The Emperor's constant change of uniform is often said to be a sign of his liking for the theatrical, and writers have compared him on this account with lightning-change artists like the great Fregoli. Rather his respect for and reliance on the army, a sense of fitness with the occasion to be celebrated, a feeling of personal courtesy to the person to be received, are the motives for such changes. The Paris _Temps_ published the following incident apropos of the Emperor's visit to England in November, 1902. When, on arriving at Port Victoria, the royal yacht _Hohenzollern_ came in view, the members of the English Court sent to welcome the Emperor saw him through their glasses walking up and down the captain's bridge wearing a long cavalry cloak over a German military uniform. When they stepped on board they found him in the undress uniform of an English admiral. They lunched with him, and in the afternoon, when he left for London, he was wearing the uniform of an English colonel of dragoons. Arrived in London, he left for Sandringham, and must have changed his dress _en route_, for he left the train in a frock-coat and tall hat.
Perhaps the most notable theatrical event of the reign hitherto was the production at the Royal Opera in 1908 of the historic pantomime "Sardanapalus." The Emperor's idea, as he said himself, was to "make the Museums speak," to which a Berlin critic replied, "You can't dramatize a museum." The ballet, for it was that as well as a pantomime, engrossed the Emperor's time and attention for several weeks. He spent hours with the great authority on Assyriology, Professor Friedrich Delitzsch, going over reliefs and plans taken from the Kaiser Friedrich Museum or borrowed from museums in Paris, London, and Vienna, decided on the costumes and designed the war-chariots to be used in the ballet. The notion was to rehabilitate the reputation of Asurbanipal, the second-last King of Assyria, whom the Greeks called "Sardanapalus," who reigned in Nineveh six hundred years before Christ, over Ethiopia, Babylon and Egypt, and whom Lord Byron, accepting the Greek story, represented as the most effeminate and debauched monarch the world had ever known.
Professor Delitzsch, with a wealth of recondite learning, showed, on the contrary, that Sardanapalus was a wise and liberal-minded monarch, who, rather than fall into the hands of the Medes, built himself a pyre in a chamber of his palace and perished on it with his wives, his children, and his treasure. The whole four acts, with the various ballets, gave a perfectly faithful representation of the period as described by Diodorus and Herodotus, and as plastically shown on the reliefs discovered at Nineveh by Sir Henry Layard and subsequently by German excavators. Over £10,000 was spent upon the production, and the public were worked up to a great pitch of curiosity concerning it. But it was a complete failure as far as the public were concerned. "Heavens!" exclaimed one critic, "what a bore!" This, however, was not the fault of the Emperor, but was due to want of interest on the part of a public whose enthusiasm for the events and characters of times so remote could only be kindled by a genius, and a dramatic one. The Emperor is no such genius, nor had he one at command.