Hurlothrumbo; or, The super-natural is an 18th-century English nonsense play written by the dancing-master Samuel Johnson of Cheshire, and published in 1729.
[1] Writing in 1855, Frederick Lawrence says of the play:[2] The extraordinary drama of Hurlothrumbo, above alluded to, was then (mirabiledictu!)
The novelist and playwright Henry Fielding mentions the play in his novel Tom Jones: Thus the famous author of Hurlothrumbo told a learned bishop, that the reason his lordship could not taste the excellence of his piece was, that he did not read it with a fiddle in his hand; which instrument he himself had always had in his own, when he composed it.A significant early collection of graffiti was published under the pseudonym Hurlothrumbo in 1731.
The book, titled The Merry-Thought: or, the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany, transcribes graffiti found in public latrines in England, much of it humorous or sexual.
The volume may have been attributed to Hurlothrumbo by the publisher or editor to benefit from the popularity of Johnson's play.