A History of Equestrian Drama in the United States

4  The Plays

Melodramatic Equestrian Drama

A horse in the highway is simply a horse and nothing more; but, transferred to the theatre, the noble animal becomes a real horse.

—Edward Dutton Cook (1876)

In turning to the study of the equestrian dramas themselves, it is appropriate to begin with melodrama, since this is the genre in which most of the earliest equestrian dramas were written. Although melodrama can be said to have developed as early as the late decades of the eighteenth century, it was in the early years of the nineteenth century that melodrama truly became a viable form of dramatic literature. The first playwright of melodramas is generally accepted to be Thomas Holcroft, whose plays were first produced in England in 1802.

As the ...