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Notwithstanding Sir Henry's assurance that a few forsaken cloaks alone perished with the wood and straw, it appears, from "A Sonett upon the pitiful burning of the Globe Playhouse in London,' "* that great part, if not the whole, of the wardrobe was consumed; for says the Son

neteer

"The perrywigs and drum-heads frye
Like to a butter firkin; †

A woeful burning did betide

To many a good buffe jerkin."

John Chamberlain, writing to Sir Dudley Carleton on the 15th of December 1621, mentions the other catastrophe in the following terms; "On Sunday night here was a great fire at the Fortune in Golding-lane, the first playhouse in this town. It was quite burnt down in two hours, and all their apparel and play-books lost, whereby those poor companions are quite undone."‡

The puritanical spirit, which began to manifest itself during the troublous times of Charles the First, interfered considerably with dramatic entertainments; but we can scarcely be surprised if less severe thinkers than "Mr. Comissary General" had been scandalized by the performance of the "Midsummer Night's Dream” in a bishop's house, by order of the right reverend prelate, and "for the amusement of himself and divers knights and ladyes, upon the 27th of September (1631), being Sabbath day; the play beginning about ten at night, and ending about two or three in the morning." Mr. Collier thinks

* Vide Gentleman's Magazine, lxxxvi. p. 114, and Collier, vol. i. p. 387.

This sonneteer was not half so pathetic and so grandiloquent on the destruction of theatrical wigs, as was the penny-a-line man of one of our papers, who in describing the burning down of one of our London theatres (we believe it was the "Royalty,") turned a long sentence by saying," and the finest collection of tragic wigs in the universe fell a prey to the devouring element."

309.

Dr. Birch's MSS. Brit. Mus. No. 4173, Collier, vol. iii p,

§ Collier, vol. ii. p. 34.

VOL. I.

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the present manager of our principal theatre, (Mr. Garrick, who entered on the management of Drury Lane in 1747,) is that of the dresses, which are no longer the heterogeneous and absurd mixtures of foreign and ancient modes which formerly debased our tragedies, by representing a Roman general in a full-bottomed peruke and the sovereign of an Eastern empire in trunk-hose." Now, to say nothing of the fact that the very absurdities specified were then, and continued to be so for some years afterwards, in existence, let us for Heaven's sake look at the specimens he gives us of the elegant and characteristic costumes introduced by the genius and judgment of Garrick Perdita in "The Winter's Tale," in a long

macher, and a hoop festooned with flowers; and Comus,

in a stiff-skirted coat, over which is worn what he calls "a robe of pink sattin, puft with silver gauze, fastened over the shoulder with a black velvet sash, adorned with jewels. The jacket," as he calls the coat aforesaid, "is of white curtained sattin. The collar is black velvet, set with jewels, and the boots are blue sattin!" But the figure should be seen to be appreciated. Here it is! Fancy an actor now walking on the stage in such a dress for Comus!

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Behold also the dress of Zara in the "Mourning Bride," from the same collection!

A pamphlet, entitled "The Dramatic Execution of Agis," published on the production of Mr. Home's tragedy of that name in 1758, contains a severe attack on Garrick for "disguising himself (a Grecian chief) in the dress of a modern Venetian gondolier;" and ridicules his having introduced "a popish procession made up of white friars, with some other moveables, like a bishop, des enfans de chœur, nuns, &c." into a play, the scene of which lies in ancient Sparta! So much for the judgment and taste of Garrick in dramatic costume.

Shortly after this period, it began to be the custom on the revival of old plays to advertise in the bills that the characters would be dressed "in the habits of the times." A friend informs us that he remembers such notices as

;

early as 1762, the year of his first coming to London but the earliest we have ourselves been able to meet with is dated Nov. 8th, 1775, on the occasion of the revival of a play called "Old City Manners;" and a similar advertisement occurs early in 1776, on the revival of Ben Jonson's "Epicene, or the silent Woman," when Mrs. Siddons supported the principal character. Henderson, the immediate successor of Garrick, instead of improving the taste of his brethren in this particular, set them the most wretched example in his own person. "He paid not," says Mr. Boaden,*"the slightest attention to costume, and was indifferent even as to the neatness of his dress. He never looked even to the linings of the suits he wore, and once boasted that he had played, I think, ten characters consecutively in the same coat.' Macklin's costume in Shylock has been preserved to us by the pencil of Zoffany. A large unfinished picture by that artist, of the trial-scene in the "Merchant of Venice," now in the possession of Mr. Dominic Colnaghi of Pall-Mall East, presents us with Macklin in a dress not very dissimilar in general appearance to that worn by the actors of Shylock at the present day; but Antonio is in a full court suit of black, and the senators in scarlet gowns, with large powdered wigs; which latter, though certainly worn by Venetian senators in the eighteenth century, were as certainly unknown to them in 1594, when the play was written, and to which period the language and manners are alone appropriate.

Mr. John Kemble, the first real reformer of stage costume, was introduced to the London public in the character of Hamlet. But he then played the part, says his biographer, "in a modern court-dress of rich black velvet, with a star on the breast, the garter and pendent riband of an order, mourning sword and buckles, with deep ruffles; the hair in powder, which, in the scenes of feigned distraction, flowed dishevelled in front, and over the shoulders." His classical taste, however, soon led

In his "Life of Kemble."

+"Life of Kemble."

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