Prefaces to Shakespeare

# The Illustrations

In Volume I the first sixteen pages of plates provided a pictorial commentary for each of the plays comprised in Granville-Barker’s Introduction. In this volume the first eight pages of plates provide an account of classical staging in the Renaissance imagination, as thus Barker believed, through the Roman plays were dressed in Shakespearean theatre; and in the Preface to Antony and Cleopatra he remarks that players may not have been able to indulge in equal splendour, we are at least able to suggest here what designs for the Court Masks’ (p. 48). It will be observed that behind it is long theatrical tradition, which, as these and it illustrations show, was not shown in records of archaeology and accuracy until the nineteenth century. Barker discusses the subject in his Introduction (Vol. I, PP. 20-221, in the Julius Caesar Preface (pp. 47-50). After reaching these problems the student should press beyond the limitations of Ernest Stern’s costume designs for Julius Caesar explained in The Players’ Shakespeare are included, as I cannot think the resemblance between Barker’s ideas and Stern’s drawings can be fortuitous.