Hurlothrumbo

Samuel Johnson of Cheshire, sometimes nicknamed "Maggoty Johnson," was an English dancing master, dramatist, and violinist born in 1691. He is best remembered for Hurlothrumbo; or, The Super-Natural, published in 1729, a play that mixed speech, music, and absurd theatrical invention in a way that made him a curiosity of 18th-century stage history.

Part of the fascination around him comes from performance as much as writing. Contemporary accounts say he appeared in his own work, playing, dancing, and even performing on stilts, which helped make Hurlothrumbo notorious. The play was widely noticed and satirized, including by Henry Fielding, which only strengthened its odd afterlife.

Johnson died in 1773. Though he never became a canonical literary figure, he remains memorable as one of the great eccentrics of Georgian theatre: a performer-author whose most famous work still stands out for its energy, nonsense, and sheer theatrical nerve.