we may, perhaps, take as an axiom that the effect which the mounting of a drama serves to intensify must be the effect which the drama itself was intended to produce; if playwright and stage-manager are at cross purposes their efforts will only be mutually destructive. This is no doubt a truism, but it is a truism that is constantly overlooked in practice. Every stagemanager as a matter of course professes to do his best to attain the effect which Shakespeare had in his mind; but to determine this in the case of any one of his plays, classical, historical or romantic, tragedy or comedy, it will not do to go no further than the names of the characters, their nationality, or the age in which they lived. Because Shakespeare wrote of the reign of King John, we must not lightly assume that the reign of King John was associated in his mind with the same ideas we have learnt to associate with it, ideas which are the growth of three centuries of historywriting, and have been crystallised, as it were, from a vast and undefined mass of knowledge which in the sixteenth century had no existence at all. To take a crucial instance, the Great Charter, which to a modern Englishman is the prominent feature of John's reign, forms no part of Shakespeare's conception of the period as we know it from his writings; for the truth is that the notions represented in any play whatsoever written three hundred years ago must necessarily be widely different from those which would influence the writer of a similar play to-day.

Thus we shall not be greatly helped towards the solution of the problem how Julius Cæsar' or 'Coriolanus' can be represented with the best possible results, by taking account of the success achieved by such a play as 'Claudian,' mounted with immense parade of archæological accuracy, and forming certainly a succession of very striking pictures. In a few of Shakespeare's plays possibly no archæological truth may be violated; but if this is

It will be said, however, that taste having changed since his time, we should as far as possible accommodate his plays to the growing passion for accuracy in historical details; and that the scenic splendour of which Shakespeare never dreamed satisfies modern needs without injuring the dramatic effect he aimed at. Such a contention challenges careful inquiry: and, indeed, Shakespeare's plays are so diverse in character that perhaps the difficulty of stage representation can only be settled for each separately. For our present purpose, then, we will divide the plays roughly and unscientifically into four classes: the classical, the historical, the romantic, and the pseudohistorical, and consider how the realistic theory works when applied to each in turn.

With regard to the first class it might seem at first sight reasonable enough. Julius Cæsar' and 'Coriolanus' and Antony and Cleopatra' are undeniably instinct with the true classical spirit; such trivial anachronisms as the mention of clocks, sennets, night-caps, and chimney-pots, do nothing, of course, to spoil the general impression. The characters are Roman to the core-perhaps not quite unimpeachable from the historian's point of view, but on the stage the historian's point of view is unimportant; and Shakespeare's Brutus and Caius Marcius and Volumnia, true as they are to nature, and, what is more, true to the antique Roman temper with which we are most intimately acquainted, impress us with a far livelier

sense of their reality than could ever be inspired by what is left of these personages in history, now that the fierce storms of professorial controversy have done their utmost to reduce them to shreds and fragments. Shakespeare, at least, lived before the days of Niebuhr and Cornewall Lewis, and knew his own mind.

On these two or three plays, then, the latest discoveries in classical antiquity may perhaps be lavished harmlessly, and may possibly even help the action. Yet, here too, there is some danger. If our antiquaries are permitted to revolutionise even on the stage all the ideas of oldfashioned people, they may end by making Cæsar and Cassius unfamiliar figures to us, and with that would disappear a large part of the fascination of the drama in which they move. We cannot afford just yet to give up, at all events at the theatre, those stately white-robed immortals to whom high-sounding phrase and proud sentiment seemed pure nature. We should not, I think, hear with the same contentment that fine, old-world reproach, "Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Cæsar," if it came from the lips of a quaint, over-dressed starveling of the stamp offered us by Mr. Alma-Tadema and others; while a freely picturesque treatment would be altogether unbearable applied to that 66 woman well-reputed, Cato's daughter."

As for Troilus and Cressida,' that, as a play, would surely be ruined by the very touch of the archæological theorist. Who would not a thousand times rather have Shakespeare's Grecians, toga-clad anachronisms as they may be, than any outlandish warriors from Hissarlik or Mycenæ, though the British Museum's stores of prehistoric art were never so carefully ransacked to supply precedents for their antique bravery Before such figures as those which some of our precious vases of the archaic period show us, what ordinary theatre-goer would have ears for the play itself? and how long No. 320-vOL. LIV.

would it be before we so accustomed ourselves to the grotesque sight as to realise that it was no pantomime but an English classic that was in question? No, depend on it, in this case author and archæologist, however anxious to claim partnership the latter may be, are inevitably at odds; and if one of the two must needs go to the wall, most of us, it is to be hoped, would rather it were Schliemann than Shakespeare.

Besides, mount a piece as carefully as you will, still it will go hard with us but we will make shift to find some joint in your armour, some detail for which no respectable authority is guarantee; and for such as have come to witness a complete living picture of a bygone age, the whole evening will straightway be spoiled. A friend of ours told us a short time ago that when he went to see the recent revival of 'As You Like It,' at the St. James's Theatre, he looked on at the first two acts with the greatest pleasure, but in the third act he made the fatal discovery (as he took it to be) that Orlando had carved his mistress's name in characters that could not possibly have occurred to a gentleman of his cut. Thereupon a cold distracting doubt got possession of him; was the whole representation a sham? was he really in his ignorance breathing a "stifling atmosphere of anachronisms?" and had his applause been gained by sheer imposition? Perhaps his apprehensions were unfounded— and, it must be confessed, he was no deeply read archæologist-but what, in the name of common-sense, are we to say of a system by which our enjoyment of a dramatic performance depends on a question of Roman characters or black letter? For let us add that our friend had more than once witnessed a performance of the same play without a thought of its inconsistency afflicting him for a moment; in this case it was the parade of archæological precision, the emphatic profession of a love for historical truth, that had given his thoughts this pestilent turn, and, by

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striking that vein of criticism which every one has in him, deprived him of all chances of quietly enjoying the play.

It is only with great caution, then,

can be

that the realistic method applied to Shakespeare's classical plays. Does it fare better in the case of the historical drama? Here, if nowhere else, do we not see history made "to move in a pageant"? Have Iwe not here a kind of panorama of our national life, unfolding picture after picture of England's struggles and England's triumphs, painted, as it were, in a transport of patriotic fervour, and consequently raising our enthusiasm to a higher pitch, speaking with a livelier utterance to our hearts, the more 66 actuality" and historical substance is given to the representation?

In three or four plays, perhaps in such a military pageant as 'Henry the Fifth,' in 'Henry the Eighth,' or in the three parts of 'Henry the Sixth,' supposing any manager bold enough to venture on its revival, this may be true; but in the great majority of Shakespeare's historical plays, once carefully examined, very great difficulties will be found incident to the theory.

An ordinary actor will surely find it hard to thrill his audience with horror or melt it in compassion, if he has to play the part of Richard the Second with one leg red and the other green; or to inspire the character of Richard the Third with real dread so long as the tips of his shoes are chained to his knees.

These particu

lar eccentricities, it will be answered, need not be insisted on; and a dress may be devised for each part which shall be historical without being absurd; but then the inference seems to be that the costume becomes more tolerable exactly in proportion as it is less obtrusively historical, and the realistic method will be most successful just where it is least recognisable. Besides there are more serious difficulties than these to be faced. In the

historical, more than in any other of Shakespeare's plays, the truism with which we started is apt to be overlooked. If a man take in hand the

carrying out of Shakespeare's intentions, he must carry them out in Shakespeare's way, not in his own. If in any play Shakespeare's purpose was to present as complete a picture as possible of a bygone age, then by all means let us summon the resources of archæology to do him honour. Doubtless his own powers in this way were small 1; we know that scenery in his time was almost entirely wanting, and as for costume, his writings certainly do not give one the impression of a man 66 who had at his disposal," to use the words of a recent upholder of the realistic theory, "a most elaborate theatrical wardrobe, and who could rely on the actors taking pains about their make-up," but rather of one who, being obliged to trust much to his audience's imagination, is willing to help them as far as he is able. Those vivid touches of description, by which we learn to know some of Shakespeare's characters almost by sight, were surely designed rather to supply the short-comings of the actors than to illustrate and call attention to their actual make-up. Still, whenever he points the way to a realistic and historical treatment, we may go forward with a light heart; it will not matter though we go beyond the extremest limit he ever dreamed of, so only that we are continuing the course on which he started. But if we have mistaken the signs, the further we push our theories into practice, the more widely we shall miss the mark; and infallible signs are not to be found in the mere names of the characters or the period in which they lived.

Because Falstaff is young Prince Hal's comrade, it does not necessarily follow that he belongs to the fifteenth century. Who in reading 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' does not place the date a full century and a half later than the only possible date

for the historical Falstaff? It is a pure comedy of manners, and the chief characters must have unquestionably presented themselves to Shakespeare's mind as contemporaries of his own, such as he might meet of an evening in any Warwickshire ale house. The very tradition that the part of Justice Shallow was meant as a libel on an obnoxious neighbour, and the frequent use throughout the play of slang terms, move in the same direction. Indeed, the point is scarcely worth arguing: Falstaff and his boon companions, Shallow and Slender and Mrs. Quickly, are true Elizabethans in the historical plays quite as much as in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor;' and to dress them in costumes that should proclaim them undeniably and unmistakably as of the Middle Ages would be mere cruelty to the actors who played their parts, as well as felony against the poet who conceived them.

It has been said by the critic already quoted that Shakespeare "gives to each play the social atmosphere of the age in question;" but when he wrote those stirring lines which have ever since rung in the mouths of British orators, we may take it for certain that he was thinking of the England of his own day, "hedged in with the main, that water-walled bulwark still secure and confident from foreign purposes," against which "the proud foot of the conqueror was ever turned in vain. He was thinking of the England of the Revenge,' and the Spanish Armada; of the little island for the possession of which Englishmen and Spaniards had so recently been at deadly strife, rather than of the England of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, ruled by an alien king and a foreign nobility, half of whose possessions lay on the other side of the Channel, rent asunder by dissension and prostrate under the yoke of papal tyranny.

'King John' should not on that account be made a purely Elizabethan spectacle; but on the other hand, if it

be presented in such a manner as inevitably and irresistibly to suggest the thirteenth century and nothing but the thirteenth century, we shall surely miss half the force of the passages which are most familiar to us, and have to submit into the bargain to an inconsistency as great, dramatically speaking, as though Constance were to be tricked up in powder and patches. For it is not too much to say that the England of Shakespeare's 'King John' bears as close a relation to the England of the eighteenth century as to the England of the historical Constance.

The Romantic Drama has next to be considered, and with regard to this class it will, we think, appear that the realistic theory is by no means less open to exception than is the case with the historical plays.

There is, at least, some colourable excuse for giving historical characters a historical costume, even though it sit somewhat awkwardly on them; but when we have poetical comedies whose most powerful fascination lies in their ideal and imaginative character, treated as if they were transcripts from some dry French or Italian annalist, when we have 'As You Like It' and 'Much Ado About Nothing' brought to the level of the historical romance, when the highest praise that can be given to the actors is that they look as though they had walked straight out of an illuminated missal, then it is surely time to raise some protest against the theory that is at the bottom of it all.

To think of Rosalind, the very type of gracious womanhood, warm with ever-changing emotions and instinct with the charm of a halftender, half - ironical waywardness, whose moods are as various as the "many-twinkling smile of ocean," yet always winning and always indescribably human, to think of her, we say, walking out of an illuminated missal! Possibly there were Rosalinds in the Middle Ages, but we who know them chiefly by the

grotesque workmanship of the time, find some difficulty in admitting it. If Rosalind's exquisite ease and enchanting vitality can by any means be taken from the character, it would be by assimilating her to a mediæval missal. Happily in the last revival of As You Like It,' however unkindly some of the characters were treated, Rosalind herself was not sacrificed to the modern passion for quaintness; but next time it may not be so, and we may have Shakespeare's most delightful heroine translated into something which in its lovely colours and archaic forms can only be likened to the figures in a painted window.

And what, after all, is the tendency that leads to such an issue? Confessedly the romantic drama, as handled by Shakespeare, is purely ideal; not only is it full of anachronisms, and historical and geographical absurdities, but it is, in a word, independent, as far as may be, of time and space altogether. And it is surely just this far-offness that is one of its greatest charms. But this, as it seems, we of to-day may not realise; we cannot apparently conceive of a poet writing except with his ear attuned to Science's last word;

and we are to suppose, according to the theory we are now examining, that Shakespeare, while writing his most fairy-like conceptions, must needs have had a definite period and a definite country in his mind. We are to take an infinite amount of pains to discover what these were, till at last it is demonstrated amid general satisfaction, that the story would be perhaps least impossible if it were assigned to some particular date which one or two mere chance allusions seem in our judgment to point to. That fixed, the drama must be presented as though it were of the stamp of Queen Mary' or 'Philip van Artevelde.' The exquisite imaginations of the poet are turned into common mortals eating of the fruits of earth, more quaint and pictur

6

esque indeed, but scarcely less substantial than the men and women we pass in the street to-day. And what in the name of mischief has quaintness and picturesqueness to do with it? For our own part, we doubt if any of Shakespeare's characters are, strictly speaking, to be called quaint, unless it be his fools; and from the dramatic point of view it is of no consequence how picturesque and even how beautiful we make our stage, if we have gone the wrong way about to carry out the poet's intentions.

For the matter of that, if we make of Miranda and Imogen women who actually lived at some definite period with which historians have made us familiar, it matters not at all, from the dramatic point of view, whether that period is the fifteenth or the nineteenth century. Lions in the forest of Arden, and Ariel and the magician's wand, we feel to be as impossible in 1486 as in 1886; and the only thing to be said for the one date more than for the other is that the costume of the earlier century does not, as far as most of us are concerned, point irresistibly to one special historical period, while the full-bottomed wig, or the frock-coat and silk hat, do.

To be sure, in some of Shakespeare's romantic dramas, especially those which are founded on Italian novels, strong local colouring is absolutely indispensable; but then it is the local colouring which he himself has suggested, and not that which a later generation foists on him. Thus it is impossible, to our mind, to trace in

The Merchant of Venice' any feeling whatever for the peculiar fascination of the famous Republic; indeed, one would be distrustful of evidence that enthusiastic critics could produce of such a feeling in a man, who, as far as we know, gained all his experience of foreign climes from English translations and adaptations. To make The Merchant of Venice' a picture of the city's ancient splen