‘Moral grounds…are always the last refuge of people who have no sense of beauty.’

The Truth of Masks was first published in the Fortnightly Review in 1889. It is one of the four essays Wilde chose to revise and publish in the volume titled Intentions in 1891.

The premise

Wilde begins by stating that some contemporary critics have criticised the trend for sumptuous productions of Shakespeare which place a pedantic and ‘archaeological’ emphasis on correctness of costume and dress. Wilde says these critics are completely wrong as:

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.

Far from being dismayed by late-Victorian attempts at authentic historical costume:

A dramatist who laid such stress on historical accuracy of fact would have welcomed historical accuracy of costume as a most important adjunct to his illusionist method.

Clothing in Shakespeare’s plays

Wilde lists the many ways dress and costume are important in Shakespeare’s plays:

• Shakespeare constantly introduces masques and dances for which characters dress up: 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
• Henry VIII features three grand processions with detailed prescriptions for the costumes
• some Elizabethan critics criticised his costumes for being too realistic
• but it wasn’t just for appearance’ sake; Shakespeare knew ‘how important costume is as a means of producing certain dramatic effects’; many dramatic moments hinge on the exact costume a character is wearing
• disguise is a central element of Shakespearian drama; Posthumus, Edgar, Portia, Rosalind, Imogen, Jessica, Julia, Viola, Henry the Eighth, Romeo, Prince Hal, Poins and Falstaff all wear disguises
• he achieves effects through dramatic changes of costume, as when Macbeth appears in his night-gown as if aroused from sleep, Timon ends his play in rags, Richard flatters the London citizens in a suit shabby armour, or when Prospero throws off his enchanter’s robes and changes to the costume of an Italian Duke
• 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 points of dramatic importance
• exchanging or squabbling over clothes, such as a master and servant exchanging coats in front of the audience, shipwrecked sailors squabbling over the division of a lot of fine clothes, a tinker dressed up like a duke while drunk
• big points hinge on tiny elements of dress, such as Desdemona’s handkerchief, Orlando’s blood-stained napkin, Imogen’s bracelet, the ring Duncan sends to Lady Macbeth and Portia’s ring; the climax of Antony’s speech is when he presents Caesar’s blood-stained cloak to the crowd, a great part of King Lear’s dramatic effect is the rags to which the once-great king wanders the heath in a storm
• he gives directions about the costumes of Perdita, Florizel, Autolycus, the witches in Macbeth, the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, elaborate descriptions of his fat knight, and a detailed account of the garb Petruchio is to be married in, the children who play at fairies in Windsor Forest are to be dressed in white and green, with green garlands and gilded vizors, Bottom wears homespun, Lysander is distinguished from Oberon by wearing an Athenian dress, 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 occasions for jest or taunt in the dialogue
• Shakespeare uses the costume of his day in metaphors and as the subject of dialogue: characters frequently discuss the absurdities of contemporary fashion, or analyse what other characters are wearing; or in serious mode, discuss how clothes maketh the man, how clothing denotes very precisely a person’s status in Elizabethan society

To summarise: dress and costume were not trivial details for Shakespeare, who understood that costume is a vital part of drama, that clothes denote people’s status and character, that changing clothes denotes comic or tragic upheaval, that even tiny details of costume (a hankie) can have dramatic consequences.

Wilde can’t resist summing all this up in an alliterative epigram:

Of Shakespeare it may be said he was the first to see the dramatic value of doublets, and that a climax may depend on a crinoline.

Wilde goes on to list the costumes included in an inventory of Shakespeare’s company, an impressive array.

He tackles the anti-historical tendency of the critics of his time, by emphasising that the Elizabethan age was itself deeply fascinated in history and in reviving all aspects of the beauty of the ancient world, its architecture, writing and dress. As soon as he discusses history he lapses into empurpled prose, but his point is that:

Archæology to them was not a mere science for the antiquarian; it was a means by which they could touch the dry dust of antiquity into the very breath and beauty of life, and fill with the new wine of romanticism forms that else had been old and outworn.

(N.B. Wilde uses the word ‘archaeology’ and ‘archaeological’ where we would write ‘historical’ – historical research into ancient costumes etc, and ensuring the look and fabric of costumes was historically correct.)

Bringing history to life

Wilde moves from this general observation to make the point that a key element of Renaissance life was processions, which demonstrated social order and hierarchy and status, which towns and cities took a lot of time and money organising, and which they preserved in prints and paintings. In other words, the clothing and outer appearance of people was immensely important to the Elizabethans. And the stage is by far the most effective way of bringing history to life.

The ancient world wakes from its sleep, and history moves as a pageant before our eyes, without obliging us to have recourse to a dictionary or an encyclopædia for the perfection of our enjoyment.

Thus, paying close attention to the historical accuracy of the costumes actors wear is not a trivial matter of academic pedantry, but vital to giving the drama its full meaning and also the most effective way of bringing historical eras to life in front of us. The historical accuracy is what makes the drama live.

Only the foolish called it pedantry, only those who would neither look nor listen spoke of the passion of the play being killed by its paint.

Not only that, but the Renaissance period saw an outburst of interest in other nations’ costumes and traditions.

Europe began to investigate its own clothes, and the amount of books published on national costumes is quite extraordinary.

It wasn’t only academic. Ambassadors and travellers left an increasing number of accounts not only of key diplomatic decisions, but of the appearance, manners, etiquette and dress of foreign courts and foreign lands.

After the departure from England, for instance, of the ambassadors from the Czar, the Sultan and the Prince of Morocco, Henry the Eighth and his friends gave several masques in the strange attire of their visitors. Later on London saw, perhaps too often, the sombre splendour of the Spanish Court, and to Elizabeth came envoys from all lands, whose dress, Shakespeare tells us, had an important influence on English costume.

We have evidence that Shakespeare used these writings, and his own observations of visiting foreigners, to mimic their clothes and style on the stage.

In addition, societies for the first time became interested in the history of their own dress and costumes.

Historical accuracy

Wilde admits that the plays are full of historical anachronisms, a fact which undermines the general drift of his argument that historical fidelity in dress and accoutrements was important to Shakespeare and his contemporaries – but dismisses it by saying the examples are minor and the Bard would no doubt have corrected them if they’d been pointed out.

(Most modern scholars think that historical accuracy just didn’t matter to Shakespeare and his audiences, and that he was far from being the pedantic purist which Wilde implies. All that mattered for Shakespeare was that it worked on the stage and in that moment; he didn’t care what contradictions later scholars would reveal by close study of the texts. The texts were for him, just scripts, aids for presenting a drama.)

But Wilde goes on at length about the historical accuracy of the plays, suggesting that they make a perfect introduction to the history of the peers of England and that Board School children would learn more history from Shakespeare’s plays than from their dull history books.

But he is careful to hedge his points about Shakespeare’s historical accuracy with one big caveat: the Artist can base his art on facts, but is never bound by them.

Of course the æsthetic value of Shakespeare’s plays does not, in the slightest degree, depend on their facts, but on their Truth, and Truth is independent of facts always, inventing or selecting them at pleasure.

Facts are there to embellish, help bring to life, to create the illusion. But the artist remains free to pick and choose them at will.

Thus he takes the example of the cloak of Coriolanus, mentioned by Plutarch in his biography, which goes into some detail about Coriolanus’s peculiar dress:

Shakespeare, in the spirit of the true artist, accepts the facts of the antiquarian and converts them into dramatic and picturesque effects…it is evident from [this example] that, in mounting a play in the accurate costume of the time, according to the best authorities, we are carrying out Shakespeare’s own wishes and method.

The essay concludes with a long passage about specific colours, how to attain them in England, which colours relate to which character, how they appear by the gaslight of a theatre and so on, which contains no ideas but a lot of suggestive detail about the theatre of Wilde’s day.

He makes the point that there ought to be many more dress rehearsals than there currently are, precisely so the actors can feel as at home in their costumes, know how to move and gesture and express themselves in them, as their characters are meant to. All too often modern actors look embarrassed and puzzled in period costume.

Criticism and attitude

Right at the end he makes a wittily paradoxical point, by saying there is much in the essay we have just read that he himself disagrees with. Worth quoting in full:

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.

That’s a complex interplay of ideas, but I take from it the notion that, since there is no one interpretation of a work of art, or one position regarding art in general – instead, the important thing is at least to adopt a position, an attitude, in order to present a thorough and consistent case, even if you don’t necessarily believe with every element of the case you’ve found yourself making.

I sympathise with that. I often find myself in the same position, arguing points in these blog reviews in order to make them work, while at the same time aware of strong counter-arguments…

Summary

The Truth of Masks is an impressively thorough piece of work. It is remarkably free of the purple prose or swooning over handsome young men you find in other Wilde essays, and instead sticks very much to its subject. It amasses an impressive pile of detailed references to Shakespeare plays, characters and costumes.

And you can see how the whole thesis echoes or reinforces Wilde’s fundamental belief that, in a civilised society, it is the most elaborate and artificial aspects of a culture which are sometimes the deepest and most significant.

A note on race

Maybe worth pointing out that Wilde, like all the other writers of his time, didn’t use the word ‘race’ as we do to denote ethnic groups with an emphasis on skin colour. For him it means something closer to what we’d call ‘nation’ and denotes a national culture. So:

He is even true to the characteristics of race. Hamlet has all the imagination and irresolution of the Northern nations, and the Princess Katharine is as entirely French as the heroine of Divorçons. Harry the Fifth is a pure Englishman, and Othello a true Moor.

Related link

• The Truth Of Masks online

Related reviews

• Oscar Wilde reviews
• Aubrey Beardsley @ Tate Britain
• The Beardsley Generation @ the Heath Robinson Museum