Why did the Age, alone among London newspapers, continually dismiss Planches work?
The editor for many years, Charles Westmacott Molloy, seems to have held Planche in special contempt. Why is not clear, although he repeatedly ridiculed the playwright, referring to him as the “wooden Mr. Plank,” for instance, or as Mme. Vestris’ pet monkey, Jouez-la. (The monkey was a real pet; why Planche was compared to him is unclear, except that it was a convenient form of insult.) One notable element is that Molloy also seems to have had a strange love-hate attitude toward Eliza Vestris. Sometimes he referred to her as a favorite, beloved actress, and at other times dismissed her in very condescending ways. Molloy seems to have wanted to have an affair with Vestris, whose flirtations were legendary (in both senses of the term). She was not always a model of propriety, but most of her sexploits were exaggerated or even invented by gossip mongers. However, Molloy seems to have been bitter about a rejection by Vestris, whether real or imagined, and took it out on her and many member
