Hans Makart

In the procession of Dionysus, out of which grew the Greek drama, the god was represented with long hair and beard, two small horns projecting from his forehead, while the reeling Bacchantes appeared with faces smeared with wine dregs or mulberry juice. Some of the followers in the train portrayed dead souls clad in shrouds with their faces covered in white lead.

Development.—For the miracle plays of the 14th century and onward actors made up with startling realism for animals, devils, saints and angels. Much ingenuity in facial disguise was used in a mediaeval play called The Acts of the Apostles, wherein the spectators saw the eyes of St. Matthew drawn out of his head and Simon Magus change his face several times. In an early English Passion play, Christ and the Apostles wore gilt wigs and the evil spirits appeared with bodies painted a reptile-like green, sd Ihyoena Bien n m iAlinvgise the other terrible. In a modern production of an old secular play, Noah's Flood, at the New Theatre, New York, God was supplied with a gilded face.

A

favourite farce actor in Paris during the reign of Henry IV. was known as Gros Guillaume. His face make-up consisted of a thick coating of flour which, at comic moments, he sent flying into the eyes of his fellow actors by puffing out his fat cheeks; on his chin he wore a piece of white lamb's skin, representing a beard. The popular Commedia dell' Arte (q.v.) of the Italian theatre of the i6th and 17th centuries was performed by actors masked always in the typical grotesquerie of Pierrot, Harlequin, Pantaloon, Scaramouche, Capitano, etc. The white face of the modern circus clown is a direct inheritance from the Pierrot, who in the 18th century discarded the mask and powdered his face with flour. The Italian Pulcinello and the French Polichinelle were represented as deformed old men with white hair and moustaches and huge hooked red noses.

The English stage of Elizabeth did away with the mask as a means of facial make-up. Instead of the set expressions of the disguised Harlequins and Pantaloons, actors were seen as human beings with their natural faces or appropriately painted, bearded and wigged as the character called for. Cosmetics were applied

simply and obviously as there was no artificial lighting to soften disguise deficiencies. The theatre of Moliere encountered few make-up difficulties. The customary long ringlets of the Court were worn whatever the period of the play, whether Roman or Contemporary and the only beard necessary was the partly shaved moustache of the prevailing mode.

The ignoring of archaeological verity in make-up was charac teristic of the English stage until after the time of David Garrick who, for nearly every character, wore the white court wig of George III. and as Romeo appeared as a British gentleman of his day. The art of make-up was but little studied before the beginning of the 19th century. Costume was clumsy and in correct, wigs and beards for character parts of crude material and the faces of old men, villains and clowns inartistically painted. The early method of acting Shylock was as a comedy part that roused audiences to laughter. Doggett, a celebrated Shylock, wore a ridiculous red wig and beard for the part. The first actor to redeem the character from buffoonery was Macklin, who pre sented him sinister and black-bearded. Since Macklin, actors have varied the aspect of Shylock according to their fancy. A well remembered portrait was that of Henry Irving whose Jew was the picture of an elderly aristocrat.

The stage lighting of the period was dim and ineffectual, first by candles, later by smoking oil lamps, and in its twilight crudity passed unnoticed. As illuminating gas and calcium lights were introduced the necessity arose for greater circumspection in ap pearance. Make-up material, however, was still somewhat ele mental and natural appearing heads and complexions a rarity. The electrical lighting in theatres today would make sorry work of some of these old stagers. Wigs were constructed of any workable material resembling human hair, sheep and goat fleeces, yak and horse hair. Sometimes for rough and tousled heads jute was used. Human hair, nevertheless, was employed when avail able and gradually superseded the coarser material. Llama hair is often used in white wigs.