Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

Not surprisingly perhaps this ambitious scheme did not materialise in full. Over the next
two decades, however, Planché pursued his studies and developed his career through a period
when historical realism grew increasingly popular in the largest theatres and theatrical pageants
and costume balls carried the drama off the stage, until the interpenetration of art and life was
almost complete. The smaller theatres tried to keep up with the patent holders and antiquaries
accordingly kept their eye on the stage. At the Coburg theatre, where a melodrama of the Battle
of Hastings was billed with a ‘long and imposing’ list of authorities for its costumes Planché,
who had taken a box in order to observe the competition, was interested to see ‘in the very centre
of the pit, a most conspicuous object amongst the dingy denizens of the New Cut and St
George’s Fields…the snow-white powdered head of the learned and highly respected Dr
Coombe, the Keeper of the Medals at the British Museum’. 81
In May 1825 Kemble sent Planché to Rheims to observe the coronation of Charles X, a
ceremony designed to recreate the medieval ceremonies that had legitimated the Bourbon line
through history. From Paris, where he was accorded ‘every facility …of inspecting the regalia,
the royal robes, the state dresses of the great officers, the magnificent uniforms of the “Cent
Suisses” etc’, he went on to Rheims for the ceremony itself. 82 He then hurried back to London
with his notes and on 19 July Covent Garden put on ‘The Pageant of the Coronation of Charles
X’. Thus a real antiquarian event, based on historic precedent, became an antiquarian drama
based on recent history; past and present, art and documentary mirrored one another in a
production in which it would be particularly hard to draw the line between truth and illusion,
reality and representation. Having once put a living king on stage, it was a perhaps a natural
progression for Planché, some years later in 1842, to turn a real monarch into an historical one.
For the royal costume ball at which Queen Victoria and Prince Albert decided to appear as
Queen Philippa and Edward III, Planché was called in to advise and dressed them and the most
important of the guests. Letting daylight in on majesty was, he recalled, a delicate business, not
least because daylight required another standard of realism from limelight. Planché had some
trouble convincing the Earl of Cardigan that on this side of the footlights he would need real
81 Planché, Recollections, 1, p. 60.
82 Planché, Recollections, 1, p.65.
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