Bang-up! Theatricality and the "Diphrelatic Art" in de Quincey's English Mail-Coach‪.‬

This article examines implicit connections between Thomas De Quincey's The English Mail-Coach and the English popular stage during the first two decades of the nineteenth century. At this time, London included among its entertainments equestrian spectacles, re-creations of historical and contemporary warfare, and farcical commentary on the so-called "Four-in-Hand" or "Driving" mania that seized the city early in 1809. From February to July of that year De Quincey was in town seeing Wordsworth's Convention of Cintra pamphlet through the press, a task that left him well-schooled in the campaigns of the Peninsular War that figure prominently in the section of his essay called "Going Down with Victory." Given the long-standing preference of De Quincey and his college-age peers for riding "on the box," which he describes in the first part of The English Mail-Coach, he is unlikely to have overlooked this new frenzy for coach-driving in the nation's capital. In fact, the fundamental crisis that shapes the entire Mail-Coach essay concerns skill in driving coaches, not just in sitting atop them. Moreover, the "diphrelatic" or "charioteering art," as De Quincey calls it, links three contemporary arenas or "theaters" for the testing and evaluation of equestrian skill in the pages of his essay: the London popular stage, the streets and highways of England, and the "theater" of war. **********