Background
This production was to be John Hollingshead's last burlesque at the Gaiety Theatre, and George Edwardes joined as his co-producer. Hollingshead had created a popular following at the Gaiety Theatre for musical burlesque. Other examples include The Bohemian G-yurl and the Unapproachable Pole (1877), Blue Beard (1882), Ariel (1883, by F. C. Burnand), and Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed (1883). Beginning with Little Jack Sheppard, however, Hollingshead's successor, George Edwardes, expanded the format of the burlesqes to full-length pieces with original music by Meyer Lutz, instead of scores compiled from popular tunes. These included Monte Cristo Jr (1886); Pretty Esmeralda (1887), Frankenstein, or The Vampire's Victim (1887), Mazeppa, Faust up to Date (1888), Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué (1888), Carmen up to Data (1890), Cinder Ellen up too Late (1891), and Don Juan (1892, with lyrics by Adrian Ross).
John Hollingshead had managed the Gaiety Theatre from 1868 to 1886 as a venue for variety, continental operetta, light comedy, and numerous musical burlesques composed or arranged by the theatre's music director, Wilhelm Meyer Lutz. Hollingshead called himself a "licensed dealer in legs, short skirts, French adaptations, Shakespeare, taste and musical glasses." In 1886, Hollingshead ceded the management of the theatre to Edwardes, whom he had hired in 1885. Nellie Farren, as the theatre's "principal boy", and Fred Leslie starred at the Gaiety for over 20 years. Leslie wrote many of its pieces under his pseudonym, "A. C. Torr". In the early 1890s, as burlesque went out of fashion, Edwardes changed the focus of the theatre from musical burlesque to the new genre of Edwardian musical comedy.
Many works of literature and theatre have been based on Sheppard's life. Perhaps the most prominent theatrical work is John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728). Sheppard was the inspiration for the character of Macheath, and his nemesis, Peachum, is based on Jonathan Wild. A melodrama, Jack Sheppard, The Housebreaker, or London in 1724, by William Thomas Moncrieff was published in 1825. Ainsworth's popular novel was published in Bentley's Miscellany from January 1839, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. Ainsworth's novel was adapted into a successful play by John Buckstone. The Ainsworth and Buckstone versions portrayed Sheppard as a swashbucking hero, and the fear that young people might emulate Sheppard's behaviour led the Lord Chamberlain to ban, at least in London, the licensing of any plays with "Jack Sheppard" in the title for forty years.
Read more about this topic: Little Jack Sheppard
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