THE BLACK-A-VISED STAGE VILLAIN
By W. J. LAWRENCE IT is more than passing strange that no one has hitherto remarked that a story told of Old Rowley in Colley Cibber's classic autobiography on the authority of Thomas Betterton, the famous actor, throws a revealing flashlight on the origin of a curious old stage convention, some relics of which subsisted until a time well within living memory. Once, when present at the Duke's Theatre at a performance— Of Macbeth, the swarthy king turned to one of the courtiers seated with him in his box just as the scene between Macbeth and the Two Murderers had ended, and playfully asked, " Pray, what is the meaning that we never sec a rogue in a play, but Godsfish ! they always clap him on a black periwig —when it is well known one of the greatest rogues in England always wears a fair one ? " Unfortunately, historians have been too much exercised in mind over the identity of the rogue in question—whether my lord Shaftesbury or another—to note the implications of Old Rowley's remark. A little reflection must convince anybody of understanding that the custom referred to cannot possibly have been of recent origin, else the Merry Monarch, easy-going and all as he was, would hardly have spoken of it so good-humouredly. Nothing but the authority of a long-established stage convention could have justified or condoned such a practice in the days when the restored Stuart matched his swarthiness with the blackest of perukes, and was moreover an assiduous playgoer.
There arc cogent reasons for believing that this pre- tended characteristic of unmitigated scoundrelism dated from Shakespeare's day. If gentlemen even then pre- ferred blondes, they had no monopoly of the preference. An old dislike to dark-haired people was still persisting. As Shakespeare said in. the Sonnets :
" In the old ago black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name."
Love compelling him to run counter to the taste of the times, Biron maintained of Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost : " 0, if in black my lady's brows bo deck'd, It mourns that painting and usurping hair Should ravish doter,, with a false aspect ; • And therefore is she born to make black fair.' The bestowal of a black wig and a dark aspect upon the stage villain was a concession to the prejudices and prepossessions of the times. The Elizabethans liked to have the characters in a play well and truly labelled. 'Stage villains were expected soon to show their hands : the vogue of soliloquy enabled them safely to reveal their inner thoughts. Attire was distinguishing and 'often symbolic. Kings' seldom appeared without their crowns, and the King in the dumb show in Hamlet actually lay down and went to sleep in his. Hence the prime utility of the coal-black wig. Once a player emerged wearing it, the spectator was assured that nefariousness was in the. air, and about to get to work. It takes all sorts to make an audience, and things were thus made easy for the obtuse.
All this has something more than mere likelihood to recommend it. -One- can advance a modicum of support- ing evidence. To prevent the theory being condemned to go by the board, Tom Killigrew comes nobly to the rescue. Fated as patentee of the King's Theatre to play a prominent part in the story of the Restoration drama, Killigrew had early dramatic aspirations, and wrote two plays which were produced at.the Cockpit in later Caroline days. Too uncompromising a royalist to find things comfortable in England during the interregnum, he spent some years agreeably in Italy. In 1650, and the following year, while sojourning in Turin and Florence, he employed his leisure in writing a tragi-comedy in two parts called Cicilia and Clorinda, which never had the good fortune to be acted, but got into print in 1663. Concerning the costume of the villain of the piece one reads in the book, " Orante is cloathed in black, with black feathers, black perriwig, his person crooked and ugly, with a dagger by his side."
On the whole, then, there are sound er.ough reasons for believing that the stage convention against which the king so quaintly protested had- originated long before his reign, and it is certain that it persisted long after. One recalls how, in 1709, at a 'time when much internal com- motion was taking place at Drury Lane, Steele announced in The Tatler a pretended sale of the theatre's effects, of which he gave a humorous list including " the Com- plexion of a Murderer in a Bandbox ; consisting of a large Piece of burnt Cork, and a Coal-black Peruke." Time passes, but the story remains the same. In his poeni of " The 'Act& " written in 1762, Robert Lloyd inveighs against the monotonous stability of theatrical costume :
" To suit thg dreSs demands the actor's art, Yet some there are who overdress the part. To some prescriptive right gives settled things— Black wigs to murderers, feathered hate to kings. Yet Michael Cassio might be drunk enough, Though all his features were not grimed m snuff. Why shoirld Poll Peachum shine in satin clothes ? Why every devil dance in scarlet hose " .
Garrick had thoughts of reforming all this, but he con- fessed that he dreaded the resulting protests of the un- thinking in the galleries, more particularly as such pro- tests generally took the form of bottles and rotten apples. So progress was slow. Garrick's sometime associate, Tom Davies the bookseller, writing in his Dramatic Miscellanies, in 1788, takes occasion to put an unaccept- able gloss upon Hamlet's outburst, " Begin, murderer, leave thy damnable faces, and begin." In his view : " This contains a censure upon the custom of certain actors, who were cast into the parts of conspirators, traitors and mur- derers, who used to disguise themselves in very black wigs ; and distort their features, in order to appear terrible ; in short, to discover that which art should teach them to conceal. I have seen Hippisley act the first Murderer in Macbeth : his face was made pale with chalk, ,distinguished with large whiskers, and a long black wig. This custom of dressing so preposterously the hateful implements of the tragic scene, is now almost worn out."
It would be making a grave mistake to conclude from this that the black-a-vised stage villain . was about to receive his quietus. Neither Davies nor any other person of his time could have foreseen the imminent rise of melodrama, that new dramatic delight which was either to prolong the existence of, or resuscitate (one hardly knows which) the hoary convention. Beginning in an atmosphere of rich romanticism and ending in one of lurid realism, melodrama, throughout all its vicissitudes, hugged the black-browed villain to its heart. Vainly did a stray iconoclast rebel. With some vividness I recall that some forty-odd years ago there was a fertile-minded actor- author touring the provinces with his own well-knit melo- dramas, one F. A. Scudamore by name, who conceived the idea that the public had wearied of dark-complexioned mis- creants and wrote a piece in which the .bright particular villain was flaxen-haired. But the novelty, so far from affording any intellectual refreshment, was viewed as an outrage on the law and the prophets. For some remaining years the villain still pursued her, but it was the black-a- vised villain of old.
Previous page
