John Palmer (actor) - Royalty Theatre and Debtor's Prison

Royalty Theatre and Debtor's Prison

In 1785 Palmer, yielding to his own ambition and the counsel of friends, began to build the Royalty Theatre in Wellclose Square. Deaf to remonstrances, he persisted in his task, though the only licenses, wholly ineffectual, which he could obtain were those of the governor of the Tower and the magistrates of the adjoining district. This building he opened, 20 June 1787, with a performance of As you like it, in which he was Jaques to the Rosalind of Mrs. Belfille, and Miss in her Teens, in which he was Flash to the Miss Biddy of Mrs. Gibbs. The contest for places was violent. Apprehensive of an interference on the part of the authorities, he gave the representation for the benefit of the London Hospital. At the close Palmer read an address by Murphy, and said that performances would be suspended for the present. On 3 July the theatre was reopened for the performance of pantomimes and irregular pieces. Though backed up by friends, some of them of influence and wealth, Palmer was never able to conquer the opposition of the managers of the patent houses. A pamphlet warfare began with A Review of the present Contest between the Managers of the Winter Theatres, the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, and the Royalty Theatre in Wellclose Square, &c., 8vo, 1787. This, written in favour of Palmer, was answered anonymously by George Colman in A very plain State of the Case, or the Royalty Theatre versus the Theatres Royal, &c., 8vo, 1787. In the same year appeared Royal and Royalty Theatres (by Isaac Jackman), Letter to the Author of the Burletta called "Hero and Leander," The Trial of John Palmer for opening the Royalty Theatre, tried in the Olympian Shades, and The Trial of Mr. John Palmer, Comedian and Manager of the Royalty Theatre, &c. In 1788 appeared The Eastern Theatre Erected, an heroic "comic poem", the hero of which is called Palmerio, and Case of the Renters of the Royalty Theatre. The polemic was continued after the death of Palmer, a list of the various pamphlets to which it gave rise being supplied in Mr. Robert Lowe's Bibliographical Account of Theatrical Literature. Improvident and practically penniless through life, Palmer ascribed to the treatment he received in connection with this speculation, in which nothing of his own was embarked, his subsequent imprisonment for debt and the general collapse of his fortunes.

In such difficulties was he plunged that he resided for some period in his dressing-room in Drury Lane Theatre, and when he was needed elsewhere he was conveyed in a cart behind theatrical scenery. On 15 June 1789 he gave at the Lyceum an entertainment called As you like it, which began with a personal prologue written by Thomas Bellamy. He also played at Worcester and elsewhere, took the part of Henri du Bois, the hero in a spectacle founded on the just-concluded taking of the Bastille, and, while a prisoner in the Rules of the King's Bench, delivered three times a week, at a salary of twelve guineas a week, Stevens's Lecture on Heads. On 9 Nov. 1789 Drury Lane Theatre was closed, and Palmer, as a rogue and vagabond, was committed to the Surrey gaol. The public demanded him, however, and 1789-90 is the only season in which he was not seen at Drury Lane.