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

novelist, the painter, and the actor, have discovered in attention to costume a new spring of
information and a fresh source of effect’. 88 Thus the artist and the scholar, the creator and the
recreator are, by this account, joined in a single endeavour.
Two years later Planché considered that endeavour again, in another of Knight’s
publications, The Book of Table Talk, to which he contributed an essay on the ‘History of Stage
Costume’. Here again Shakespeare was, by whatever far-fetched or comic association, the
ultimate and superhuman point of reference:
If Stratford-upon-Avon be the Mecca of our dramatic world, Dunstable may surely be called the Medina, -the
second sacred city in the estimation of the zealous play-goer; not that Shakspeare fled thither from the vengeance of
Sir Thomas Lucy, his Abu Sophian…but because the little town of Bedfordshire, which is only famous in Gazetteers
for the manufacture of straw hats and pillow-lace, has the honour of furnishing us with the earliest precise
information concerning an English play and English theatrical wardrobe, through the medium of Matthew Paris. 89
And thus another new subject emerged, for although both Malone and John Payne Collier (1789-
1883) had published details of historic theatrical costumes, Planché’s seems to have been the
first attempt to form a complete narrative of costume history, as a parallel to his history of dress.
Like Douce, however, Planché reached a point where the desire to praise Shakespeare, by
setting his work in context, had to be balanced against the danger of burying him under historical
detail. In his case it led to an apparent volte-face, the rejection to a great extent of the
authenticity for which he had so long campaigned. Again as with Douce this was connected with
the turn from Shakespeare as subject, to Shakespeare as source, and rather than any real change
of purpose it should be seen as the exchange of one kind of authenticity for another, arguably
more sophisticated, which Planché came to prefer. The shift came in 1843, when, after a
campaign in which Planché had been active, the Theatre Regulation Act was passed. This
removed the monopoly of the Patent holders, allowing Shakespeare and other spoken drama to
be put on in any theatre. Sadlers Wells and in particular the Princess’s Theatre under the
management of Charles Kean, went on to base their new repertoire on Shakespearean
88 Planché, History of British Costume, p.xi.
89 Planché, History of Stage Costume, p.143.
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