To what extent did Planche write for a specific socio-economic class?
More than anyone else, Planche seemed to write for people who were like him, in terms of overall attitudes, of interests, and of educations levels. He was not an intensely political person, and indeed overt political preaching would have been potentially troublesome in the eyes of the Licenser of Plays. However, he was a member of the middle class, and wrote for primarily middle-class audiences. For instance, he seldom truly made working-class people the heroes of his dramas, but usually made the heroes more or less middle class, like Peter Stein, the tradesman hero of the “Mason of Buda,” or the householder Adam Brock in “Charles XII.” He did not particularly denigrate the working classes or libel the upper classes, however, nor was he insensible to issues that might have caused offense to others. Indeed, in “the Day of Judgement,” his adaptation of the revolutionary French play, “L’Enfant de Paris,” although a nobleman is still the cause of most of the suffering in the melodrama, oth
