The theatre's first major success was a 1729 production of a play by Samuel Johnson of Cheshire, "Hurlothrumbo, or The Supernatural", which ran for 30 nights – not as long as John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera" (62 performances), but still a long run for the time. In 1730, the theatre was taken over by an English company, and its name changed to the 'Little Theatre in the Haymarket'. Among the actors who appeared there before 1737 when the theatre was closed under the Licensing Act 1737 were Aaron Hill, Theophilus Cibber, and Henry Fielding. In the eight to ten years before the Act was passed, the Haymarket was an alternative to John Rich's Theatre Royal, Covent Garden and the opera-dominated Drury Lane Theatre. Fielding himself was responsible for the instigation of the Act, having produced a play called "The Historical Register" that parodied prime minister Robert Walpole, as the caricature, Quidam.