ABSTRACT
First published in The Examiner, V, 18 October 1812, pp. 663–5. Here, Hunt addresses one of the major theatrical events of 1812, the reopening of Drury Lane Theatre on 10 October, over three years after its destruction by fire on 24 February 1809. Drury Lane held a competition for the best poetic Address to be delivered onstage at the reopening. When the selection committee found all submissions unworthy, the head of the committee, Lord Holland, asked Byron to supply the Address. Byron’s poem, reprinted here by Hunt, was read on opening night and received mixed reviews. The gala occasion teetered on the edge of cultural farce when an unauthorized reader, as Hunt reports it, ascended the stage and had to be yanked off by police. Soon after this event, Horace Smith (1779–1849; DNB) and his brother, James Smith (1775–1839; DNB), published their enormously popular collection, Rejected Addresses (1812), parodies of contemporary poets who supposedly submitted these collected works unsuccessfully in the Drury Lane competition.
