In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

THE CIRCUS 116 suits! I believe the cause of their hatred of the circus may be found in their envy of the clown. He never looks dismal, he don’t dress in rusty black, and who ever yet saw a clown who was not fat enough to kill? The beauty of the circus is that everyone can understand it, a deaf and dumb boy can enjoy it, and a blind man could revel in the music and laugh at the clown’s jokes. Youth, and age, irrespective of nationality, can feast upon the splendors of the sawdust circles and understand it all. If you go to the play and don’t understand what the actors are saying you have but a poor time of it. But what does it matter what they say at the circus, as long as they do only half the things they promise on the bills. . . . Now let us look at the people who constitute the circus. The chief of these, as the reader will admit, are the riders. Who has not felt his heart stop beating as these gorgeous apparitions burst upon him from the mysterious recesses of the dressing-room? What a dream they were! Velvets, tinsel, tarletan skirts, pink tights, gold braid, feathers and spangles, flying through the air like gigantic birds of paradise. . . . The circus is a great humanizer. Its popularity is due chiefly to the fact that everyone can understand it, and it rouses in every one a sympathy of sentiments which levels the barriers fortune and station set up. The millionaire gets no more for his money than the man who sweeps the crossing for him, at the circus. He can only see, hear and enjoy, and those prerogatives nature and not fortune confers on man. Look at the motley throng which makes up the audience of a circus. At the theatre you see not only silks and laces and diamonds, but here flannel shirt jostles broadcloth coat, and calico wrapper brushes sealskin; here diamonds gleam beside brass, and ostrich plumes quiver next to Bowery ribbons at five cents a yard. Artisan and banker, scullion and mistress, make up the swarm who turn out when the circus comes to town. All this, as much as the performances themselves, lend interest to the show. If the act in the ring is dull, one can study one’s neighbors, and be interesting in spite of the clown’s antediluvian jokes and the ringmaster’s familiar replies and apostrophes. This was never better shown than in the success the circus meets with in foreign countries . Even a Frenchman will laugh at the, to him, incomprehensible witticisms of an American clown. He knows it is the clown’s business to be funny and takes it for granted that he is so. It is well for the clown, sometimes, that he does take it for granted, perhaps. The Early Circus On May 28, 1835, Nathaniel Hawthorne noted his impressions of the circus performance he had seen in Salem and used it as the basis for his brief essay in the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge in April 1836. Perhaps the accent on tradition gave the skills greater legitimacy. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hawthorne’s Lost Notebook, 1835–1841, ed. Barbara S. Mouffe (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978), 3. The Early Circus 117 The Circus—A dancing horse, keeping excellent time to the music, with all four feet. Mr Dakin says, that two horses, who had learned to dance, dropt down dead during their performance. The physical exertion seems very moderate; it must be the mental labor that kills them—The Clown in his dress of motley, making fun of everything —Mr. Merryman—the most antique character, I suppose, now existing; just the same, probably, that he used to be five hundred years ago; and perhaps playing-off many of the identical jokes that all those successive generations have roared at.—A fellow who kept up several balls in the air at once; and also several knives;—this, too, is a feat of great antiquity, practised by the Saxon gleemen.—Excellent horsemanship ,—one rider with a boy on his shoulders; another man got into a sack, and after riding a few minutes, behold a woman emerged from the sack—Feats of strength, by a young fellow of no great bulk, but very solid muscle; lifting a table and a boy on it, with his teeth; sustaining an anvil on his breast, whereon another man...

Share