Even as late as 1842 a writer in a critical journal, reviewing a performance of “She Stoops to Conquer” at the Haymarket Theatre, reminds the representatives of Young Marlow and Hastings that the costumes they wear being “of the year 1842 accord but ill with those of 1772, assumed by the other characters.”  “The effect of the scene is marred by it,” writes the critic.  And ten years before Leigh Hunt had admitted into the columns of his Tatler many letters dwelling upon the defects of stage costume in regard to incongruousness and general lack of accuracy.  One correspondent complains of a performance of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” at Covent Garden, in which Bartley had played Falstaff “in a dress belonging to the age of the first Charles;” Caius had appeared as “a doctor of the reign of William and Mary, with a flowing periwig, cocked hat, large cuffs, and ruffles;” while John Rugby’s costume was that “of a countryman servant of the present day.”  Another remonstrant describes Kean as dressing Othello “more in the garb of an Albanian Greek than a Moor; Richard goes through the battle without armour, while Richmond is armed cap-a-pie; and Young plays Macbeth in a green and gilded velvet jacket, and carries a shield until he begins to fight, and then throws it away.”  A third correspondent draws attention to “The School for Scandal” and Mr. Farren’s performance of Sir Peter Teazle in a costume appropriate to the date of the comedy, the other players wearing dresses of the newest vogue.  “Even Sir Oliver,” it is added, “appeared in a fashionable modern drab greatcoat.”  In a note Leigh Hunt records his opinion that Mr. Farren was right, and that it was “the business of all the other performers to dress up to his costume, not for him to wrong himself into theirs,” and adds, “there is one way of settling the matter which puts an end to all questions except that of immediate convenience and economy; and this is to do as the French do, who rigidly adhere to the costume of the period in which the scene is supposed to take place.  Something of immediate sympathy is lost, perhaps, by this system, for we can hardly admire a young beauty so much in the dress of our grandmothers as in such as we see our own charmers in; but this defect is compensated by a sense of truth and propriety, by the very quaintness and novelty of the ancient aspect, and even by the information it conveys to us.”

The condition of the Parisian stage in regard to its improved and splendid scenery, decorations, and accessories owed much to the special intervention and patronage of Louis XIV.  Sir Walter Scott ascribes to Voltaire “the sole merit of introducing natural and correct costumes.  Before his time the actors, whether Romans or Scythians, appeared in the full dress of the French court; and Augustus himself was represented in a huge full-bottomed wig surmounted by a crown of laurel.”  Marmontel, however, claims to have had some share in this innovation, and also in