" But attempts to be accurate in this way
were only of an intermittent kind; any enduring amendment can hardly
be found until we approach a period that is within the recollection of
living playgoers. Mr. Donne, lately the Examiner of Plays, writes in
one of his essays on the drama: "We have seen 'The Rivals' performed
in a sort of chance-medley costume--a century intervening between the
respective attires of Sir Anthony and Captain Absolute;" and he adds,
"we have seen the same comedy dressed with scrupulous attention to the
date of the wigs and hoops; but we doubt whether in any essential
respect that excellent play was a gainer by the increased care and
expenditure of the manager." Sir Walter Scott had previously written:
"We have seen 'Jane Shore' acted with Richard in the old English
cloak, Lord Hastings in a full court dress, with his white rod like a
Lord Chamberlain of the last reign, and Jane Shore and Alicia in stays
and hoops. We have seen Miss Young act Zara, incased in whalebone, to
an Osman dressed properly enough as a Turk, while Nerestan, a
Christian knight, in the time of the Crusades, strutted in the white
uniform of the old French guards!"
Even as late as 1842 a writer in a critical journal, reviewing a
performance of "She Stoops to Conquer" at the Haymarket Theatre,
reminds the representatives of Young Marlow and Hastings that the
costumes they wear being "of the year 1842 accord but ill with those
of 1772, assumed by the other characters.
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