While in the meantime
two Armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and
then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field!"*
*An Apologie for Poetrie, published 1595.
If the actors of the Elizabethan time had no scenery they made up
for the lack of it by splendid and gorgeous dressing. But it was
the dressing of the day. The play might be supposed to take
place in Greece or Rome or Ancient Britain, it mattered not. The
actors dressed after the fashion of their own day. And neither
actors nor audience saw anything funny in it. To them it was not
funny that an ancient British king should wear doublet and hose,
nor that his soldiers should discharge firearms in a scene
supposed to take place hundreds of years before gunpowder had
been invented. But we must remember that in those days dress
meant much more than it does now. Dress helped to tell the
story. Men then might not dress according to their likes and
dislikes, they were obliged to dress according to their rank.
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