COSTUME (Ital. costume; Fr. coustume, costume, from Lat. consuetudo, use and wont) is another form of the word custom, and, in its wider sense, signifies the external appearance which the life of a people presents at a particular epoch of its history. In its narrower and more usual sense, C. signified the customary modes of clothing and adorning the person, in any particular age or country. In this sense, it includes the prevailing fashion in jewelry, weapons, and other personal equipments. In both senses, C. plays an important part in art. The poet, more especially the narrative or epic poet, is compelled to resort to it a means of carrying his reader back into the age which he describes. Homer has it constantly in view in narrating the exploits of his heroes. Amongst modern romance writers, sir Walter Scott has introduced the fashion of perhaps an excessive attention to mere external costume. But it is in art as presented to the eye, that C. becomes indispensable, and the loose and general treat ment of it which is permitted to the novelist or the poet, is forbidden to the painter, the sculptor, and the player. How sorely the sculptor has been tried by the wings and breeches of former generations, and by the trousers, straps, hats, and other monstrosities of our own, no one who has seen a statue of Frederick the great, or of the late sir Robert Peel, can require to be told. Two means, not of solving but of escaping from the difficulty, have been largely resorted to: the one consists in departing from the modern dress altogether, and reverting to the ancient toga; the other, in wrapping up the figure, as far as possible, in a cloak. The first of these devices is neither more nor less than a deliberate violation of what artists regard as the laws of C., by which they conceive themselves bound to represent every object with its appropriate accessories; the second, besides being very often open in a lesser degree to the same objection, has the further disadvantage of accomplishing its object very imperfectly. The wisest course for the artist is boldly to face the difficulty. That he may do so successfully, many of the works of Rauch, Tieck, Thorwaldsen, Schadow, and others abundantly testify. In the earlier stages of art, an excessive attention to C. may generally be remarked, which though useless, and sometimes hurtful to artistic effect, has proved of the greatest value for historical purposes. The tendency of the earlier schools of art to exhibit C. with an almost painful accuracy and minuteness, is exhibited in the works of the older masters, both of the Italian and German schools. Even during the period of the highest bloom of Italian art, the mediaeval custom of representing historical, sacred, and ideal characters in the C. peculiar to the time and country of the artist, was in a
great measure adhered to. From Paul Veronese, Tintoretto, and others, we may learn the aspect which a marriage-feast in the palace of a Venetian or Florentine grandee presented, but can form little conception of the C. of that simpler festivity in Cana of Galilee, or of that supper still less sensuous in Jerusalem, which they profess to repre sent. In the hands of the greater masters, these scenes assume an ideal character; and in the works of Michael Angelo, Leonardo, and Raphael, C., though still exhibiting something of a native trace, rises into the highest regions of poetical conception. The effort to avoid anachronisms by a previous historical and antiquarian study of the sub jeer, belongs, indeed, almost entirely to the modern European schools of art, and many painters of late have devoted themselves to it to such an extent as almost to forget that it is a means, and not an end, except, indeed, to a mere painter of clothes.
i But it is in theatrical representations that attention to C., particularly in its narrower sense, becomes most imperative. When the stage, in western Europe, commenced in the religious mysteries of the middle ages, the dress adopted was that which belonged to the time and the country. To this dress some fantastical objectWas generally added to indicate the character intended to be personated. In this position matters remained during the time of Shakespeare in England. of Lope de Vega and Calderon in Spain, and even of Corneille, Racine, and Molicre in France. Whether a Greek, a Roman, an Assyrian, or a Turk, was represented, the ordinary court-dress of the tune was adhered to, and the turban, the helmet, or the laurel-crown was placed on the top of the peruke or the powdered hair. In like manner, shepherdesses and peasant-girls had their hair dressed in turrets like feudal keeps, and long white kid gloveswhich covered their hands and arms to the elbow. Towards the middle of the 18th c.,, a reform was intro duced by the famous actress Clairol', who acted Electra without hair-powder; but Talma was the first who introduced a C. really true to history. Garrick followed in the foot steps of the great Frenchman, though both he and Siddons, during their earlier period, personated the characters of Shakespeare in what has been called the rococo C.—knee breeches and periwigs. Schlegel's Hermann, and Goethe's Gotz von Berhehingen, were the first plays which were given in Germany with historical costume.