Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

his own particular ‘fairy system’ and the speech should be perfectly clear. 37 ‘It is simply the
language of a fairy speaking of men.’ 38 It is a sentence that gives the reader pause. For a
moment Douce himself seems to have entered a wood near Athens. The anonymous critic who
complained, about a decade later, of the influence of antiquarianism on Shakespearean
productions seems not far off the mark in predicting that at this rate there would soon be
‘legitimate authority produced for the dressing of Puck and authenticated wings allotted to
Mustardseed’. 39
Much of Douce’s discussion of the plays takes this general form of a dialogue, sometimes
courteous, sometimes querulous, with his fellow antiquaries. It ranges well beyond those who
interested themselves specifically in Shakespeare. Thus on the meaning of ‘wassel’ in Hamlet,
Act I sc iv, Douce cites Milner’s article in Archaeologia of 1794, ‘Observations on an antient
cup formerly belonging to the Abbey of Glastonbury’ as an instance of the sort of Saxon vessel
that would have been used. 40 The impression overall is of the whole body of antiquarian
knowledge being brought to bear on Shakespeare as the fittest subject for it, being not more
obscure than other writers, but ‘much better worth illustrating’. 41 As the book goes on, however,
and Douce moves beyond the individual plays to more general discussions his attitude changes.
The article that prefaces the dissertations is ‘On the anachronisms and some other
incongruities of Shakspeare’. Here Douce the antiquary finds himself at odds with Douce the
admirer of Shakespeare. In his former character he must of course condemn all ‘transgressions
against the rules of chronology’. 42 Like many of his contemporaries he was increasingly critical
of Georgian stagings of the plays which took no account of historical dress. Garrick, for all his
genius as an actor, played Macbeth ‘in a scarlet coat with broad gold lace like the uniform of a
modern general’ while James Quin as Othello wore ‘a flowing powdered periwig’. 43 Such
‘absurdity … or distortion of reality’ was a ‘disgrace’ to the stage and to an age that aspired to
37
Douce Illustrations of Shakspeare 1, p. 185.
38
Douce Illustrations of Shakspeare 1, p. 185.
39
Quoted in Rosenfeld, ‘The Grieves’, p.109, from an unidentified cutting of a theatre review in the Enthoven
Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
40
Douce Illustrations of Shakspeare, 2, p.209.
41
Douce Illustrations of Shakspeare, 1, p. xi.
42
Douce Illustrations of Shakspeare, 2, p. 281.
43
Douce Illustrations of Shakspeare, 2, pp. 282-3.
239