Equestrian Drama

Equestrian drama, also known as hippodrama, was a hybrid genre combining circus and theatre – and featuring trained horses and virtuosic acts of equestrianism – in plays that took various dramatic forms (chiefly melodrama, pantomime, and burletta), which flourished in England in the first half of the nineteenth century. While this hybrid also gained popularity in Paris and was exported to New York and elsewhere, its primary locus and inspiration came from London, most prominently, Astley's Amphitheatre, built by former cavalryman Philip Astley (1742–1814) in a working‐class area near Westminster Bridge on the south side of the Thames. By 1811, equestrian entertainments had grown so popular at Astley's and other ‘minor’ theatres that the patent theatres were compelled to hire Astley's performers and horses so that they, too, could offer hippodramas – on the same bills with tragedies featuring Sarah Siddons and J.P. Kemble – to fill depleted coffers. The genre reached its zenith during the years 1824 to 1842, when Astley's most famous actor‐manager, Andrew Ducrow (1793–1842), otherwise known as ‘the Emperor of Horseflesh’, held the reins. Ducrow and his second wife, ballerina equestrienne Louisa Woolford (1814–1900), along with their famous stud, became huge stars at Drury Lane as well as their home theatre and its Parisian satellite. Theirs was the Astley's immortalized by Dickens inSketches by Boz(1836). Critics railed at the ‘pollution’ of literary drama – literally by the sounds and ordure of horses on the stage floor, and figuratively by the mixing of genres – while audiences of all classes flocked by the thousands to cheer their thrilling performances.