The story they tell involves a man called
John Dennis,an actor-manager of the early part
of the eighteenth century who had invented a machine that reproduced for the stage the sound of thunder.
Dennis used his invention for the first time in his own play, Appius and Virginia, performed at Drury Lane Theatre in London in 1709. By all accounts Mr Dennis’s writing skills did not match his creative ones, and his play closed after a short run, to be replaced by a production of Macbeth performed by another company. Dennis himself went along to the opening night and was outraged to hear his thunder machine being used. The story goes that he stood up and shouted, ‘Damn them! They will not let my play run, but they steal my thunder.’