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Marius Kwint
continental Europe and sometimes further afield. Calling themselves “riding
masters,” they also offered riding lessons and set up arenas for the purpose. This
was a time not only of unprecedented expansion and prosperity in leisure markets,
but also of increasing reaction to them in the form of the Movement for the
Reformation of Manners. Concerns about the limits of acceptable play have of
course been perennial. But the years of Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution
saw a new level of concerted efforts by Parliament and local magistrates to purge
popular amusements of the most disorderly elements – the petty crime, vice and
frequent cruelty towards animals – that had long attended the gathering of crowds. 3
In this context a particularly talented and enterprising riding master, an exsergeant
major from the light dragoons named Philip Astley, thought to intersperse
his arduous feats on horseback with the more traditional fairground and interlude
elements of tumbling and clowning. 4 He opened his own “riding school” in a field
in Lambeth, on the southern fringes of London, in April 1768. It proved popular
with a broad social range of audiences, but was forced to weather the jealousy of
West End theater-managers and harassment from local magistrates before it won
general recognition as a respectable form of family entertainment. 5 It was,
however, by no means exclusively family-oriented. Partly because it was based
in the common appreciation of the horse, the show transcended the normal
differences of class and cultural outlook, and enjoyed the custom of prosperous
working classes and aristocracy alike, although in segregated accommodation.
Making a reported 40 guineas a day, Astley was within the next 20 years able to
build permanent covered “amphitheaters” in Paris and Dublin as well as Lambeth.
He then used these as headquarters from which to tour smaller towns in winter.
Competition mounted, not least from the “Royal Circus,” which opened near to
Lambeth in 1782. 6 The Royal Circus not only coined a name for the genre, but
also erected a fine stage next to the ring, bringing circus close to the world of
drama for much of the next century. Astley’s and the Royal Circus began to
emulate each other in producing swashbuckling horse-borne melodramas known
as “hippodramas.” 7 Based on recent news of imperial exploits or Gothic legends,
they were set with lavish scenery in exotic locations, and usually ended in massed
battle scenes in front of burning castles complete with crashing timbers. Then the
“scenes in the circle” would begin. Astley died in 1814 but his company in London
went on to survive the Royal Circus, the introduction of the big top tent to Europe
by a visiting American company in 1842, and the proliferation of many smaller
touring companies without stages. Astley’s Amphitheatre became a cherished
institution of Victorian Britain and a standard brand for the circus business.
However, after being immortalized in the writings of Dickens and Thackeray and
lampooned in the pages of the satirical magazine Punch, it began to suffer from a
decline in the taste for hippodrama and increasing competition from the music
halls. 8 The Amphitheatre was finally demolished in 1893.
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