The speaking of trains and pages suggests the fact that in old times the heroes and heroines of tragedy always wore, either in peculiarity of dress or pomp of surroundings, the badge of greatness.  Nowadays a few bars of romantic music, to usher these characters on the stage, will suffice.  But things were different then; our ancestors insisted that the aforesaid dramatis personnae should be labelled, frilled and furbelowed.

Addison has an interesting essay on the subject.[A]

[Footnote A:  Spectator, No. 42.]

“But among all our tragic artifices,” he says, “I am the most offended at those which are made use of to inspire us with magnificent ideas of the persons that speak.  The ordinary method of making an hero, is to clap a huge plume of feathers upon his head which rises so very high, that there is often a greater length from his chin to the top of his head than to the sole of his foot.  One would believe that we thought a great man and a tall man the same thing.  This very much embarrasses the actor, who is forced to hold his neck extremely stiff and steady all the while he speaks; and notwithstanding any anxieties which he pretends for his mistress, his country, or his friends, one may see by his action, that his greatest care and concern is to keep the plume of feathers from falling off his head.  For my own part, when I see a man uttering his complaints under such a mountain of feathers, I am apt to look upon him rather as an unfortunate lunatic, than a distressed hero.

“As these superfluous ornaments upon the head make a great man, a princess generally receives her grandeur from those additional encumbrances that fall into her tail; I mean the broad sweeping train that follows her in all her motions, and finds constant employment for a boy who stands behind her to open and spread it to advantage.  I do not know how others are affected at this sight, but I must confess my eyes are wholly taken up with the page’s part; and, as for the queen, I am not so attentive to any thing she speaks, as to the right adjusting of her train, lest it should chance to trip up her heels, or incommode her, as she walks to and fro upon the stage.  It is, in my opinion, a very odd spectacle to see a queen venting her passion in a disordered motion, and a little boy taking care all the while that they do not ruffle the tail of her gown.  The parts that the two persons act on the stage at the same time are very different.  The princess is afraid lest she should incur the displeasure of the king her father, or lose the hero, her lover, whilst her attendant is only concerned lest she should entangle her feet in her petticoat.”