The art of exquisite clown fooling died in England when Grimaldi passed away. The London managers had to create a substitute, which they did after a fashion, with elaborate scenic spectacles. The clowns that followed were acrobats. Agility took the place of humor. There are traces of this in the clowning of to-day.
Of course, in any consideration of the origin of the modern clown you must reckon with the king’s jester. You have only to turn to the pages of Shakespeare to find how highly he was regarded. Every court had its fool, and he was often the wise man. In King Lear are the words:
“Jesters do oft prove prophets.”
Jacques was a philosopher, and Touchstone a great personage.
I have known king’s jesters in the American circus, but their art was too fine to be appreciated by the multitudes, and they had to give way to the more popular form of clowning. It took years of thought and study to be a Shakespearian jester.
Although the historical facts about the origin of the clown are fine and imposing, I somehow prefer to remember the legend about it that I heard as a boy in France. It was told me by an old clown in Normandy. As he related it to me, it went on to show that the little daughter of a wandering mountebank once dreamed that she saw her father with whitened face, peaked hat, and baggy white pantaloons, performing before a great crowd, and that everybody was laughing and applauding. It was such a vivid dream that she told her father about it. He was deeply impressed, and adopted the costume, thus appearing as the first white-faced clown.
VII
I GIVE MY CREED
FOR thousands of years man has searched for the Fountain of Youth, and it has always eluded him. Yet I am foolish enough to think that I have discovered it. The secret lies in being a clown. We are not only the oldest people of the circus in tradition, but also in years. There is that about our work which keeps us eternally young in spirit. Sometimes when the journey has been long and the day hot and the dust thick, I get a little weary, for I am moving on towards sixty. But as soon as I hear the music of the band, the snorts of the horses, the shrill voices of the “barkers,” and the indescribable movement of the crowd toward the big tent, it all acts like wine upon my blood. I am stirred to action, the weariness falls away like magic, and I am young again. I have not missed a performance in five years.