I

The move towards a carefully constructed idea of historical authenticity in Shakespeare production came about through the work of several individuals in separate or related fields, growing towards the complex stagings of the second part of the nineteenth century and their multiple effects on the plays’ temporal identities. It is no simple chronological growth, and involves the intersections of all of the disciplines discussed in the preceding chapter. Staging itself, and its effects on the plays’ historicism and their rhythms in performance, is radically transformed by Charles Kean, albeit resting in some ways on the work of his predecessors. This will be the subject of Chapter 4. Fully to be understood, however, it must be seen within three related yet overlapping fields: the design of costume, early Victorian illustrated editions of the plays, and paintings from the same period. These forms, their intersections, and their implications for later forms of Shakespearean visualisation are the subject of the present chapter.

The conventional view of the historical revival centres on the young James Robinson Planché who, astonished at the vagaries of costume design in the two patent theatres, worked with Macready on his production of King John that opened in November 1823, published illustrated books on the design of costumes for Shakespeare's plays, and thus began a revolutionary move towards authenticity. This is true in part, and perhaps resulted in part from Planché's own account of the events, asserting ‘That I was the original cause of this movement is certain’, an achievement secured ‘without fee or reward, and in defiance of every obstacle that could be thrown in my path by rooted prejudice and hostile interest’. Despite this display of modesty, Planché is not telling the whole story. Christopher Baugh has recently established that the drive towards authenticity began much earlier, in a series of articles in The Gentleman's Magazine from 1800 to 1801. These argue in favour of authentic costuming as ‘the faithful mirror of past times’ that will offer ‘a captivating source of information and instruction to the patriot, the historian and the artist’.