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

the classical tradition, the patron of high drama, traduced by later alterations. Planché clearly
expected his audience to be familiar enough by now with this line of argument to follow it in
such abbreviated form and to spot ‘Richard is himself again’ as Cibber’s line, in the way that
they could be relied upon to have spotted Hawksmoor’s additions to Westminster Abbey.
Kean’s production, it is implied, puts historic details before textual essentials. It would be some
time, however, before Cibber’s Richard III lost its currency (Laurence Olivier kept the line in the
film of 1955) and Planché was soon to be one of the many who were disappointed by the effects
of the 1843 Act. At this point, however, he was still optimistic. In The Drama at Home
Shakespeare’s dispossessed characters are restored. Ariel rescues Othello, who has been reduced
to advertising Warren’s blacking and Macbeth, who was modelling as a Highlander (another
figure whose misappropriation owed much to antiquarianism) outside a cigar shop. In a second
transformation scene the stage of the Haymarket appears, with Katherine and Petruchio from
Planché’s recent production on it; a stage within a stage, showing a play within a play, the
tableau represents the kernel of authenticity within the mirroring layers of illusion. This was the
heart of Planché’s later understanding of Shakespeare, his comic representation of the essential
Ding an Sich, where Drama finds she has ‘indeed a home then found! From which she ne’er will
move’. 97
Walter Scott and ‘a Sensible Shakespeare’
If the study of Shakespeare was the apotheosis of romantic antiquarianism, then in Scott’s
relationship with Shakespeare, both the man and his works, is to be found its quintessence.
Scott’s writings are saturated with Shakespearean references, the British theatre of his lifetime
was saturated with Scott, and antiquarianism gave a pervading tone and colouring to both.
Dramatised versions of the Waverley novels, as plays and ballets, often appeared within weeks
of the books themselves. In 1820 one of Planché’s first productions was an adaptation of
97 Planché, The Drama at Home, p. 18.
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