Or when from Court a birthday suit bestowed,
    Sinks the lost actor in the tawdry load.

Indeed, to some of the clothes worn by actors a complete history is attached.  The wardrobe of Munden, the comedian, contained a black Genoa velvet coat, which had once belonged to King George II.; while another coat boasted also a distinguished pedigree, and could be traced to Francis, Duke of Bedford, who had worn it on the occasion of the Prince of Wales’s marriage.  It had originally cost L1000!  But then it had been fringed with precious stones, of which the sockets only remained when it fell into the hands of the dealers in second-hand garments; but, even in its dilapidated state, Munden had given L40 for it.  Usually, however, fine clothes, such as “birthday suits,” became the property rather of the tragedians than the comedians.  Cibber describes the division on the subject of dress, existing in the “Commonwealth” company, of which he formed a member, in 1696.  “The tragedians,” he writes, “seemed to think their rank as much above the comedians as the characters they severally acted; when the first were in their finery, the latter were impatient at the expense, and looked upon it as rather laid out upon the real than the fictitious person of the actor.  Nay, I have known in our company this ridiculous sort of regret carried so far that the tragedian has thought himself injured when the comedian pretended to wear a fine coat.”  Powel, the tragedian, surveying the dress worn by Cibber as Lord Foppington, fairly lost his temper, and complained, in rude terms, that he had not so good a suit in which to play Caesar Borgia.  Then, again, when Betterton proposed to “mount” a tragedy, the comic actors were sure to murmur at the cost of it.  Dogget especially regarded with impatience “the costly trains and plumes of tragedy, in which, knowing himself to be useless, he thought they were all a vain extravagance.”  Tragedy, however, was certainly an expensive entertainment at this time.  Dryden’s “All for Love” had been revived at a cost of nearly L600 for dresses—­“a sum unheard of for many years before on a like occasion.”  It was, by-the-way, the production of this tragedy, in preference to his “adaptation” of Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus,” that so bitterly angered Dennis, the critic, and brought about his fierce enmity to Cibber.

To the hero of tragedy a feathered headdress was indispensable; the heroine demanded a long train borne by one or two pages.  Pope writes: 

    Loud as the wolves on Orca’s stormy steep
    Howl to the roarings of the northern deep,
    Such is the shout, the long-applauded note,
    At Quin’s high plume, or Oldfield’s petticoat.