,
At Quin's high plume, or Oldfield's petticoat.

Hamlet speaks of a "forest of feathers" as part of an actor's
professional qualification. Addison, writing in "The Spectator" on the
methods of aggrandising the persons in tragedy, denounces as
ridiculous the endeavour to raise terror and pity in the audience by
the dresses and decorations of the stage, and takes particular
exception to the plumes of feathers worn by the conventional hero of
tragedy, rising "so very high, that there is often a greater length
from his chin to the top of his head than to the sole of his foot. One
would believe that we thought a great man and a tall man the same
thing." Then he describes the embarrassment of the actor, forced to
hold his neck extremely stiff and steady all the time he speaks, when,
"notwithstanding any anxieties which he pretends for his mistress, his
country, or his friends, one may see by his action that his greatest
care and concern is to keep the plume of feathers from falling off his
head." The hero's "superfluous ornaments" having been discussed, the
means by which the heroine is invested with grandeur are next
considered: "The broad sweeping train that follows her in all her
motions, finds constant employment for a boy who stands behind her, to
open and spread it to advantage. I do not know how others are affected
at this sight, but I must confess my eyes are wholly taken up with the
page's part; and as for the queen, I am not so attentive to anything
she speaks, as to the right adjusting of her train, lest it should
chance to trip up her heels, or incommode her as she walks to and fro
upon the stage. It is, in my opinion, a very odd spectacle to see a
queen venting her passion in a disordered motion, and a little boy
taking care all the while that they do not ruffle the tail of her
gown. The parts that the two persons act on the stage at the same time
are very different; the princess is afraid that she should incur the
displeasure of the king, her father, or lose the hero, her lover,
whilst her attendant is only concerned lest she should entangle her
feet in her petticoat." In the same way Tate Wilkinson, writing in
1790 of the customs of the stage, as he had known it forty years
before, describes the ladies as wearing large hoops and velvet
petticoats, heavily embossed and extremely inconvenient and
troublesome, with "always a page behind to hear the lovers' secrets,
and keep the train in graceful decorum. If