The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-06-25 00:00:00

THE DRAMA.

On Friday " The Stranger" was produced at the Theatre-
Royal. A more detestable play than this piece of German
sentimentality is, we do not know; and, we suspect, has had its
influence in creating some of the spurious sympathy of which
we have already begun to feel the bad effects. Mrs. .Haller, the
faithless wife, is clothed with all the attributes that make virtue
lovely in our eyes; she is extolled as a paragon of excellence,
and the closing scene leads to the inference that she is pardoned.
by her injured husband. In private life this is perhaps the
greatest crime that can be committed, and to the stern and rigid
exclusion of offenders of this class from the home of their hus-
bands and fathers may be attributed the purity of our wives and
daughters. This salutary dread renders them pure in word and
in thought, and impresses upon them the necessity of not only
being virtuous, but of appearing to be so. To hold up, then, to
the young and thoughtless that this crime can, under any cir-
cumstances, be palliated Or forgiven, is bad; although in particu-
lar cases this may be done, publicly it should never be done.
Vandenhoff and Miss HiLdart were the Stranger, and Mrs.
Haller, and they supported their characters with great ability.
" The Hunchback" was performed on Saturday. This, the
best of all Sheridan Knowles's. productions, is too well known,
and has been too often performed here, to require any comment
from us. The only novelty was the Julia of Miss Huddart. The
less we say about " Tom and Jerry," the afterpiece that fol-
lowed it, the better.
Last night Power's new drama of " St. Patrick's Eve, or the
Order of the Day," was got up here for the first time. The
scene is laid in Prussia, and the incident is, we believe, founded
:in fact. Frederick the Great, finding himself closely pressed by
Count Daune, resolves on a midnight movement, to facilitate
WhiCh he issues an order prohibiting the use of fire or light
within the lines of his camp, on pain of death. Mayor
Diwherig (Power) is first cajoled into striking a light
by. his friend Gustavus Schonfeldt, (Cooke,) who has been
wounded, and wishes to write a note to his mother, and to his
mistress, to assure them of his safety. While the major
is writing the note for him,' the king enters, and the major is,
in consegnence, tried by a court martial and sentenced to be
shot. From this fate he is rescued by the mistress of Schon-
feldt, the king conniving-at his escape, which gives the major an
opportunity of saving the king from an ambush that had been
laid four kidnapping him, from amidst his camp, to which his
physician. was an accessory. The major is of course pardoned.
This we think the best of Mr. Power's performances, and
we never saw a better picture of the cool determined bra-
very of the soldier, indifferent to all personal consider-
ations, With whom life was nothing—honour every thing.
Mr. Baker, as " the old Martial king, poet, and philosopher,"
was really excellent. His action in the scene where the feel-
ings °Me man -were in opposition to the duty of the sovereign,
and in 'his reply to the entreaties of the ladies; when he tells
them that a King must be just before he is merciful; that his
first.dtity'Was to preserve the moral force of his army, without
which he..could not preserve discipline among his soldiers, or
protect, his people,'was finely executed. The only prominent
parts .or;the piece are the King and the Major, but Miss Eyre,
Mrs. Vining, and Mrs. Clarke did all that could be done with
the parts'allotted to them. The 'Pit was nearly tilled, and the
dress cirele presented an unusually gay appea:fance,

runntrr is in circulation of a contemplated Congress to be
held at Vienna.

Sir Hobhouse is said to have still a hankering after the
representation of Westminster; but u e suspect that the day of
both the Baronets is gone by.
There are at present suet' public Committees of the House
of. Commons sitting :—Ou Land Revenues, Dramatic PerforM-
Knees, Admiralty Courts, British Channel Fisheries, Army and
Navy AppOintmeuts, Derry-bridge, and Stafford Bbrough.
Horse-stealing was seldom, if ever, more prevalent than at
present, not being confined to any particular district, but ex-
tending more or less over every part of the kingdom.—Edin-
burgh .ldvertiaer.
WHERE SHALL I DINE P—This question, which forms the
title of an amusing farce, must soon be asked by war eracious
sovereign'of his present ministers, if their organs of the preis
are to he relied upon. The chief of these has actually had the
inconceivable stupidity to bestow half a column of solemn trilling
upon the astounding fact of the King having been, us he has
.frt!uently been before, the guest of hero of Waterloo on
thb anniversary of that memorable day. From, this Waterloo
dinner the most fearful forebodings are drawn ; till at length
the writer 'checks himself, and recovers from his fitful dream,
b announcing that on such a day his Majesty dines with Lord
Holland ! We shall probably next be told, though his Majesty,
it is well known,. is .no gourmand, that the fate of the ministry
depends upon the merits of the respective dinners.—Murniny
Harald.

e take the following from one of our contemporaries
,of yesterday :

" ost of OUT readers have, perhaps, heard that a meeting of
'the Liverpool etergy was held a few days since, for the purpose
of petitioning the House of Lords against the Irish Church Re-
form Bill. But many' of them, perhaps, hive not heard that,
on the 18th instant, (the day on which the annual sermon for
the Charity Schools was preached,) the Mayor had a party of
upwards of forty of the clergy to dinner. Now what, it May be
said, had the dinner and the petition to do with oue another?
Stop a moment and we will tell you a curious little anecdote
connected therewith, which has been whispered about until it
has reached our ears, and which will tend to show the unceasing
.activity of your wily old Tory. It is to be observed, that at this-
said dinner were many of the clergy who had not attended the
meeting where the petition was agreed upon. Well, as they
each- and severally entered the Town-hali, there stood in the
vestibule a person with pen, ink, and parchment, on a little
table before him, calling upon them to sign the petition against
the ministerial measure. And we do happen ourselves to know
one clergyman who had not attended the previous meeting, and
who could not conscientiously sign it when required, who felt
extremely uncomfortable during the whole of the .day, at the
idea of partaking of the Mayor's hospitality after relasing to
sign, what- he -.conceived to be, his petition as displayed in. his
mansion."

The author of this piece of stupid balderdash we know
well, and we grieve to add that he is a clergyman of the
Church of England, who is ambitions of rivalling the
Rev. Doctor Wade. We know too that he is much em-
ployed as the purveyor of scandal to the radical press of
this town, and we put it to the reverend gentleman, in all
seriousness, whether lie would not be better employed in
preaching the gospel and in soothing the distresses of the
poor and needy than in this species of panderism. Our
last Tuesday's namber contained a short account of the
petition to which this article refers, the chief feature of
which is a respectful protest against the precedent of ap-
plying church property to any butchurch objects. Should
the contemplated spoliation of the church be carried into
effect, to what city of refuge will the reverend gentleman
fly ? Will he seek shelter in France ? Will America
foster him ? Has he read the history of the French revo-
lution ? The hospitalities of the Town-hall had no refer-
ence whatever to the petition, and if the clergyman al-
luded to "felt extremely uncomfortable," that discomfort
must have arisen from feeling that he was in better com-
pany than he is wont to keep.