ABSTRACT
James Robinson Planche was born in Old Burlington Street, Piccadilly, on 27 February 1796, the son of a watchmaker, Jacques Planche, who was descended from a Huguenot refugee. He had married a cousin, Catherine Emily Planche, who died in 1804 when their son was only eight years old. J. R. Planche was then brought up and educated by a clergyman in Chelsea, later studied geometry and perspective under a French tutor, and was articled to a bookseller. One of his dramas produced at Covent Garden was given unauthorised performance at the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, and this led to Planche giving evidence before a parliamentary committee in 1832, which resulted in an Act of Parliament giving protection to dramatists. With Charles Reade Dance he wrote Olympic Revels’, with which Madame Vestris regime, as the first feminine lessee of a theatre, opened, and together the two dramatists produced for her a great series of famous burlesques, comedies, and extravaganzas.
