ABSTRACT
First published in The Examiner, IV, 21 July 1811, pp. 470–1. After a revival of George Colman the Younger’s Blue-Beard with horses and the premier of Matthew Lewis’s Timour the Tartar that exploited the new rage for hippodrama (see headnote above, p. 166), at least eleven satires on equestrian plays filled London theatres. In this piece, Hunt takes up the Lyceum’s offering, Quadrupeds; or, The Manager’s Last Kick, and also mentions Colman’s own Quadrupeds of Quedlinburgh (for his reviews of this play, see The Examiner, IV, 28 July 1811, pp. 485–6). Part of the edge in these satiric pieces was that they were being offered by so-called ‘minor’ theatres (as opposed to Drury Lane and Covent Garden), with some of the humour arising from the fact that the patent theatres royal had to resort to the tactics of the pantomimic stage and the circus in order to hold onto their audiences.
