The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-06-23 00:00:00

THEATRE ROYAL.

A most desired and desirable change in performer and
performances has taken place at this establishment. The
low and debauching piece of clever gallery blackguardism.
" y'clept" Jack Sheppard has departed with that prince of
itinerants (Yates) by sea, and to be seen at Dublin ! Power
is with us now, and families may go to see him in his glory
without awaking on the morrow to a consciousness of shame
for time misspent and money misapplied.
"Jack Sheppard" proved the taste of the radical, vulgar
portion of the public. None but those who expose their
propensities for Socialism and Vulgarism saw or sat it out
twice. It is a piece put on the stage in a time degrading to
this boasting country, a country whose history of greatness
cannot be known—or its littlenesses now, by its cutthroats
in the assumed name of patriots and friends would not and
She
pard" not be suffered. Yet they have been! "Jack Sh
pard" had its exposing gallery audiences of smilers, and ac-
tive approvers in pit and boxes ! and by people, too, who
passively cry out that the legitimate drama suffers ; and yet
they paid for the keeping up of a vulgar, paltry, and petty
larceny "booth-show, ' like the Jack Sheppard as "got up"
at the Adelphi Theatre, and now provincialized by an itine-
rating remnant of the paid off company at the Strand.
Who is to blame for such pieces being produced ? The
management ! Not at all. Every one's thanks is due to
them : all thanks are due to them ! It is the paying, pa-
tronising PUBLIC who are at fault, and the public only. The
public keep such trash of members of the " Dramatic Tailors'
Society" on the stage. How ?
hy, by paying for its sup-
port—its maintenance there ; otherwise no parish would
stand the remains of bones or soup fora day in the immoral
support of such exhibitions. This plain way of setting forth
a true bill may surprise the unthinking. But look at it.
Does the public of 1840 support Shakspeare and the good
old English comedy ? Not they ; not with a bill whose caste
can show three or four " capital" London performers. Yet
they pay money in crowds to see Jack and his harlots in a
den of thieves and prostitutes.
The conduct of the Liverpool press,
Sheppard, in not noticing Jack
is worthy of all praise. The opposition of the
press, strange to say, would have done no good, but harm.
The press by
its opposition made O'Connell, as its tardy
silence is unmaking his own unmasking now. It is so in all
" popular" fallacies.
It is otherwise, however, with Power's pieces. People
after going to see them can laugh—he makes them ; and
next day the recollection justifies their laughing o'er again.
His reception last night showed what such a man on his last
legs may look for. It is a clever piece, but no novelty. It
is purloined from the old farce of " Animal Magnetism,"
and the hero is made an Irishman of, to Mr. Power's mea-
sure. That is the truth, and it detracts not at all from the
fun and mirth of the successful piece.
Success to Power and no " small blame" to the public if
it does not aid him and his legitimate innocent comedy,