How did Planche treat capitalism in his work?
Quite mockingly. He made fun of banks in several of his extravaganzas and burlesques. For instance, in “The Bee and the Orange Tree,” he refers to a bank financing railroads as “Dunn, Brown, and Cutaway, Bolt Court,” reflecting the bankruptcies that had plagued many companies, including banks, during the “railway bubble” of the 1840s. However, his facetious mocking does not stop with a few references to banks. Banks were often targets of his humor, as they were through much of the English-speaking world at the time, suggesting a basic dis-ease with the perception that some people would make their livings by manipulating other people’s money. Beyond this, however, he mocks life insurance (which, to be fair, was often a scam in his time) in a late extravaganza, “The Good Woman in the Wood,” in which an evil sorcerer and a toy duck sing a duet proclaiming the whole world to be full of “quacks,” including the insurance industry. He also ridicules advertising and corporate decision-making a
