Planché, James Robinson

Planché, James Robinson (1795–1880), English dramatist of Huguenot descent, a prolific writer of burlesques, extravaganzas, and pantomimes, most of which were seen in the smaller theatres of London, particularly the Adelphi and the Olympic. The best known of Planché's works, The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles (1820), introduced to the English stage the vamp(ire) trap, and for Mme Vestris at the Lyceum he wrote the spectacular extravaganza The Island of Jewels (1849) for which the painter Beverley produced some remarkable scenic effects. Having had his first play, a burlesque entitled Amoroso, King of Little Britain, produced in 1818, Planché ended his career with a pantomime, King Christmas (1871), and a spectacle play for Covent Garden, Babil and Bijou; or, The Lost Regalia (1872), written in collaboration with Dion Boucicault. Although Planché's work was enormously successful in his own day it has no literary merit and divorced from its music and spectacular effects is quite unreadable. It depended largely on its staging, acting, and topicality, and taken as a whole provides an excellent picture of the London stage over more than 50 years. It has been claimed that many of Gilbert's libretti for the Savoy operas were based on texts of Planché's plays. In 1823 Planché, who was a serious student of art, designed, with some approximation to historical accuracy, the costumes of Charles Kean's King John. An unauthorized production of one of his own plays led him to press for the reform of the laws governing dramatic copyright, and it was largely owing to his efforts that new legislation was passed, giving greater protection to British dramatists.