Proofed and corrected from the original edition for enjoyable reading. (Worth every penny spent!)
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Oscar Wilde in "Shakespeare and Stage Costume" has shown that Shakespeare was willing to use the tricks of costume, the appeals of display, whenever possible. The boy and girl disguises, Malvolio cross-gartered, Macbeth and his wife in their night gowns, the rags of Timon, the black of Hamlet, the armies of the Chronicles,—these revealed the dramatist's willingness not only to use effects for spectacle, but to use them dramatically. He had no desire to depend upon poetic description where the suggestion of sight was more immediate. And what is true of costumes is true of movable properties.
It was not by a purposed denuding of accessories or a conscious crudeness of handling that the Elizabethan producer worked. He was wise enough to distinguish between the kinds of effects which could be secured by sight and those other effects that lie only in the "mind's eye". In this he was somewhat aided by the accidents of the stage structure of the time, but these were not altogether responsible. Shakespeare had at any time he desired it ready to hand the ornate structure of the masque. He did not use this because he found his own stage more flexible and useful in serving the larger purposes of his craft.
