Christa Giles

54
The bifurcation between the interior and exterior,
the man and the mask, was crystallised in one of the most
popular figures of the period: Pierrot. In Walter Pater’s ˝A
Prince of Court Painters,˝ Pater claims Watteau’s creatures
have put on motley for once and are able to
throw a world of serious innuendo into their
burlesque looks with a sort of comedy which
shall be but tragedy seen from the other
side. 151
The idea of the mysterious sad clown whose external gaiety
hides his melancholy was one which efficaciously
encapsulated many thematic preoccupations of the time.
˝The mask,˝ according to Wilde, is to ˝hide seriousness or to
reveal . . . levity˝ 152 and the figure Pierrot suggests this
connection between superficial frivolity and inner
seriousness to the dandy’s projection of the mask. In A
Woman of No Importance, Lord Illingworth tells Gerald that
in order to be ˝modern,˝ he must make it ˝his ideal˝ to be a
dandy. ˝People nowadays are so absolutely superficial,˝ he
continues, ˝that they don’t understand the philosophy of
the superficial.˝ 153 An obvious extension of this idea is that
˝only shallow people do not judge by appearances.˝ 154 The
profound and the trivial not only coexist–they reveal one
another by a process of dandaical ironic inversions:
Lady Windermere: Lord Darlington is trivial.