Yet, when has the theatre been thus ordered, or have audiences been so
disciplined? Beaumont, probably, had good reason for writing to
Fletcher, concerning a performance of his "Faithful Shepherdess"--
Nor want they those who as the boy doth dance
Between the acts, will censure the whole play;
Some like if the wax lights be new that day;
But multitudes there are whose judgment goes
Headlong according to the actors' clothes.
The playgoers of Garrick's time, and long afterwards, were habituated
to the defective system of theatrical costume--had grown up with it.
To them it was part of the stage as they had always known it, and they
saw no reason for fault-finding. And it is conceivable that many plays
were little affected by the circumstance that the actors wore court
suits. It was but a shifting of the period of the story represented, a
change of venue; and Romeo, in hair-powder, interested just as much as
though he had assumed an auburn wig. The characters were, doubtless,
very well played, and the actors appeared, at any rate, as "persons of
quality.
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