful actor, M. Christian, from appearing in uniform, on the plea that it was prejudicial to the glory of the army that a colonel should be caricatured.  And elsewhere the gorgeousness of apparel which distinguished the English stage under Shakespeare’s influence was attacked by the contemporary critics, not as a rule, however, on the grounds of the democratic tendencies of realism, but usually on those moral grounds which are always the last refuge of people who have no sense of beauty.

The point, however, which I wish to emphasise is, not that Shakespeare appreciated the value of lovely costumes in adding picturesqueness to poetry, but that he saw how important costume is as a means of producing certain dramatic effects.  Many of his plays, such as
Measure for
Measure
,
Twelfth Night
,
The Two Gentleman of
Verona
,
All’s Well that Ends Well
,
Cymbeline
, and others, depend for their illusion on the character of the various dresses worn by the hero or the heroine; the delightful scene in
Henry the Sixth
, on the modern miracles of healing by faith, loses all its point unless Gloster is in black and scarlet; and the
dénoûment
of the
Merry Wives
of Windsor
hinges on the colour of Anne Page’s gown.  As for the uses Shakespeare makes of disguises the instances are almost numberless.  Posthumus hides his passion under a peasant’s garb, and Edgar his pride beneath an idiot’s rags; Portia wears the apparel of a lawyer, and Rosalind is attired in ‘all points as a man’; the cloak-bag of Pisanio changes Imogen to the Youth Fidele; Jessica flees from her father’s house in boy’s dress, and Julia ties up her yellow hair in fantastic love-knots, and dons hose and doublet; Henry the Eighth woos his lady as a shepherd, and Romeo his as a pilgrim; Prince Hal and Poins appear first as footpads in buckram suits, and then in white aprons and leather jerkins as the waiters in a tavern: and as for Falstaff, does he not come on as a highwayman, as an old woman, as Herne the Hunter, and as the clothes going to the laundry?

Nor are the examples of the employment of costume as a mode of intensifying dramatic situation less numerous.  After slaughter of Duncan, Macbeth appears in his night-gown as if aroused from sleep; Timon ends in rags the play he had begun in splendour; Richard flatters the London citizens in a suit of mean and shabby armour, and, as soon as he has stepped in blood to the throne, marches through the streets in crown and George and Garter; the climax of
The Tempest
is reached when Prospero, throwing off his enchanter’s robes, sends Ariel for his hat and rapier, and reveals himself as the great Italian Duke; the very Ghost in
Hamlet
changes his mystical apparel to produce different effects; and as for Juliet, a modern playwright would probably have laid her out in her shroud, and made the scene a scene of horror merely, but Shakespeare arrays her in rich and gorgeous raiment, whose loveliness makes the vault ‘a feasting presence full of light,’ turns the tomb into a bridal chamber, and gives the cue and motive for Romeo’s speech of the triumph of Beauty over Death.

Even small details of dress, such as the colour of a major-domo’s stockings, the pattern on a wife’s handkerchief, the sleeve of a young soldier, and a fashionable woman’s bonnets, become in Shakespeare’s hands points of actual dramatic importance, and by some of them the action of the play in question is conditioned absolutely.  Many other dramatists have availed themselves of costume as a method of expressing directly to the audience the character of a person on his entrance, though hardly so brilliantly as Shakespeare has done in the case of the dandy Parolles, whose dress, by the way, only an archaeologist can understand; the fun of a master and servant exchanging coats in presence of the audience, of shipwrecked sailors squabbling over the division of a lot of fine clothes, and of a tinker dressed up like a duke while he is in his cups, may be regarded as part of that great career which costume has always played in comedy from the time of Aristophanes down to Mr. Gilbert; but nobody from the mere details of apparel and adornment has ever drawn such irony of contrast, such immediate and tragic effect, such pity and such pathos, as Shakespeare himself.  Armed cap-à-pie, the dead King stalks on the battlements of Elsinore because all is not right with Denmark; Shylock’s Jewish gaberdine is part of the stigma under which that wounded and embittered nature writhes; Arthur begging for his life can think of no better plea than the handkerchief he had given Hubert -

Have you the heart? when your head did but ache,
I knit my handkerchief about your brows,
(The best I had, a princess wrought it me)
And I did never ask it you again;

and Orlando’s blood-stained napkin strikes the first sombre note in that exquisite woodland idyll, and shows us the depth of feeling that underlies Rosalind’s fanciful wit and wilful jesting.

Last night ’twas on my arm; I kissed it;
I hope it be not gone to tell my lord
That I kiss aught but he,

says Imogen, jesting on the loss of the bracelet which was already on its way to Rome to rob her of her husband’s faith; the little Prince passing to the Tower plays with the dagger in his uncle’s girdle; Duncan sends a ring to Lady Macbeth on the night of his own murder, and the ring of Portia turns the tragedy of the merchant into a wife’s comedy.  The great rebel York dies with a paper crown on his head; Hamlet’s black suit is a kind of colour-motive in the piece, like the mourning of the Chimène in the
Cid
; and the climax of Antony’s speech is the production of Caesar’s cloak:-

I remember
The first time ever Caesar put it on.
’Twas on a summer’s evening, in his tent,
The day he overcame the Nervii:-
Look, in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through:
See what a rent the envious Casca made:
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed. . . .
Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold
Our Caesar’s vesture wounded?

The flowers which Ophelia carries with her in her madness are as pathetic as the violets that blossom on a grave; the effect of Lear’s wandering on the heath is intensified beyond words by his fantastic attire; and when Cloten, stung by the taunt of that simile which his sister draws from her husband’s raiment, arrays himself in that husband’s very garb to work upon her the deed of shame, we feel that there is nothing in the whole of modern French realism, nothing even in
Thérèse Raquin
, that masterpiece of horror, which for terrible and tragic significance can compare with this strange scene in
Cymbeline.

In the actual dialogue also some of the most vivid passages are those suggested by costume.  Rosalind’s

Dost thou think, though I am caparisoned like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition?

Constance’s

Grief fills the place of my absent child,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;

and the quick sharp cry of Elizabeth -

Ah! cut my lace asunder! -

are only a few of the many examples one might quote.  One of the finest effects I have ever seen on the stage was Salvini, in the last act of
Lear
, tearing the plume from Kent’s cap and applying it to Cordelia’s lips when he came to the line,

This feather stirs; she lives!

Mr. Booth, whose Lear had many noble qualities of passion, plucked, I remember, some fur from his archaeologically-incorrect ermine for the same business; but Salvini’s was the finer effect of the two, as well as the truer.  And those who saw Mr. Irving in the last act of
Richard the Third
have not, I am sure, forgotten how much the agony and terror of his dream was intensified, by contrast, through the calm and quiet that preceded it, and the delivery of such lines as

What, is my beaver easier than it was?
And all my armour laid into my tent?
Look that my staves be sound and not too heavy -

lines which had a double meaning for the audience, remembering the last words which Richard’s mother called after him as he was marching to Bosworth:-

Therefore take with thee my most grievous curse,
Which in the day of battle tire thee more
Than all the complete armour that thou wear’st.

As regards the resources which Shakespeare had at his disposal, it is to be remarked that, while he more than once complains of the smallness of the stage on which he has to produce big historical plays, and of the want of scenery which obliges him to cut out many effective open-air incidents, he always writes as a dramatist who had at his disposal a most elaborate theatrical wardrobe, and who could rely on the actors taking pains about their make-up.  Even now it is difficult to produce such a play as the
Comedy of Errors
; and to the picturesque accident of Miss Ellen Terry’s brother resembling herself we owe the opportunity of seeing
Twelfth Night
adequately performed.  Indeed, to put any play of Shakespeare’s on the stage, absolutely as he himself wished it to be done, requires the services of a good property-man, a clever wig-maker, a costumier with a sense of colour and a knowledge of textures, a master of the methods of making-up, a fencing-master, a dancing-master, and an artist to direct personally the whole production.  For he is most careful to tell us the dress and appearance of each character.  ‘Racine abhorre la réalité,’ says Auguste Vacquerie somewhere; ‘il ne daigne pas s’occuper de son costume.  Si l’on s’en rapportait aux indications du poète, Agamemnon serait vêtu d’un sceptre et Achille d’une épée.’  But with Shakespeare it is very different.  He gives us directions about the costumes of Perdita, Florizel, Autolycus, the Witches in
Macbeth
, and the apothecary in
Romeo and Juliet
, several elaborate descriptions of his 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.